Linwei Ding, a former software engineer at Google, has been arrested for stealing some official files from the tech giant. This arrest took place in Newark, California, and the software engineer is now facing charges on four counts of federal secret theft. According to the reports, the former Google software engineer was stealing some core AI intelligence from Google for Chinese firms.
The investigators of this case say that Ding has been on this for quite a while and in this period he has been working with Chinese firms. Precisely, two years ago, the software engineer started uploading hundreds of files to a personal Google Cloud account. The files in question contain important data on Google’s AI advancements, which in the hands of bad actors can spell doom for the tech giant’s AI dreams.
Linwei Ding joined Google back in 2019 as a software engineer, giving him access to most of these files. For some unknown reason, after a few years of working with Google, Ding got into the art of stealing confidential information. The reports go on to point out that the amount of files that Ding uploaded to the personal Google Cloud account runs into the hundreds.
With the data stolen, Linwei Ding became a valuable asset to a Chinese AI firm. While working with Google, Ding was also serving as a chief technology officer at this Chinese AI firm. Surprisingly, Ding also served as a chief executive at another Chinese startup firm that concerns itself with the training of AI models.
All of these took place while Ding was working with Google and stealing confidential AI information. A few weeks ago, he resigned from his role at Google to join one of the Chinese firms spoken of in the previous paragraph as CEO. Now Linwei Ding faces a four-count charge for his actions and this can bag him some serious jail time in the US.