A Chinese software engineer working for Alphabet Inc’s Google was charged by the US Department of Justice with stealing trade secrets for developing artificial intelligence (AI) from the company’s supercomputing data centers.
Linwei Ding, 38, a Chinese national and resident of Newark, California, who was hired by Google in 2019, has been charged with four counts of trade secrets theft, the US Department of Justice said in a statement on Wednesday.
“We allege the defendant stole artificial intelligence-related trade secrets from Google while secretly working for two companies based in China,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “We will fiercely protect sensitive technologies developed in America from falling into the hands of those who should not have them.”
Photo: Reuters
A Google spokesperson said Ding acted alone and that the company was able to act quickly and refer the case to law enforcement after discovering the problem.
“We have strict safeguards to prevent the theft of our confidential commercial information and trade secrets,” Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said in an e-mailed statement. “We are grateful to the FBI for helping protect our information and will continue cooperating with them closely.”
Ding, also known as Leon Ding, allegedly transferred sensitive information from Google’s network to his personal email and cloud accounts while secretly affiliating himself with two China-based companies working in the AI industry, the Justice Department said.
Ding allegedly helped form one of the unidentified companies. He did not disclose his connection to either company to Google. The Justice Department does not allege that Ding provided the companies with specific data he stole from Google.
The case marks the first significant enforcement action since Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced last month that the Justice Department’s disruptive technology strike force would focus on violations related to the use or transfer of AI technology.
The US Attorney’s office in San Francisco has in recent years prosecuted multiple cases over intellectual property theft involving China, including three ex-Apple Inc engineers accused of stealing trade secrets from the company’s autonomous driving project to take with them for jobs with Chinese companies.
Ding was arrested on Wednesday in Newark. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of as much as US$250,000 for each count if convicted.
The technology Ding allegedly stole “involves the building blocks of Google’s advanced supercomputing data centers, which are designed to support machine learning workloads used to train and host large AI models,” the Justice Department said.
While he was employed by Google, Ding had access to confidential information about hardware, software and the AI models and applications they supported, some of which he is alleged to have uploaded into personal accounts.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
FORESEEABLE CONSEQUENCES: New technology always comes with new innovations by the iniquitous in exploiting users for financial gain or more nefarious ends Artificial intelligence (AI) “agents” say they can save users time and energy by automating tasks, but the growing power of systems such as OpenClaw is putting cybersecurity experts on edge. Powered by a wave of hype, OpenClaw today says it has more than three million users worldwide. The system allows users to create so-called agents, tools based on a large language model (LLM) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic PBC’s Claude, that can carry out online tasks. “We’ve moved from an AI you could talk with via a chatbot to an agentic AI, which can take action... the threat and the risks are
RSS