Another case that risks shaking the Sino-American tensions again, and it still happens at Google. Lurwei Ding, a former Chinese engineer from the Mountain View firm, is currently appearing before the American justice to have allegedly stolen industrial secrets Linked to processors dedicated to AI to deliver them to China.
Ding is thus put under enormous pressure from the United States Department of Justice, which added Seven new charges for economic spying to his file.
But who stole the plans of Google fleas?
The technology in question here is one of Google’s treasures: its personalized chips, fruit of several years of research and development on the part of the mother house of Google, alphabet, and which excels in operations necessary for the training of AI models developed internally as Gemini.
According to court documents, Ding has stolen the detailed plans of these specialized processors as well as those of graphic processing units, and this, and this, Since his arrival in the company in 2019.
A carefully orchestrated plan
The investigations reveal that the engineer, also known as Leon Ding, had left Google and then created a company in China in 2023. A fact that does not plead in its favor : He had applied for a talent research program based in Shanghai, offering financial awards to people repatriating their technical expertise in China.
In his candidacy, He praised a product that “” will allow China to achieve computing infrastructure capacities at the international level ». An internal note of its start-up indicates that the company planned to provide its services to government agencies and Chinese universities.
What does ding risk? The United States does not junk with this kind of judicial case, and even more when they have a link with China. It was also one of Donald Trump’s arguments during his campaign: ” Brake China’s ability to carry out spying operations targeting the US military and other coveted technologies ».
The accused thus risks up to 15 years of imprisonment For each charging chief economic espionageAnd up to 10 years for each charging chief of Flight of industrial secrets. For the moment, his lawyers have not yet reacted to the new charges. Several elements could even more weighing down his sentence : His Chinese nationality, his business creation after his departure from Google and the statements made in his candidacy for the talent research program. Just as many elements that would be potential indicators that Ding was indeed intended to use stolen secrets to develop technologies for the benefit of your country.
- An ex-engineer from Google is accused of having stolen advanced IA fleas technologies to transfer them to China.
- He would have founded a company in 2023 and postulated for a Chinese program rewarding those who repatriated technological know-how.
- Faced with heavy accusations of economic spying and theft of industrial secrets, he risks several decades of prison in the United States.
