Federal prosecutors on Monday accused a former Google engineer of stealing thousands of confidential documents, launching a startup in China, and attempting to leverage the tech giant’s artificial intelligence trade secrets for personal gain, as opening statements began in a closely watched economic espionage trial in California.
Linwei Ding, a former Google software engineer, is charged with seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of trade secret theft. Prosecutors say Ding exploited his position at Google to siphon sensitive information related to AI focused supercomputing technology used to train and operate large language models.
“This case is about the defendant’s theft, his greed, and his lies,” Casey Boome of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California told jurors.
According to prosecutors, Ding joined Google in 2019 and, while employed there, secretly founded an artificial intelligence supercomputing company in China. Boome said Ding later pitched the venture to investors by claiming he could replicate Google’s proprietary technology.
The government showed jurors a photograph of Ding speaking at a conference in Beijing in November 2023, where he allegedly claimed his company could build AI supercomputing products that outperformed anything available in China. Prosecutors said Ding told the audience he was “one of only 10 people in the world” capable of doing so, citing his experience at Google.
By that point, Ding had allegedly taken more than 1,200 internal Google documents, including material prosecutors say contained trade secrets. About 105 of those documents qualify as trade secrets under federal law, the government said.
Prosecutors further alleged that while traveling in China, Ding had another person scan his Google campus badge in the United States to make it appear as though he was still working from a U.S. office.
The defense painted a starkly different picture. Ding’s attorney, Lora Krsulich of Goodwin Procter LLP, told jurors her client was unfairly targeted based on assumptions about his nationality and business ties.
“This case is about power,” Krsulich said. “It’s about what happens when two powerful entities come together and target a single individual.”
She argued that Ding, a lawful permanent U.S. resident who moved from China to the United States in 2010, merely kept work-related notes like many employees do and never shared confidential information with anyone, including the Chinese government.
“There is no evidence he transferred documents to anyone, let alone the Chinese Communist Party,” Krsulich said, adding that Ding’s startup “existed mostly on paper” and never became operational.
Krsulich acknowledged that Ding violated Google’s internal policies by uploading documents but said workplace rule violations do not amount to federal crimes.
The prosecution countered that Ding’s conduct went far beyond internal policy breaches. Boome said Ding copied text, diagrams, schematics, and other detailed materials from Google’s internal systems. He also accused Ding of using Google technology in a video submitted to a Chinese business incubator as part of a funding application, and of impersonating a Google executive by creating a fake email address to serve as a reference.
Prosecutors said Ding joined another Chinese technology firm as chief technology officer in 2022 and later founded his own AI company, all while still employed at Google and receiving paychecks from the company.
If convicted, Ding faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each trade secret count, and up to 15 years in prison and a $5 million fine on each economic espionage count.
The judge overseeing the case previously denied a motion to dismiss the espionage charges, though he later ruled that certain statements Ding made to federal agents must be suppressed due to violations of his Miranda rights.
The trial continues Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
