News Chinese engineer accused of stealing Google's TPU and GPU secrets, transferring them to China-based startups

[Admin]

Former Google employee Linwei Ding has been arrested and charged with stealing Google's TPU and GPU secrets. The 38-year-old Chinese national was employed by Google as a software engineer from May 2019 until January 2024, during which time he is accused of stealing over 500 documents.

Chinese engineer accused of stealing Google's TPU and GPU secrets, transferring them to China-based startups : Read more

 

[bolweval]

I'm shocked!

 

[atomicWAR]

Assuming his guilt in a court of law...you do the crime you do the time.

 

[Gururu]

Just fire him. Probably underpaid as well.

 

[evdjj3j]

10 years seems like a light sentence to me.

 

[gg83]

I'm shocked!

Lmao! Yep big surprise.

 

[peachpuff]

Maybe us firms need to do some more background checks on chinese people to circumvent ip theft when interviewing them.
Born in america and never travelled to china... you're hired.
Lived in china most of their life and moved here... a bit sus, monitor everything they do or pass on them depending how valuable their work will be to china if stolen.

 

[sivaseemakurthi]

How do companies protect IP after the arrival of internet? Do they monitor employee laptops?

 

[nightbird321]

10 years seems like a light sentence to me.

Per count, so 40 years max

 

[Dadata]

What astonishes me every time is that china can easily afford to hire the chip architects and people to design chips specifically for their manufacturing nodes. Yet they resort to espionage and probably just get poor data every single time.
It just reeks of stupidity.

How do companies protect IP after the arrival of internet? Do they monitor employee laptops?

All big companies have locks and security around their ip assets including spyware.

 

[bit_user]

Maybe us firms need to do some more background checks on chinese people to circumvent ip theft when interviewing them.
Born in america and never travelled to china... you're hired.
Lived in china most of their life and moved here... a bit sus, monitor everything they do or pass on them depending how valuable their work will be to china if stolen.

I'm sure that would run afoul of anti-discrimination laws. Also, let's be clear about something: most of the people who would get caught in your net haven't and wouldn't do anything wrong. What's possibly worse is that it would surely miss many - it's not as if IP theft only involves China.

I don't envy the big tech firms, as it's hard to see how they can completely avoid such incidents. If he had merely studied the documents and exfiltrated key details in his brain, they probably wouldn't have caught him. While you can limit what information an employee has access to, not enough to adequately protect a company's crown jewels, especially from the very employees who are working with them.

 

[bit_user]

Just fire him.

Termination comes nowhere close to either addressing the damage caused nor serving as an effective deterrent. From the sound of it, he already had one foot out the door to go and run his own company.

Probably underpaid as well.

Google is one of the best-paying tech firms. There's no way he was underpaid, relative to someone doing comparable work just about anywhere else.

Also, if you're being underpaid, the remedy is to leave and find another job that pays better. It never justifies theft.

 

[endocine]

There was a tech company in SV that was doing exclusively .gov contracts, and they refused to hire chinese nationals, but got sued for discrimination. Its the enemy using our own justice system against us to defeat us.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Well, all of this is just alleged at this point so we don't know if he's actually guilty. Having said that, it's pretty clear that Google's corporate security is Swiss cheese if he was able to run TWO Chinese AI companies while working for Google. That alone says a lot about Google because even though nobody knows if he actually did steal tech (well, he knows if he did but nobody else) is besides the point. Whoever it was at Google who hired and/or supervised him is ultimately responsible for this breach if he is guilty. It's clear that he wasn't properly vetted or his work properly monitored.

Ultimately, Google can only blame themselves for this. If we're being honest, who wouldn't sell out Google if China offered something like ten million dollars to do so? I would've probably done it but I also wouldn't have stuck around long enough to get caught.

 

[tooltalk]

Assuming his guilt in a court of law...you do the crime you do the time.

or flee to China and enjoy the Chinese gov't protection, like the former employees of ASML and founders of XTAL did.

 

[bit_user]

it's pretty clear that Google's corporate security is Swiss cheese if he was able to run TWO Chinese AI companies while working for Google.

We really don't know what constitutes "running", in this case. It could be just like a couple hours/day of remote meetings with management & investors. I'm sure he had people on the ground who were taking care of all the nuts & bolts.

even though nobody knows if he actually did steal tech

The evidence they found on his devices and iCloud account sounds like a smoking gun.

Whoever it was at Google who hired and/or supervised him is ultimately responsible for this breach if he is guilty. It's clear that he wasn't properly vetted or his work properly monitored.

Ultimately, Google can only blame themselves for this.

This is textbook victim-blaming.

If we're being honest, who wouldn't sell out Google if China offered something like ten million dollars to do so? I would've probably done it but I also wouldn't have stuck around long enough to get caught.

Thankfully, liberty and principles are more important to many of us. I've had candid conversations with a couple Chinese-born co-workers who say they would never go back, and I honestly believe they weren't just telling me what they thought I wanted to hear. Some people do value intangibles that many of us take for granted.

It's not like he was on the brink of starvation. If he could get and hold that position at Google for nearly 5 years, he was surely competent enough that he wasn't worried about ever struggling to keep the lights on. There's really no justifying this.

 

[anonymousdude]

Maybe us firms need to do some more background checks on chinese people to circumvent ip theft when interviewing them.
Born in america and never travelled to china... you're hired.
Lived in china most of their life and moved here... a bit sus, monitor everything they do or pass on them depending how valuable their work will be to china if stolen.

Like others have said you'd run afoul of anti-discrimination laws. The solution would probably require government intervention in the form of modified anti-discrimination laws, expanded reach of security clearances, and a healthy dose of national security reasoning applied to everything.

 

[bolweval]

Ultimately, Google can only blame themselves for this. If we're being honest, who wouldn't sell out Google if China offered something like ten million dollars to do so? I would've probably done it but I also wouldn't have stuck around long enough to get caught.

Integrity much?

 

[pyao88]

What astonishes me every time is that china can easily afford to hire the chip architects and people to design chips specifically for their manufacturing nodes. Yet they resort to espionage and probably just get poor data every single time.
It just reeks of stupidity.

All big companies have locks and security around their ip assets including spyware.

Unless he was planned and sent by CCP to embed in Google, it's more of a personal greed and lack of strong moral values.
It's always cheaper to steal IP than fund the research / trials / time themselves.

 

[Dadata]

Ultimately, Google can only blame themselves for this. If we're being honest, who wouldn't sell out Google if China offered something like ten million dollars to do so? I would've probably done it but I also wouldn't have stuck around long enough to get caught.

So let's say you are in a cushy job at a big wig company such as intel, google' making high 6 figures a year with the option to be promoted and higher paychecks as the years roll by . You would sacrifice all this and go to live in a third world country for the rest of your life just so you can have a measly 10 million dollars extra? Alot of that would be spent just setting you up in such a country especially if you lived in a city like bejing which is an expensive city. Buying a license plate for a car there is so much money and a lottery system to top it off.

 

[FoxtrotMichael-1]

It’s overtly clear at this point than China and Chinese Nationals have to be treated differently by US trade and discrimination laws to allow companies to do what is necessary to protect their IP and our national infrastructure. I also read just this morning about how investigators have discovered entire secondary computer systems in Chinese built cranes at US ports that allow them to remotely disable and/or monitor our logistics. There is no excuse for racism, but we didn’t do business or allow German espionage during WW2. This is getting beyond ridiculous and China will use the liberal US legal system to their advantage until we change the laws to prevent acquisition of Chinese infrastructure hardware and allow US companies to more heavily scrutinize Chinese national applicants.

 

[bit_user]

So let's say you are in a cushy job at a big wig company such as intel, google' making high 6 figures a year with the option to be promoted and higher paychecks as the years roll by .

Google pays well, but not that well! And they pay a lot because they demand the best and you need to perform. Advancement is not a given, either. It's definitely not "cushy"!

You would sacrifice all this and go to live in a third world country for the rest of your life just so you can have a measly 10 million dollars extra?

Are you still talking about China? The big cities are far from 3rd world!

As for the hypothetical payout, that has nothing to do with the facts of the case. This guy thought he could build AI accelerators comparable to Google's TPUs, which would make him a real player in the AI industry. He was probably thinking he'd be worth $100M, in a few years, or maybe even eventually $Billions. That doesn't sound so crazy, when you look at what Jensen is worth.

 

[Dadata]

Google pays well, but not that well! And they pay a lot because they demand the best and you need to perform. Advancement is not a given, either. It's definitely not "cushy"!

Average salary for employees at google that we know is 124k, and by saying that you know they have to pay more than that as thats what workers would demand at the start atleast. And by cushy, you can litterally sit in a cushioned bean bag while working at google. Trying to define "omg i have to use my brain to work" as not cushy is a brain dead take

Are you still talking about China? The big cities are far from 3rd world!

They are third world, china is a third world country by all definitions.

As for the hypothetical payout, that has nothing to do with the facts of the case. This guy thought he could build AI accelerators comparable to Google's TPUs, which would make him a real player in the AI industry. He was probably thinking he'd be worth $100M, in a few years, or maybe even eventually $Billions. That doesn't sound so crazy, when you look at what Jensen is worth.

Espionage is still espionage especially when it comes to corporate theft. You can go back even 10 years and still see people jailed for trying to spy for china.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Integrity much?

Well, I don't mean me as I am now. I meant if I were in his shoes. You know, brainwashed to be loyal to his country no matter what and offered a huge amount of money to "serve my country". How many Americans would sell out China to the USA without a second thought? I'm sure that patriotism played a bigger role in this than morals because, as a Chinese national, to him, he WAS doing the moral thing because the moral thing was to serve his country. Add to that the money he was probably offered and it was likely a bygone conclusion as soon as he was hired.

Unless he was planned and sent by CCP to embed in Google,

Regardless of whether that's true or not, Google did hire him, red flags and all.

it's more of a personal greed and lack of strong moral values.

Personal greed probably did play a role in it but you're looking at this through the wrong lens, yours. Look at it through his lens and your "lack of strong moral values" argument falls apart. To him, he was helping his country and I'm sure that Chinese patriotic propaganda is at least as effective as the patriotic propaganda in the USA (probably even more effective).

I'm willing to bet that his thoughts were that he was helping his country more than anything else. In order to understand someone, you have to look at things from their perspective, not your own. Like, I don't know what country you're from but would you sell out China for your country? I imagine that you probably would with no qualms, especially if you were offered a crap-tonne of money from your country to do it. He is no different as he sees China as his home exactly the same way you see your country as home.

He was also setting up businesses in China and I'd be willing to bet that they were to help support his family. It's not like people live incredibly well over there and the incentive to do something like this is therefore much higher.

It's always cheaper to steal IP than fund the research / trials / time themselves.

Of course it is, but there's no way that China is alone in these kinds of endeavours. Activities like this have been committed by every country in the world. Hell, it's also easier to "colonise" and enslave people to make your country richer, something that we in the West are still benefitting from to this day.

 

[peachpuff]

I'm sure that would run afoul of anti-discrimination laws.

I'm sure they would, but so do diversity hires yet that keeps on happening for whatever reason.