ארה"ב: אזרח סין מואשם בגניבת 500 קבצים חסויים מחברת "גוגל" לטובת תעשיית הבינה המלאכותית הסינית

Next, let's pivot to the justice system where the charges against one Chinese national are piling up. Leon Ding is accused of stealing trade secrets from Google to benefit China's AI industry. The Justice Department expanded a 14-count indictment against Ding on Tuesday. The defendant was indicted last March on four counts of stealing U.S. technology, but now he faces seven counts each of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets. Prosecutors said Ding joined Google in May 2019 and began his stealing efforts three years later. That's while he was secretly working for two Chinese tech firms at the same time. As for the information he allegedly stole, the indictment says Ding snatched over 500 confidential files and uploaded them to his personal cloud account. The files were about the hardware infrastructure Google uses to train its AI models. According to the DOJ, Ding founded a startup in China back in 2023. He also applied for a so-called talent program that incentivizes people to bring tech know-how back to China. A Google spokesperson said the company has been cooperating with law enforcement on the investigation. If convicted, Ding could serve up to 15 years behind bars for each count of economic espionage. That's in addition to a 10-year term for each trade secrets charge.