Linwei (Leon) Ding, a former Google engineer, has been indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for allegedly stealing trade secrets related to Google's AI technology to benefit Chinese firms. He faces up to 175 years in prison after being charged with seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets. Ding is accused of uploading over 1,000 proprietary documents to his personal account from May 2022 to 2023. His discussions with a Chinese tech company’s CTO reportedly began in June 2022. The stolen data includes critical information about Google's supercomputing infrastructure, AI models, and various chips, including SmartNIC and Tensor Processing Unit designs. Ding launched his own AI company in China and was seeking to enhance China's computing capabilities. Google detected unusual activity on its network, leading to Ding's arrest in March 2024, and investigations are ongoing.

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