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DOJ Charges Former Apple Engineer With Theft of Autonomous Car Tech for China (cnbc.com) 30

A former Apple software engineer was charged with stealing Apple's autonomous technology for a Chinese self-driving car company, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday. From a report: Weibao Wang worked as a software engineer at Apple from 2016 to 2018, a DOJ indictment said. Wang worked on Apple's Annotation Team and was granted "broad access" to databases which the Justice Department said could only be accessed by 2,700 of Apple's 135,000 employees. Wang is the third former Apple employee to be accused of stealing autonomous trade secrets for China.

Wang has been charged with six separate counts involving the theft or attempted theft of Apple's "entire autonomy source code," tracking systems, behavior planning for autonomous systems, and descriptions of the hardware that was behind the systems. A year into his employment, four months before he quit his job at Apple, Wang accepted a job at the U.S.-based subsidiary of an unnamed Chinese company that was developing autonomous driving technology and he began to siphon "large amounts" of sensitive commercial technology and source code, the indictment alleges.

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DOJ Charges Former Apple Engineer With Theft of Autonomous Car Tech for China

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  • So they are going to bust the guy that was poisoning the well? That is cold blooded. I assume they weren't happy with just selling them useless Apple tech. I kind of thought China was already pretty good at gobbling up personal data on its employees/citizens.

  • by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Tuesday May 16, 2023 @05:15PM (#63527007) Journal

    He fled his home the same day it was to be searched. He's already back in China, and in China he will remain. It's not like they're going to extradite a guy that was stealing technology (allegedly) for them, and we don't do trials in absentia in the US.

    He's a stooge that now better never think about leaving China ever again, or he'll probably magically end up in the hands of a country that would be more than happy to send his ass to account for his misdeeds against Uncle Sam.

    • by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Tuesday May 16, 2023 @05:25PM (#63527027)

      He fled his home the same day it was to be searched. He's already back in China, and in China he will remain. It's not like they're going to extradite a guy that was stealing technology (allegedly) for them, and we don't do trials in absentia in the US.

      He's a stooge that now better never think about leaving China ever again, or he'll probably magically end up in the hands of a country that would be more than happy to send his ass to account for his misdeeds against Uncle Sam.

      China not only won't extradite him, China will give him a mansion, a yacht, and a medal for glorious service to the motherland. It's not that China independently smiles approvingly of such behavior, but rather that China encourages and provides government resources to facilitate such behavior that obviously benefits China.

      • China will give him a mansion, a yacht, and a medal for glorious service to the motherland.

        That's a weird assertion. Do you have any evidence that's something the Chinese government does?

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        It's also likely he's got nothing. I mean, Apple disbanded their Apple Car team years ago. Apple likely looked at what they were getting into and before committing too much, gave up. A car is likely well over Apple's head given the amount of safety critical software that goes into one.

        So at best they may have had a few ideas, but otherwise nothing really earth shattering or revolutionary. Quite likely Apple was bogged down with all the myriad of details on putting a car together that the innovation that nee

    • ...account for his misdeeds against Uncle Sam.

      Since when is Apple owned by Uncle Sam?

  • by martinX ( 672498 ) on Tuesday May 16, 2023 @05:17PM (#63527011)

    FTFA:
    "Wang was able to flee the country even after law enforcement executed the search, despite promising that he wouldn’t.

    Wang boarded a flight to Guangzhou, China, from San Francisco International Airport. In a press conference, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Ismail Ramsey said Wang is in China and would face 10 years in prison for each count if extradited and convicted."

    Onya, Chief Wiggum. Well done.

    • FTFA:
      "Wang was able to flee the country even after law enforcement executed the search, despite promising that he wouldn’t.

      Wang boarded a flight to Guangzhou, China, from San Francisco International Airport. In a press conference, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Ismail Ramsey said Wang is in China and would face 10 years in prison for each count if extradited and convicted."

      Onya, Chief Wiggum. Well done.

      Yep, pretty inept of the police and the courts to not recognize an obvious flight risk.

      What's also hard to understand is why the name of the Chinese auto company hasn't been released or at least leaked. The guy is just a pawn in the multinational game. The real punishment needs to be against the Chinese company, and the best punishment is to reveal their name and poison their future sales in the US. If the US were serious about such widespread industrial espionage, it would work with the EU to outlaw sal

      • Yep, pretty inept of the police and the courts to not recognize an obvious flight risk.

        It's possible they didn't actually want to go to trial with it.

        • by Tailhook ( 98486 )

          Cynical, but not implausible. Much better to let him slip away than deal with a public trial, exposing Apple's indifference in hiring, finding out how few degrees of separation exist between this guy and Hunter bucks, etc.

      • Re:Keystone Kops? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Beerismydad ( 1677434 ) on Tuesday May 16, 2023 @08:29PM (#63527285)
        My guess is he was providing Apple's intellectual property to a company called WeRide Corporation. They're at 2630 Orchard Pkwy in San Jose. The company hires a lot of former Googlers and other tech types to glean information about what is being worked on elsewhere. Oh... and the workforce in the building works on UTC+8/Beijing time, not Pacific Standard/Daylight Time.
        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          He could just as easily have been selling it to Uber or any number of other companies. Anthony Levandowski already pled guilty to stealing Google's self driving tech for Uber.

          It's unlikely that it was WeRide that got the info. By the time Apple was well into it's car's R&D, they already had superior technology. Stealing Apple's tech would have been extremely dumb, given that they were already ahead and would have faced severe consequences like being sued into the ground by a rival with essentially infin

          • Is WeRide based in the PRC?

            IF so...fuck'em....we don't need them in the US period.

          • Wish that were true, but no- the bulk of the workforce at WeRide doesn't start to roll in until late afternoon each day. I used to work nearby and see the parking lot fill up every day around 3 or 4 pm.
  • Typical government response: mete out punishment after the damage is done and can't be undone.

  • Whoever ran this case shouldn't be in law enforcement.

  • Why am I not surprised? Thanks for that pointer to WeRide, Beerismydad. Those coordinates go in my list of targets for whenever I get my hands on an ICBM (or at least a cruise missile) launch site.

There is no opinion so absurd that some philosopher will not express it. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Ad familiares"

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