Superseding Indictment Charges Chinese National in Relation to Alleged Plan to Steal Proprietary AI Technology - aub

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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 understood as Leon Ding, 38, with seven counts of economic espionage and 7 counts of theft of trade tricks in connection with an alleged strategy to take from Google LLC (Google) proprietary details related to AI innovation.

Ding was at first arraigned in March 2024 on 4 counts of theft of trade tricks. The superseding indictment returned today explains 7 categories of trade secrets taken by Ding and charges Ding with seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade tricks.

According to the superseding indictment, Google worked with Ding as a software engineer in 2019. Between around May 2022 and May 2023, Ding uploaded more than 1,000 distinct files containing Google personal details from Google's network to his individual Google Cloud account, including the trade tricks alleged in the superseding indictment.

While Ding was utilized by Google, asteroidsathome.net he covertly connected himself with two 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 innovation company based in the PRC. By May 2023, Ding had actually established his own innovation company concentrated on AI and artificial intelligence in the PRC and was functioning as the company's CEO.

The superseding indictment declares that Ding intended to benefit the PRC federal government by stealing trade secrets from Google. Ding presumably stole technology connecting to the hardware infrastructure and software platform that permits Google's supercomputing information center to train and serve large AI designs. The trade secrets contain detailed details about the architecture and functionality of Google's Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips and systems and Google's Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) systems, the software that permits the chips to interact and perform tasks, and the software that manages thousands of chips into a supercomputer efficient in training and carrying out cutting-edge AI workloads. The trade tricks likewise pertain to Google's custom-made SmartNIC, a kind of network interface card used to enhance Google's GPU, high efficiency, and cloud networking items.

As declared, Ding flowed a PowerPoint discussion to workers of his technology business citing PRC national policies encouraging the advancement of the domestic AI industry. He likewise developed a PowerPoint presentation containing an application to a PRC talent program based in Shanghai. The superseding indictment explains how PRC-sponsored talent programs incentivize people engaged in research and advancement outside the PRC to transmit that knowledge and research study to the PRC in exchange for salaries, research study funds, lab area, or other incentives. Ding's application for the skill program mentioned that his company's product "will help China to have computing power infrastructure capabilities that are on par with the global level."

If convicted, Ding faces a maximum penalty of 10 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 figure out any sentence after thinking about the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory aspects.

The FBI is investigating 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 law enforcement strike force co-led by the Departments of Justice and Commerce designed to target illicit stars, safeguard supply chains, and prevent crucial technology from being obtained by authoritarian regimes and hostile nation-states.

A superseding indictment is simply a claims. All accuseds are presumed innocent till proven guilty beyond an affordable doubt in a law court.