A federal jury just delivered a verdict that marks a watershed moment in the U.S.-China tech rivalry. Linwei Ding, a 38-year-old former Google software engineer, was convicted Thursday on 14 counts of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets after prosecutors proved he smuggled over 2,000 pages of Google's AI technology to benefit the People's Republic of China. It's the first conviction on AI-related economic espionage charges in U.S. history, according to the Department of Justice, and it sends a stark message as the AI arms race intensifies.
Google just won a significant legal battle in what federal prosecutors are calling a landmark case for protecting American AI technology. A San Francisco jury convicted former Google software engineer Linwei Ding on Thursday after an 11-day trial that exposed how thousands of pages of the company's most sensitive AI secrets ended up in Chinese hands.
The verdict - seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets - represents the first time anyone's been convicted on AI-related economic espionage charges in the United States, according to the Department of Justice. Ding, also known as Leon Ding, now faces up to 15 years in prison for each espionage count and 10 years for each theft count when he returns to court Tuesday.
"In today's high-stakes race to dominate the field of artificial intelligence, Linwei Ding betrayed both the U.S. and his employer by stealing trade secrets about Google's AI technology on behalf of China's government," Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, said in a statement Friday. "Today's verdict affirms that federal law will be enforced to protect our nation's most valuable technologies and hold those who steal them accountable."
The theft took place over nearly a year, from May 2022 through April 2023. During that window, Ding methodically uploaded more than 2,000 pages of Google's confidential AI documentation to his personal Google Cloud account, . The timing wasn't coincidental - while still employed at Google, Ding had already affiliated himself with two China-based tech companies and was laying groundwork for his own startup.
