Former Google Engineer Indicted for Stealing AI Trade Secrets for Chinese Firms

A Google engineer, Linwei Ding, has been indicted for allegedly stealing over 500 confidential files containing AI trade secrets and transferring them to a personal Google Cloud account before covertly working for China-based companies. The stolen data includes designs for Google’s tensor processing unit (TPU) chips and hardware and software specifications for GPUs used in Google’s data center. The engineer faces up to ten years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each of the four counts of theft of trade secrets if convicted.