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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 7 counts of theft of trade tricks in connection with a supposed plan to steal from Google LLC (Google) proprietary details connected to AI technology.
Ding was initially arraigned in March 2024 on four counts of theft of trade tricks. The superseding indictment returned today explains seven categories of trade secrets taken by Ding and charges Ding with seven counts of financial espionage and 7 counts of theft of trade secrets.
According to the indictment, Google hired Ding as a software application engineer in 2019. Between around May 2022 and May 2023, Ding published 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 covertly connected himself with 2 People's Republic of China (PRC)- based innovation business. Around June 2022, Ding remained in conversations to be the Chief Technology Officer for an early-stage innovation business based in the PRC. By May 2023, Ding had founded his own innovation business focused on AI and artificial intelligence in the PRC and was serving as the company's CEO.
The superseding indictment alleges that Ding intended to benefit the PRC government by taking trade tricks from Google. Ding allegedly took innovation connecting to the hardware infrastructure and software platform that permits Google's supercomputing data center to train and serve big AI models. The trade secrets contain detailed details about the architecture and performance of Google's Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips and systems and Google's Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) systems, the software application that enables the chips to interact and perform tasks, and the software that orchestrates thousands of chips into a supercomputer capable of training and videochatforum.ro executing cutting-edge AI work. The trade secrets also pertain to Google's custom-designed SmartNIC, a kind of network interface card used to improve Google's GPU, high performance, and cloud networking products.
As declared, Ding flowed a PowerPoint discussion to staff members of his technology company citing PRC nationwide policies encouraging the advancement of the domestic AI industry. He also created a PowerPoint presentation containing an application to a PRC skill program based in Shanghai. The superseding indictment explains how PRC-sponsored skill programs incentivize individuals engaged in research and advancement outside the PRC to transmit that understanding and research study to the PRC in exchange for incomes, research funds, lab area, or other rewards. Ding's application for the skill program mentioned that his company's item "will help China to have computing power facilities abilities that are on par with the worldwide level."
If founded guilty, Ding faces a maximum penalty of ten years in jail and approximately a $250,000 fine for each trade-secret count and 15 years in jail and $5,000,000 fine for each economic-espionage count. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after thinking about the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory aspects.
The FBI is examining the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Casey Boome and Molly K. Priedeman 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 police strike force co-led by the Departments of Justice and Commerce developed to target illicit actors, protect supply chains, and prevent critical innovation from being obtained by authoritarian programs and hostile nation-states.
A superseding indictment is simply a claims. All accuseds are presumed innocent until tested guilty beyond an affordable doubt in a law court.