Artificial intelligence and espionage: a former Google engineer is convicted of stealing information for China

A US court has convicted a former Google software engineer of spying and stealing confidential information containing company trade secrets related to artificial intelligence (AI) to benefit China.

Ding was initially charged in March 2024. Almost a year later, in February 2025, a new indictment was filed containing seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets.

According to evidence presented at trial, between approximately May 2022 and April 2023, while a Google employee, Ding stole more than two thousand pages of confidential information containing Google AI trade secrets from the company’s network and uploaded them to his personal Google Cloud account.

In December 2023, less than two weeks before resigning from Google, Ding downloaded stolen Google trade secrets to his personal computer.

Furthermore, according to the court, the convicted man was affiliated with two technology companies based in China while working for the multinational.

In fact, he was in talks to become CTO of an early-stage technology company focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning.