A former Google software engineer, Linwei Ding, has been found guilty of espionage and trade secret theft in a landmark case concerning artificial intelligence. The federal jury in San Francisco convicted Ding on a total of fourteen counts, including seven of economic espionage and seven of theft of trade secrets, after an eleven-day trial. The charges stemmed from his misappropriation of over 2,000 pages of confidential information aimed at benefiting the Chinese government.
During the trial, evidence revealed that Ding, who was 38 years old at the time of the offenses, had stored sensitive documents related to Google’s AI technology on his personal Google Cloud account. He had been in talks to take a position as chief technology officer for a Chinese tech company while still employed at Google. Prior to leaving the company in December 2023, he allegedly downloaded crucial information about Google’s AI hardware, including the Tensor Processing Unit chips and SmartNIC technology.
Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI highlighted the case's significance in the context of increasing competition between U.S. and Chinese tech firms in AI development, especially following the introduction of China's DeepSeek AI chips in January 2025. The Department of Justice indicted Ding in March 2024, underscoring the seriousness of the theft during a vital juncture in AI advancements.