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Posted on 01/30/2026 3:13:27 PM PST by nickcarraway
A U.S. jury found Linwei Ding guilty of economic espionage and trade secret theft after he stole Google’s sensitive AI infrastructure data.
In brief
-Former Google software engineer Linwei Ding has been convicted of economic espionage for siphoning Google’s trade secrets to China-based companies.
-Federal agents arrested Ding in March 2024, accusing him of stealing 500+ confidential AI files while secretly collaborating with China-based companies.
-Ding built his own AI startup in China, pitched investors on replicating Google’s tech, and applied to a Shanghai government talent program.
A 38-year-old former Google software engineer has been convicted of siphoning thousands of pages of the company's most sensitive AI technology to benefit China, in one of the most serious tech espionage cases prosecuted by the Justice Department.
Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, was found guilty on seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets following an 11-day trial in San Francisco federal court, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California said in a statement on Thursday.
In March 2024, federal agents arrested Ding at his Newark home, with then-U.S. Attorney Ismail Ramsey alleging he stole 500+ confidential AI files while secretly working with China-based companies to gain a competitive edge.
Ding now faces up to 15 years in prison for each economic espionage count and 10 years for each theft count, with a status conference scheduled for February 3.
The trial revealed how Ding systematically plundered Google's AI crown jewels over nearly a year.
Between May 2022 and April 2023, while working as a Google software engineer with access to the company's most confidential systems, he copied more than 2,000 pages of proprietary information to his personal Google Cloud account.
The trade secrets included detailed specifications for Google's custom Tensor Processing Unit chips, Graphics Processing Unit systems, and the sophisticated software that orchestrates thousands of chips into supercomputers capable of training cutting-edge AI models.
While stealing Google’s AI secrets, Ding was also building his own China-based AI venture, discussing a CTO role with a Chinese startup in mid-2022 before founding and leading his own AI company as CEO by early 2023.
In investor pitches, Ding claimed he could replicate Google’s technology, promoted China’s state-backed AI priorities, and applied to a Shanghai government talent program in late 2023, pledging to help China reach “international-level” computing infrastructure.
"The jury delivered a clear message today that the theft of this valuable technology will not go unpunished," U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian said in the statement.
Industrial espionage and AI
The conviction comes as Chinese exploitation of American AI technology has become a major concern for U.S. officials.
"AI models are already geopolitically sensitive as we are deep into the AI arms race, and the nation that leads this race will gain an advantage similar to those won by the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the nuclear arms race," Kadan Stadelmann, Chief Technology Officer at Komodo Platform, told Decrypt.
"AI espionage is already running rampant, because there is so much at stake with this technology," he added, urging AI startup founders to thoroughly vet engineers through comprehensive background checks.
US AI and Data Firms to Testify in Chinese AI Espionage Probe
U.S. lawmakers have reportedly called in several AI development companies to explain how certain models have become part of a wide-ranging espionage effort. Among them is Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who was asked to appear before the House Homeland Security Committee on December 17 to explain how Chinese state actors used Claude Code, according to an Axios report released Wednesday, citing letters shared in private. Earlier this month, Anthropic disclosed that a hacking group linked to the Chine...
In November, congressional investigators summoned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to explain how Chinese state actors used the company's Claude Code tool to launch what Anthropic described as the first large-scale cyber operation largely automated by AI.
Last month, major U.S. tech companies formed the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation, partly in response to China overtaking the U.S. in open-source AI downloads.
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What, he was the ONLY one?? Jeez, the company has so many foreigners in it anyone could be doing it.
Who would have suspected Mr. Ding?
“””Who would have suspected Mr. Ding?”””
Sum Ting Wong
LOL. Who could have guessed
“””Who would have suspected Mr. Ding?”””
Sum Ting Wong
Ho Lee Fook
China invent something , nope got to steal it
Trump wants 599,000 more of his crooked countrymen here.
never trust a chinaman
Only clicked on the thread to say I’m “shocked” it was a treasonous Asian that did the treason /s
We are doomed.
Ding got dinged.
That is true. 👍
Most deceptive people on earth are from China.
Once we get all of the MURDERERS and RAPISTS and TERRORIST out of our County...can we go after the Foreign Spies...NEXT?
What a flippin’ NIGHTMARE the Socialist Democrats AND the Quisling RINOs have made for us...just in my lifetime!
How I loathe them all!
*SPIT*
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