Google Engineer Faces 175 Years for AI Theft

A former Google engineer, Linwei (Leon) Ding, 38, faces up to 175 years in jail after being charged with seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets by a federal grand jury in San Francisco. Ding, who was arrested in March 2024, is accused of uploading proprietary data on Google's AI supercomputer hardware infrastructure and software to his personal account, benefiting Chinese firms and the Chinese government.

Ding's role at Google involved developing software for machine learning and AI applications, giving him access to confidential information about Google's supercomputing data centers. Between May 2022 and 2023, he allegedly uploaded over 1,000 Google documents to his personal cloud account. Court documents reveal that Ding founded an AI and machine learning company in China, claiming it would help China achieve international-level computing power infrastructure capabilities.

Investigations found that Ding had another employee use his security card to access his office while he was in China. The stolen trade secrets include details about Google's SmartNIC, Tensor Processing Unit, and Graphics Processing Unit chips, as well as software built for next-gen AI innovations. Each economic espionage charge carries a maximum prison term of 15 years and a $5 million fine, while each trade secrets charge carries a maximum 10-year term and a $250,000 fine. If found guilty, Ding could face up to 175 years of imprisonment and fines totaling up to $36.75 million.