A major security breach has rocked Silicon Valley as a former Google AI software engineer, Linwei Ding, stands convicted of funneling massive amounts of proprietary artificial intelligence technology to China. On Thursday, the Department of Justice confirmed that a federal jury found Ding guilty on fourteen counts—seven for economic espionage and seven for the theft of trade secrets. This case highlights a sophisticated effort to strip-mine American innovation to build a competing tech infrastructure overseas.

A Massive Breach of Google AI Trust and Technology

Linwei Ding, who also went by the name Leon Ding, was 38 years old when his legal troubles began to mount. According to federal prosecutors, Ding systematically drained more than 2,000 sensitive files from Google’s internal network. These weren’t just random spreadsheets; they were the “blueprints” for the company’s most advanced AI operations. The stolen data included deep technical details about Google’s supercomputing data centers, which are the backbone of modern AI training.

The theft targeted the very hardware and software that allow Google to stay ahead in the AI race. Specifically, Ding took information regarding the custom Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips that Google designed to handle massive workloads. He also grabbed data on the software that tells these chips how to talk to each other and the orchestration systems that turn thousands of individual processors into a single, unified supercomputer. Even specialized networking cards, known as SmartNICs, which are essential for high-speed data transfer in the cloud, were among the stolen intellectual property.

Living a Double Life in Two Countries

The timeline of the theft reveals a person living a calculated double life. While still drawing a paycheck from Google, Ding began cozying up to tech interests in China as early as mid-2022. He was reportedly in talks to become the Chief Technology Officer for a Chinese startup and, by 2023, had founded his own AI company called Shanghai Zhisuan Technologies. He even served as the CEO of his new venture while still pretending to be a loyal Google employee in the United States.

To keep his bosses off his trail, Ding used a series of sneaky tricks. He didn’t just copy and paste files, which might have triggered internal alarms. Instead, he copied data into the Apple Notes app on his company laptop, turned those notes into PDFs, and then uploaded them to a personal cloud account. To make it look like he was at his desk in California while he was actually traveling in China, he even convinced a coworker to scan his security badge at the office entrance. This elaborate charade finally fell apart when Google executives discovered he had given a presentation in China to pitch his startup to investors.

Economic Espionage and National Security

The legal stakes for Ding increased significantly when investigators discovered his ties to Chinese government-sponsored “talent programs.” These programs are designed to recruit researchers working abroad to bring their knowledge back to the People’s Republic of China. In his application to one of these programs, Ding reportedly boasted that he wanted to help China build a computing infrastructure that could compete on the world stage.

Because his actions were intended to benefit foreign government-controlled entities, he was hit with the more serious charge of economic espionage. U.S. officials have made it clear that this isn’t just a corporate dispute; it is a matter of national security. When sensitive AI architecture is handed over to a foreign power, it threatens the economic edge and safety of the United States.

Ding is now facing a massive amount of time behind bars. With a status conference set for February 3, 2026, he could be sentenced to up to 15 years for each espionage count and 10 years for each count of trade secret theft. As Silicon Valley continues to push the boundaries of what AI can do, this case serves as a dark reminder of how vulnerable that progress can be to internal threats.

Would you like me to look up the specific legal definitions of economic espionage versus trade secret theft to see how they differ in federal court?