The US is investigating a technology theft linked to Google’s AI
A former Google software engineer has been indicted on charges of stealing AI-related trade secrets. The man was working for Chinese competitors who were trying to gain a competitive advantage from this information.
Linwei Ding, a Chinese national who also goes by the name Leon, was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Francisco on four counts of theft of trade secrets, each of which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. He was arrested on March 6 morning in the Californian city of Newark, where he lives.
The 38-year-old allegedly stole more than 500 files containing sensitive information between May 2022 and May 2023, including detailed information about the hardware infrastructure and software platforms that enable Google's supercomputing data centers to train large AI models through learning automatic, according to the indictment.
A few weeks after Ding began the theft activity, according to the indictment, an early-stage Chinese company with a focus on AI offered him to become its chief technology officer. The position provided a monthly salary of approximately $14,800 with an annual bonus and company stock.
In late October, Mr. Ding traveled to China and stayed there until the following March, attending investor meetings to raise capital for the company, Beijing Rongshu Lianzhi Technology.
In May 2023, he founded an AI start-up in Shanghai, without telling Google anything. Not a bad scam
“We have experience with Google's ten thousand tab computational power platform; we just need to replicate and upgrade it, and then further develop a computational power platform suitable for China's national conditions ,” he said in a document promoting his company on the Chinese social media platform WeChat.
He also instructed another Google employee to scan his login badge on three different days in December 2023, to create the impression that he was working from Google's U.S. office when, in fact, he was in China, the people found. Google investigators after reviewing surveillance footage.
Mr. Ding initially managed to evade Google's detection by copying Google data into the Apple Notes application on his Google-issued MacBook, then converting it to PDF and uploading it to his personal Google Cloud account. So Google's tools served to steal information from Google…
But in December 2023, when she uploaded more files from the Google network to another personal account while in China, Google became suspicious.
He then told a Google investigator that he planned to use the information as evidence of work he had done at Google, according to the indictment.
Mr. Ding did not disclose to Google any of his affiliations with China-based companies, according to prosecutors.
Less than a week later, he booked a one-way ticket to Beijing scheduled to depart on January 7. He then resigned from Google on December 26.
Google recovered Mr Ding's laptop and Google mobile device from his home the day before his scheduled departure on January 4.
The USA creates an ad hoc division to combat technological theft
The US Department of Justice and Commerce has created an ad hoc emergency force to intervene in these cases, the Disruptive Technology Strike Force , which is specifically aimed at controlling technological theft, with a particular eye on governments opposed to the USA, therefore China and Russia.
Attorney General Merrick Garland revealed details of the case at an American Bar Association conference in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon.
“We will vigorously protect sensitive technologies developed in America, preventing them from falling into the hands of those who shouldn't have them,” he said.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said the charges are “the latest illustration of the lengths affiliates of companies based in the People's Republic of China are willing to go to steal American innovation.”
“The theft of innovative technology and trade secrets from American companies can cost jobs and have devastating consequences for the economy and national security,” he said in a statement.
Technological and industrial espionage certainly has a significant impact on the development of AI in China, but, at the same time, China does not need to steal US technologies: it just needs to invest.
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The article US investigates Google AI-related tech theft comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/gli-usa-indagano-su-un-furto-tecnologico-legatoo-alla-ai-di-google/ on Fri, 08 Mar 2024 09:30:12 +0000.