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AXIOS (Rebecca Falconer) - Ex-Google engineer found guilty of stealing AI secrets for China Tue Feb 3 03:30:09 2026

A former Google engineer was found guilty of economic espionage and theft of confidential AI technology for the benefit of China's government, the FBI said Monday. Why it matters: Intelligence and defense officials have long warned of increased efforts by Beijing and others to obtain U.S. intellectual property and use AI against American interests . State of play A federal jury in San Francisco convicted Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, 38, of seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets, per an FBI post on X Monday. - Ding was accused of stealing thousands of pages of confidential information containing Google's trade secrets related to artificial intelligence technology and sharing them with two Chinese tech firms. - He was originally indicted in March 2024 before a superseding indictment was returned last year on the charges Ding was convicted of. - The jury found him guilty of stealing more than two thousand pages of confidential information containing Google's AI trade secrets from Google's network and uploading them to his personal Google Cloud account while working for the company from May 2022 and April 2023. - Prosecutors accused him of being in talks for a chief technology officer role at a Chinese AI startup within weeks of the beginning of the thefts. Thought bubble, via Axios' Sam Sabin : We can expect to see similar cases as the competition heats up between the U.S. and China to dominate AI — just like what happened previously with semiconductor developers . What they're saying: "Silicon Valley is at the forefront of artificial intelligence innovation, pioneering transformative work that drives economic growth and strengthens our national security," said U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian in a statement. - "The jury delivered a clear message today that the theft of this valuable technology will not go unpunished.  We will vigorously protect American intellectual capital from foreign interests that seek to gain an unfair competitive advantage while putting our national security at risk."