Lingwei Ding lived in Silicon Valley, but spent months at a time in her native China, according to court documents.
There's nothing unusual about that. However, the difference was that he was supposed to work full-time as a software engineer at Google's San Francisco area office.
According to court records, he had others enter the Google building wearing badges to make it appear as if they were reporting to work. In fact, prosecutors say he stole 500 files containing some of Google's most important AI secrets while promoting himself to Chinese companies as an expert in artificial intelligence.
Mr. Ding was arrested in March after his home was raided by the FBI days before prosecutors announced he would board a one-way flight to China and is now facing federal felony charges. He pleaded not guilty. His case illustrates what U.S. officials say is a continuing nightmare for the U.S. economy and national security. Some of America's best-known tech companies are effectively being lined by Chinese corporate spies and intelligence services.
Days after the Ding case was announced, prosecutors charged Chinese company executives with conspiring to steal battery secrets from Tesla. This week, the government's cybersecurity committee cited an “inadequate security culture” and a “cascade of avoidable errors” that allowed Chinese information hackers to compromise the company's email software and gain access to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce's account. '' criticized Microsoft.
In February, the Justice Department indicted a Chinese engineer for stealing missile tracking technology from a company owned by aerospace giant Boeing Co. Last year, prosecutors accused a Chinese national of stealing Apple's self-driving car technology and fleeing to China.
FBI Director Christopher Wray recently told Congress, “China's multipronged assault on our national and economic security makes China the defining threat of our generation.” “Today, and literally every day, they are actively attacking our economic security and engaging in mass theft of our innovation, personal data, and corporate data.”
This has been happening for years, but experts say neither the government nor U.S. companies have been able to take a consistent response.
China denies stealing intellectual property. “The Chinese government has never been involved in or supported anyone's theft of commercial secrets in any way,” Chinese Embassy Spokesperson Liu Pengyu said in a statement. I urge you to handle this case according to the law and protect America.” the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens; ”
Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, was one of the first to publicize state-sponsored spying on Chinese companies in 2011. Soon, top U.S. intelligence officials were calling it “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.”
“China has been systematically stealing America's economic and national security treasures for decades,'' and author of “A World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race to the 21st Century.'' Alperovitch told NBC News. “Looting has harmed our economic growth and destroyed entire industries.”
Alperovitch and other experts say China's operations have increased the country's economic and military power, even as they have cost jobs and devastated entire business sectors in the United States and Europe, including the solar panel industry. It is said that it was a great success. The House Select Committee on the Communist Party of China estimates the cost of intellectual property theft in China to be $600 billion annually.
The Google case illustrates why the harms of trade secret theft are not widely understood by the public. It wasn't front-page news when Attorney General Merrick Garland announced it last month, and Google initially downplayed its impact.
“We have strict safeguards in place to prevent the theft of confidential commercial information and trade secrets. After an investigation, we determined that this employee had stolen numerous documents, and we immediately brought this incident to law.” We have notified the enforcement authorities,” company spokesperson Jose Castañeda said in a statement. “We are grateful to the FBI for helping us protect our information, and we will continue to work closely with them.”
Mr. Ding is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for theft. But a person familiar with the case said it was unclear whether Ding distributed the stolen material to his Chinese partners, meaning it was unclear whether the information was protected.
Bart Selman, a computer science professor at Cornell University and an expert in artificial intelligence, said the stolen technology described in the indictment is extremely important and requires 10 to 15 years of research by Google scientists. He said that it corresponds to the results.
The technology that Ding allegedly stole includes components of Google's advanced supercomputing data centers that power the surprisingly human-like answers consumers see when they ask ChatGPT questions.
“This is a very significant loss, and it's actually very concerning,” Selman said. “And I don't think this is just a problem with one company. AI software and AI training has a very large national security component to it. So it's also about national security. To do.”
Selman said the stolen secrets involved both software and hardware, including information about advanced computer chips that the U.S. government has worked hard to keep out of Chinese hands. Said to be included.
“That's one of the most worrying aspects – that this sort of thing undermines the American effort.” [prevent] “China was able to develop this technology,” he said. “This gives us new capabilities and insights that Google has developed over at least the past decade, allowing us to develop very advanced chips for training AI models.”
The indictment says Google had strong network security, including systems to monitor for large-scale data breaches. However, Ding allegedly copied data from the Google source files to his Google-issued Apple Notes application on his MacBook laptop, converted the Apple Notes to PDF files, and uploaded them from the Google network to another account. This problem is said to have been avoided by doing so.
Google did not have a system in place to monitor the movement of employees working on sensitive technology, the people said.
That's a problem, said Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence and now an NBC News contributor. He said tech companies need to strengthen their security against so-called insider threats.
“There's no question the ball dropped here,” he said. “But this is something we often see with security failures across the board. First, companies need to better identify what their true crown jewels are. Identify which employees within your company have access. Third, monitor your employees and valuable data to make sure nothing bad happens. Therefore, ensure that your highest-level employees with access are able to travel internationally. You need to know that when you go.”
The indictment does not allege any links between Ding and the Chinese government, but Figliuzzi said that doesn't matter much given Beijing's policies.
“Certainly there is a real strategy, and the five-year plan that China publishes warns its people that it needs the following items this year and the next five years, and we will do everything in our power to make it happen. “On top of that,” he said. Figliuzzi said it would be difficult for U.S. companies to protect themselves from that threat, adding that “it is against the law for Chinese people to refuse to cooperate with intelligence agencies.” , if you get a patent in China and use it to start your own business, “good luck challenging it in Chinese courts,” he said. “Success is rare.”
Last October, Mr. Wray and representatives from the other four countries in the so-called Five Eyes information partnership (the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) met in Silicon Valley to warn against China's theft of trade secrets.
Mike Burgess, director of the Australian Security and Intelligence Agency, said: “The Chinese government is engaged in the most sustained, large-scale and sophisticated theft of intellectual property and expertise in human history.”
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told NBC News that more work is needed.
“We must use every tool at our disposal to protect American business and innovation so that China cannot exploit the openness of our society and economy to their advantage,” Warner said. said. This would raise the cost to China of this action. ”
