A former Google engineer accused of stealing thousands of the company’s confidential documents to build a startup in China has now been convicted in the U.S., the Department of Justice (DoJ) announced Thursday.
Linwei Ding (also known as Leon Ding), 38, faced conviction by a federal jury on seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets. Prosecutors showed that Ding took more than 2,000 documents containing Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) trade secrets for the benefit of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
“Silicon Valley is at the forefront of artificial intelligence innovation, pioneering transformative work that drives economic growth and strengthens our national security,” said U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian. “We will vigorously protect American intellectual capital from foreign interests that seek to gain an unfair competitive advantage while putting our national security at risk.”
Indictment and Scope of the Stolen Information
Earlier, in March 2024, a grand jury indicted Ding for transferring sensitive proprietary information from Google’s internal network to his personal Google Cloud account. Investigators found that the stolen documents detailed the company’s supercomputing data center infrastructure used to run AI models, the Cluster Management System (CMS) software that manages those data centers, and the AI models and applications supported by the systems.
Specifically, the trade secrets included:
- Architecture and functionality of Google’s custom Tensor Processing Unit chips and systems, as well as its Graphics Processing Unit systems
- Software that allows the chips to communicate and execute tasks
- Software that orchestrates thousands of chips into a supercomputer capable of training and executing cutting-edge AI workloads
- Custom-designed SmartNIC technology, a specialized network interface card that enables high-speed communication within Google’s AI supercomputers and cloud networking products
Timeline of the Alleged Theft
The theft occurred between May 2022 and April 2023. Ding, who joined Google in 2019, affiliated himself during that period with two China-based technology companies. Among them was Shanghai Zhisuan Technologies Co., a startup he founded in 2023 while still employed at Google.
In December 2023—less than two weeks before resigning—Ding downloaded the documents onto his computer, according to court records.
“Around June 2022, Ding was in discussions to be the Chief Technology Officer for an early-stage technology company based in the PRC; by early 2023, Ding was in the process of founding his own technology company in the PRC focused on AI and machine learning and was acting as the company’s CEO,” the DoJ said.
In addition, prosecutors alleged that Ding took multiple deceptive steps to conceal the trade secret theft. For example, he copied data from Google source files into the Apple Notes application on his company-issued MacBook, converted those notes into PDF files, and then uploaded them to his personal Google account.
Furthermore, prosecutors accused Ding of asking another Google employee to use a company-issued access badge to enter a Google building. According to the government, this act aimed to create the impression that Ding worked from the office when he was actually in China. The scheme ultimately unraveled in late 2023 after Google learned that Ding had delivered a public presentation in China to potential investors about his startup.
Additional Charges and Alleged PRC Ties
Subsequently, in February 2025, prosecutors charged Ding with economic espionage through a superseding indictment. That filing also alleged that Ding applied to a Shanghai-based “talent” program sponsored by Beijing. The indictment described these programs as initiatives designed to encourage researchers and developers working abroad to relocate to China and contribute to its economic and technological growth.
“Ding’s application for this talent plan stated that he planned to ‘help China to have computing power infrastructure capabilities that are on par with the international level,'” the DoJ said. “The evidence at trial also showed that Ding intended to benefit two entities controlled by the government of China by assisting with the development of an AI supercomputer and collaborating on the research and development of custom machine learning chips.”
Ding is scheduled to appear at a status conference on February 3, 2026. He now faces a potential maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each count of theft of trade secrets and 15 years in prison for each count of economic espionage.
Source: TheHackerNews
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