Former Google Engineer Convicted of Espionage
A federal jury in San Francisco has found a former Google software engineer guilty of espionage and theft of trade secrets, marking the first conviction tied to artificial intelligence-related espionage.
After an 11-day trial, Linwei Ding, who is also known as Leung Ding, was convicted on seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of trade secret theft. It was revealed that he had stolen thousands of pages of confidential Google information to assist China.
“In today’s high-stakes race for supremacy in AI, Linwei Ding betrayed both the United States and his employer by taking trade secrets related to Google’s technology for the benefit of the Chinese government,” said Roman Rosavsky, deputy director of the FBI’s Espionage Division.
The competition among U.S. tech companies to develop cutting-edge AI models has intensified, particularly after a Chinese company, DeepSeek, made waves in January 2025 by releasing a competitively priced AI chip.
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, recently stated that Chinese AI models might be lagging just “months” behind their American counterparts.
Between May 2022 and April 2023, Ding, age 38, reportedly stole more than 2,000 pages of highly sensitive information from Google’s AI division, storing it on his personal Google Cloud account. The Department of Justice shared this information on Friday.
Ding, who was indicted in March 2024, allegedly collaborated with two Chinese tech firms while still employed at Google. He had even initiated discussions to take on the role of chief technology officer at a tech company in China and was preparing to launch his own startup there.
In various pitches to potential investors, Ding claimed he could construct an AI supercomputer using the stolen trade secrets.
Court documents show that he downloaded the confidential materials onto his laptop in December 2023, just weeks before leaving Google. These documents included details on Google’s Tensor Processing Unit chips and SmartNICs, critical assets for training large-scale AI models.
John Eisenberg, the assistant attorney general for national security, emphasized that this case involves some of the world’s most advanced AI technology at a crucial time in its development.
Ding faces up to 10 years in prison for each theft count and 15 years for each charge of economic espionage.
His attorney, Grant Fond, contended that the documents in question lacked valuable trade secrets, arguing that Google had not adequately protected its information. “Google opted for openness rather than security,” Fond told the jury during closing statements, asserting that the company failed to take reasonable precautions.
