Michigan Republican John James told the Evening Edit how China is exfiltrating personal information through internet-connected cars.
A former Google software engineer was indicted Tuesday in California on charges of stealing trade secrets. Artificial intelligence (AI) It’s a technology he used to benefit two companies based in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Linwei Ding, also known as Leung Ding, was charged with four counts of trade secret theft for allegedly transferring Google’s trade secrets and other confidential information to Google. Chinese companies. Mr. Ding, 38, started working at Google in 2019, working in the tech giant’s supercomputing data centers to produce graphics processing units for machine learning and AI applications, or for other purposes needed by Google or its customers. I was involved in the development of software that makes the (GPU) function efficiently.
According to the indictment, from May 2022 to May 2023, Ding uploaded more than 500 unique files containing confidential Google information, including trade secrets, to his personal Google Cloud account. Mr. Ding copied data from Google’s source files in the company’s Apple Notes and leaked these files. -Use your issued laptop to convert those notes into PDF files and upload them from Google’s network to avoid detection.
Less than a month after the fraudulent upload campaign began, Mr. Ding was offered a job as CTO of a Chinese company known as Rongshu with a monthly salary of $14,800, plus bonuses and stock. Rongshu’s business was aimed at developing software to accelerate machine learning on GPU chips and his trained AI models.
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Former Google engineer Linwei Ding is accused of stealing more than 500 confidential Google documents containing trade secrets in order to support a Chinese AI company. (LIU JIN/AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images)
According to the indictment, Ding also founded a company called Zhisuan and proposed developing a cluster management system to accelerate machine learning workloads and train AI models at scale using supercomputing chips. That’s what it means.
The company was funded by a China-based startup incubator and touted its ability to replicate and improve Google’s platform to “develop a computing power platform suited to China’s national conditions.”
Google detected Mr. Ding’s uploading activity while in China in December 2023, and on December 8, he told company investigators that he wanted to use the information as evidence of his work at Google, including confidential information. signed an affidavit stating that it would be removed. His Google data that he owns.
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Less than a week later, Ding booked a one-way ticket from . San Francisco According to the indictment, he submitted his resignation on December 26, effective January 5, 2024. In late December, Google learned that Ding had spoken on stage as Zhisuan’s CEO at an investor conference in Beijing the previous month, and searched his network activity history and discovered the fraudulent uploads.
According to the indictment, Google security personnel recovered company laptops and mobile devices from the home on January 4, and the FBI conducted an investigation on January 6 and 13 to secure electronic devices and other evidence. A search warrant was executed.
“While Mr. Linwei Ding was employed as a software engineer at Google, he secretly worked to enrich himself and two companies based in the People’s Republic of China,” said U.S. Attorney Ismail Ramsey. said in a press release. “by steal Google’s trade secrets Mr. Ding gave himself and his domestic partners an unfair competitive advantage with respect to his company’s artificial intelligence supercomputing system. ”
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Ding is accused of stealing Google’s trade secrets to benefit two Chinese companies, including one he founded. (LI XIN/AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images)
“The stolen information pertains to both.” Google hardware infrastructure and its AI software platform. In general, this information is about the technology that enables Google’s supercomputing datacenters to train AI models at scale through machine learning. While doing this work, Ding had secret ties to two technology companies based in China. Both were artificial intelligence companies,” Ramsey added in a video statement.
| ticker | safety | last | change | change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alphabet Co., Ltd. | 131.40 | -1.27 | -0.96% | |
“We have strict safeguards in place to prevent the theft of commercially sensitive information and trade secrets,” a Google spokesperson told FOX Business in a statement. “Our investigation revealed that this employee stole numerous documents. “I understood and immediately reported the matter to law enforcement.” He would like to thank the FBI for helping protect our information and we will continue to work closely with him. ”
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The company said its investigation determined that this was the sole action of a young employee and was not a widespread problem within Google. It also noted that employee activity on Google’s network was recorded, including file transfers to platforms such as Google Drive and DropBox.
Reuters contributed to this report.
