Former Google Engineer Indicted For Stealing AI Secrets To Aid Chinese Companies 28
Linwei Ding, a former Google software engineer, has been indicted for stealing trade secrets related to AI to benefit two Chinese companies. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each criminal count. Reuters reports: Ding's indictment was unveiled a little over a year after the Biden administration created an interagency Disruptive Technology Strike Force to help stop advanced technology being acquired by countries such as China and Russia, or potentially threaten national security. "The Justice Department just will not tolerate the theft of our trade secrets and intelligence," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a conference in San Francisco.
According to the indictment, Ding stole detailed information about the hardware infrastructure and software platform that lets Google's supercomputing data centers train large AI models through machine learning. The stolen information included details about chips and systems, and software that helps power a supercomputer "capable of executing at the cutting edge of machine learning and AI technology," the indictment said. Google designed some of the allegedly stolen chip blueprints to gain an edge over cloud computing rivals Amazon.com and Microsoft, which design their own, and reduce its reliance on chips from Nvidia.
Hired by Google in 2019, Ding allegedly began his thefts three years later, while he was being courted to become chief technology officer for an early-stage Chinese tech company, and by May 2023 had uploaded more than 500 confidential files. The indictment said Ding founded his own technology company that month, and circulated a document to a chat group that said "We have experience with Google's ten-thousand-card computational power platform; we just need to replicate and upgrade it." Google became suspicious of Ding in December 2023 and took away his laptop on Jan. 4, 2024, the day before Ding planned to resign. A Google spokesperson said: "We have strict safeguards to prevent the theft of our confidential commercial information and trade secrets. After an investigation, we found that this employee stole numerous documents, and we quickly referred the case to law enforcement."
According to the indictment, Ding stole detailed information about the hardware infrastructure and software platform that lets Google's supercomputing data centers train large AI models through machine learning. The stolen information included details about chips and systems, and software that helps power a supercomputer "capable of executing at the cutting edge of machine learning and AI technology," the indictment said. Google designed some of the allegedly stolen chip blueprints to gain an edge over cloud computing rivals Amazon.com and Microsoft, which design their own, and reduce its reliance on chips from Nvidia.
Hired by Google in 2019, Ding allegedly began his thefts three years later, while he was being courted to become chief technology officer for an early-stage Chinese tech company, and by May 2023 had uploaded more than 500 confidential files. The indictment said Ding founded his own technology company that month, and circulated a document to a chat group that said "We have experience with Google's ten-thousand-card computational power platform; we just need to replicate and upgrade it." Google became suspicious of Ding in December 2023 and took away his laptop on Jan. 4, 2024, the day before Ding planned to resign. A Google spokesperson said: "We have strict safeguards to prevent the theft of our confidential commercial information and trade secrets. After an investigation, we found that this employee stole numerous documents, and we quickly referred the case to law enforcement."
Google AI haiku (Score:5, Funny)
Google spy regret
AI to Chinese masters
Can't draw white people
Re: (Score:3)
More realistically, although going down and now at 1.409 billion, Chinese population is still now the second most populous country in the world. So, as expected, they are mostly everywhere in the world and of course some report back to mainland Chine weather it is voluntarily, for money and/or because of threats made to their family so this happens everywhere.
Re:Google AI haiku (Score:5, Informative)
On the contrary, Google's AI sees black people everywhere, popes, vikings, etc. , all black people according to Google's AI!
Re: (Score:3)
I must've missed that one, but I found it. [wired.com] Apparently Google's AI model had difficulty with historically accurate racial depictions. I'm sure there's some obligatory joke to be made about how Google's AI is all ready to replace the jobs of modern Hollywood casting directors.
I'm also truly sorry to whoever I offended with mod points, but I find it kind of ironic that here we are in 2024 and not only are some people still a bit racist, but now our computers are, too. The more things change, the more things
Pattern recognition (Score:2)
So many asian spies (Score:1, Interesting)
Why are we allowing all these Asian spies into our country??
Or are you saying that Google isn't a data driven company and doesn't understand the risk and so doesn't understand security and wasn't able to mitigate this from happening?
Or are you saying that they understand security and data and decided to allow this to happen anyway?
Re:So much American hypocrisy (Score:4, Informative)
TFS says Ding uploaded more than 500 proprietary documents to the first Chinese company in question. He was still working for Google at the time.
Re: (Score:1)
What are the chances that a high-tech Chinese company would risk hiring anyone called Hank Tennessee Washington Jr?
Can you ever trust a guy who grew up with 20 years of Capitalist propaganda, forced to pledge political allegiance every day at school? Yeah, he has probably learned how wrong it all was, and embraced his new life. But it only takes one.
Just Ding It (Score:1)
Chinese spy or Redmond spy?
Now Skynet will take over China's military, too (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
We'll need a Chinese terminator to set things right.
They sent one but it fell apart before it could operate they sent another it was better but the people the AI identified are black so its going to Africa
Cheap Labor (Score:5, Insightful)
How much does "cheap labor" cost?
Re: (Score:2)
How much does "cheap labor" cost?
Linwei Ding's base salary was $177,600.
He also received bonuses and stock options.
I think TFA photo caption was AI-generated (Score:2)
"borrowing" (Score:1, Flamebait)
Yep. Very strict controls ... (Score:2)
If the guy can steal 500 documents before anybody noticed. More like "utterly crappy" controls.
National security (Score:2, Flamebait)
china risk (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that there are tons of engineers who are natives of China. Anyone with relatives in China is susceptible to pressure from China's govt to phone home with info. This problem is not solvable without eliminating immigration from China, which would kneecap most research in the US.