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A double agent stole confidential files and fled to China.
A U.S. federal jury has charged Google engineer Linway Dean (also known as Leon Dean) with stealing trade secrets related to the company's AI chip software and hardware. The charges were filed on March 5, and on Wednesday morning, Dean was arrested in Newark, California.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Ding stole "more than 500 confidential files containing AI trade secrets while working secretly for Chinese companies seeking to gain an advantage in the AI technology race."
Among the allegedly stolen data is information about Google's tensor processors (TPUs), which are used in many of Google's AI tasks and, in combination with NVIDIA's GPU, allow training and running AI models, such as Gemini. The company also provided access to TPU chips through the Hugging Face partner platform.
Among the allegedly stolen files were software projects for v4 and v5 TPU chips, technical specifications for hardware and software for GPUs used in Google data centers, as well as projects for machine learning workloads in the company's data centers.
Amid the growing race in AI technology and U.S. attempts to restrict China's access to AI chips, some Chinese companies have begun turning to local chip manufacturers to operate their AI platforms. At the end of 2023, the intelligence services of the Five Eyes Alliance countries (USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) warned American technology companies about the potential threat of intellectual property theft by Chinese companies in the fields of AI, quantum computing and robotics.
US authorities accuse Dean of transferring confidential files to his personal Google Cloud account between May 2022 and May 2023. According to the Justice Department, Dean copied data from Google's source files to the Apple Notes app on his work MacBook, and then converted it from Apple Notes to PDF to avoid detection by Google's data leak prevention systems.
Less than a month after the file theft began, Rongshu, a Chinese machine learning company, offered Dean the position of CTO. He went to China for 5 months to raise funds for the company, and then founded and led the machine learning startup Zhisuan, while continuing to work at Google.
In December 2023, Ding resigned from Google and reportedly booked a one-way flight to Beijing, which was scheduled to depart 2 days after his employment with the company ended. The Justice Department also alleges that in December 2023, Dean faked his presence at Google's U.S. office by asking another employee to scan his badge at the door while he was in China.
4 cases of theft of confidential data
Dean is charged with 4 counts of stealing trade secrets, and faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for each count if convicted.
A U.S. federal jury has charged Google engineer Linway Dean (also known as Leon Dean) with stealing trade secrets related to the company's AI chip software and hardware. The charges were filed on March 5, and on Wednesday morning, Dean was arrested in Newark, California.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Ding stole "more than 500 confidential files containing AI trade secrets while working secretly for Chinese companies seeking to gain an advantage in the AI technology race."
Among the allegedly stolen data is information about Google's tensor processors (TPUs), which are used in many of Google's AI tasks and, in combination with NVIDIA's GPU, allow training and running AI models, such as Gemini. The company also provided access to TPU chips through the Hugging Face partner platform.
Among the allegedly stolen files were software projects for v4 and v5 TPU chips, technical specifications for hardware and software for GPUs used in Google data centers, as well as projects for machine learning workloads in the company's data centers.
Amid the growing race in AI technology and U.S. attempts to restrict China's access to AI chips, some Chinese companies have begun turning to local chip manufacturers to operate their AI platforms. At the end of 2023, the intelligence services of the Five Eyes Alliance countries (USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) warned American technology companies about the potential threat of intellectual property theft by Chinese companies in the fields of AI, quantum computing and robotics.
US authorities accuse Dean of transferring confidential files to his personal Google Cloud account between May 2022 and May 2023. According to the Justice Department, Dean copied data from Google's source files to the Apple Notes app on his work MacBook, and then converted it from Apple Notes to PDF to avoid detection by Google's data leak prevention systems.
Less than a month after the file theft began, Rongshu, a Chinese machine learning company, offered Dean the position of CTO. He went to China for 5 months to raise funds for the company, and then founded and led the machine learning startup Zhisuan, while continuing to work at Google.
In December 2023, Ding resigned from Google and reportedly booked a one-way flight to Beijing, which was scheduled to depart 2 days after his employment with the company ended. The Justice Department also alleges that in December 2023, Dean faked his presence at Google's U.S. office by asking another employee to scan his badge at the door while he was in China.
4 cases of theft of confidential data
Dean is charged with 4 counts of stealing trade secrets, and faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for each count if convicted.
