[Image: FMT]
US prosecutors dropped some serious charges on Tuesday, hitting former Google software engineer Linwei Ding with a 14-count indictment.
They’re accusing him of stealing AI trade secrets to help out two Chinese companies he was allegedly working for on the sly.
Ding, 38 and originally from China, is now facing seven counts of economic espionage and another seven for trade secrets theft. If convicted, the stakes are pretty high — up to 15 years in prison and a $5 million fine for each espionage count, and up to 10 years plus a $250,000 fine for each trade secrets charge. Things are looking intense for him right now.
Leon Ding, the former Google engineer also known as Linwei Ding, was initially hit with four trade secrets theft charges back in March. He’s currently out on bond, and his legal team hasn’t made any public statements so far, according to Reuters.
Ding’s case is part of the Biden administration’s Disruptive Technology Strike Force, set up in 2023 to stop advanced tech from falling into the hands of countries like China and Russia. Prosecutors say Ding made off with sensitive info about Google’s hardware and software systems that power their AI training centres. Some of the blueprints he allegedly swiped were designed to give Google an edge over cloud computing giants like Amazon and Microsoft while cutting back their reliance on Nvidia chips.
Apparently, Ding joined Google in 2019 and waited until 2022 to start uploading over 1,000 confidential files. By May 2023, he’d allegedly shared a PowerPoint with employees at a Chinese startup he founded, talking up the country’s push for a homegrown AI industry.
Google hasn’t been charged in the case but said it worked with law enforcement. According to court docs, there was some chatter about a potential plea deal in December, but it sounds like this one’s heading to trial.
Perhaps this has something to do with China’s AI model, DeepSeek, suddenly showing up better than anything the US came up with.
[Source: Reuters]