The US Department of Justice has charged a Chinese national with stealing data from Google’s artificial intelligence software.

As US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco reported, the former employee stole more than 500 files containing the company’s trade secrets. The indictment alleges that Ding also worked for Chinese companies seeking to gain an advantage in AI development.

Most of the stolen materials, according to preliminary data, contained information about Google’s TPU tensor processors. They are used in conjunction with GPUs to train and run AI models, including Gemini.

It should be noted that the files contained data on software projects for TPU v4 and V6 chips, hardware and software specifications for graphics processors. They are used in the company’s processing centers. The materials also included blueprints for machine learning workloads in data centers.

Previously, intelligence agencies from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Britain warned American technology companies about the risks of technology theft by companies in China.

The Justice Department alleges that Dean stored the stolen files in his Google Cloud account. This lasted from May 2022 to May 2023.

The materials were converted to PDF to avoid detection by security systems.

At the same time, it is known that in the summer of 2022, the Chinese company Rongshu, specializing in machine learning technologies, invited Ding to the position of technical director. The engineer was in China for five months, after which he founded the company Zhisuan, which is also developing in the field of machine learning. And last December, Dean left Google.

The Ministry of Justice believes that Ding was already in China in December, but imitated his presence at the Google office. He asked another employee to scan his license plate.

Now Dean could end up in prison for up to 10 years. He was charged with four counts, for each of which he faces a fine of $250,000.