Superseding Indictment Charges Chinese National in Relation to Alleged Plan to Steal Proprietary AI Technology
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Superseding Indictment Charges Chinese National in Relation to Alleged Plan to Steal Proprietary AI Technology
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Note: View the superseding indictment here.
A federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment today charging Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, 38, with seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets in connection with an alleged plan to take from Google LLC (Google) proprietary details related to AI technology.
Ding was initially arraigned in March 2024 on four counts of theft of trade secrets. The superseding indictment returned today explains 7 classifications of trade secrets taken by Ding and charges Ding with seven counts of financial espionage and seven counts of theft of trade tricks.
According to the superseding indictment, Google hired Ding as a software application engineer in 2019. Between approximately May 2022 and May 2023, Ding uploaded more than 1,000 distinct files containing Google private details from Google's network to his individual Google Cloud account, consisting of the trade tricks declared in the superseding indictment.
While Ding was employed by Google, he secretly connected himself with 2 People's Republic of China (PRC)- based technology companies. Around June 2022, Ding remained in discussions to be the Chief Technology Officer for an early-stage technology company based in the PRC. By May 2023, Ding had actually founded his own innovation business focused on AI and artificial intelligence in the PRC and was acting as the company's CEO.
The superseding indictment declares that Ding meant to benefit the PRC federal government by taking trade secrets from Google. Ding apparently took technology connecting to the hardware facilities and software application platform that permits Google's supercomputing data center to train and serve large AI models. The trade secrets contain detailed details about the architecture and performance of Google's Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips and systems and asteroidsathome.net Google's Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) systems, the software application that allows the chips to communicate and execute jobs, and lespoetesbizarres.free.fr the software application that orchestrates countless chips into a supercomputer capable of training and performing cutting-edge AI work. The trade secrets also pertain to Google's custom-designed SmartNIC, a type of network interface card used to improve Google's GPU, high performance, and wiki.armello.com cloud networking products.
As alleged, Ding flowed a PowerPoint discussion to staff members of his technology company mentioning PRC nationwide policies motivating the development of the domestic AI market. He also produced a PowerPoint presentation containing an application to a PRC skill program based in Shanghai. The superseding indictment explains how PRC-sponsored skill programs incentivize people engaged in research and advancement outside the PRC to transmit that knowledge and research study to the PRC in exchange for incomes, research funds, lab space, or other rewards. Ding's application for setiathome.berkeley.edu the skill program specified that his business's item "will help China to have computing power facilities abilities that are on par with the international level."
If convicted, Ding faces a maximum charge of ten years in jail and as much as a $250,000 fine for online-learning-initiative.org each trade-secret count and wiki.lafabriquedelalogistique.fr 15 years in jail and $5,000,000 fine for each economic-espionage count. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory elements.
The FBI is investigating the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Casey Boome and Molly K. for the Northern District of California and Trial Attorneys Stephen Marzen and Yifei Zheng of the National Security Division's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case.
Today's action was coordinated through the Justice and Commerce Departments' Disruptive Technology Strike Force. The Disruptive Technology Strike Force is an interagency law enforcement strike force co-led by the Departments of Justice and Commerce designed to target illegal actors, secure supply chains, and avoid important technology from being obtained by authoritarian regimes and hostile nation-states.
A superseding indictment is simply a claims. All offenders are presumed innocent up until tested guilty beyond a sensible doubt in a court of law.