A federal jury has convicted former Google software engineer Linwei Ding of stealing a trove of the company’s most sensitive artificial intelligence trade secrets — a case prosecutors say is deeply linked to China.
The conviction underscores how the global race for AI dominance has escalated into a front line of national security concerns. According to federal prosecutors, Ding’s conduct exposed how one insider, equipped with deep technical access, allegedly attempted to transfer the architecture of one of the world’s leading AI infrastructures into a parallel effort connected to Chinese firms.
Washington’s response makes clear that the U.S. now sees advanced AI infrastructure not merely as corporate property but as a strategic technology vital to national defense.
For more on the case, see the official reporting by MSN News and details from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Linwei Ding and the Growing Threat of AI Espionage Linked to China
At the heart of the case is Linwei Ding, also known as “Leon Ding,” a 38‑year‑old engineer who worked inside Google’s artificial intelligence infrastructure. As a member of teams building Google’s large‑scale machine learning systems, Ding had privileged access to some of the tech giant’s most closely guarded information. Prosecutors demonstrated that Ding systematically exfiltrated data about the inner workings of Google’s custom Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips — specialized hardware that powers many of the company’s AI applications.
