Former Google Engineer Charged With Trade Secret Theft

FILE - Items are displayed in the Google Store in Mountain View, Calif., Oct. 11, 2023. The Justice Department says a former software engineer at Google has been charged with stealing artificial intelligence technology while secretly working with two companies based in China.

A former Google software engineer was charged with four counts of federal trade secret theft for an alleged plan to steal artificial intelligence technology from Google while also secretly working for two China-based companies, according to a Justice Department indictment Wednesday. Linwei Ding, a Chinese national, was arrested Wednesday in Newark, California. Hired by Google in 2019, he was granted access to confidential information about the company’s supercomputing data centers. He allegedly began uploading hundreds of files to a personal Google Cloud account between May 2022 and May 2023. While employed by Google, he was offered a chief technology officer position at an early-stage technology company in China that emphasized artificial intelligence usage. The indictment said Ding traveled to China to participate in investor meetings aimed at securing capital for the company.