Silicon Siege: Google Engineer Busted, Notepad Plus Plus Hacked, and Chinas AI Spy Game Goes Wild cover art

Silicon Siege: Google Engineer Busted, Notepad Plus Plus Hacked, and Chinas AI Spy Game Goes Wild

Silicon Siege: Google Engineer Busted, Notepad Plus Plus Hacked, and Chinas AI Spy Game Goes Wild

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 This is your Silicon Siege: China's Tech Offensive podcast.

Hey listeners, I'm Ting, your go-to gal for all things China cyber chaos, and buckle up because the past two weeks have been a total Silicon Siege—China's tech offensive hitting US innovation like a quantum wrecking ball. Picture this: just days ago, on February 2nd, a San Francisco federal jury nailed former Google engineer Linwei Ding, aka Leon Ding, on seven counts of economic espionage and seven of trade secret theft. Ding, who joined Google in 2019, slyly copied over 2,000 pages of super-secret AI docs—think Tensor Processing Units, GPUs, SmartNICs, and orchestration software for AI supercomputers—into Apple Notes on his company MacBook, converted them to PDFs, and uploaded to his personal Google Cloud to dodge detection. All while plotting to be CTO at Beijing's Rongshu Lianzhi Technology and founding his own Shanghai Zhisuan Technology startup. He even pitched to Chinese investors about replicating Google's massive computing platforms for PRC government agencies and schools. US Attorney General John Eisenberg called it a "calculated breach of trust" in the AI arms race—first conviction for AI economic espionage, with Ding facing up to 15 years per count. Ouch!

But that's not all—Mandiant dropped a bombshell this week revealing suspected Chinese hackers, super active per CTO Charles Carmakal, infiltrated US software devs, cloud firms like those powering American corps, and even DC law firm Wiley Rein. They've been lurking undetected for over a year, swiping proprietary code to hunt vulnerabilities deeper, amid the endless US-China trade tariff tango. FBI's scrambling, comparing it to Russia's 2020 SolarWinds nightmare, with hackers outnumbering agents 50-to-1. Carmakal warns tons more orgs are compromised without knowing.

And get this supply chain gut-punch: Notepad++ creator Don Ho confirmed Monday that Chinese gov hackers hijacked its update servers from June to December 2025 via a shared host exploit—selective hits on East Asia-interest groups, per researcher Kevin Beaumont. They redirected users to malicious servers, implanting backdoors like a stealthy SolarWinds 2.0. Developer tools? Total soft underbelly.

Strategically, this is China turbocharging its AI and chip game despite US BIS bans on NVIDIA A100s and H100s since 2022—turning our sanctions into their rocket fuel. Experts like FBI brass say it's national security Armageddon: stolen IP could shave years off Beijing's catch-up, fueling supercomputing for state entities. Future risks? Insider threats skyrocket as talent hops via gov talent plans; expect more hijacks on open-source and clouds. Patch fast, segment networks, MFA everywhere—or become the next victim.

Thanks for tuning in, listeners—subscribe for more cyber spice! This has been a Quiet Please production, for more check out quietplease.ai.

For more http://www.quietplease.ai


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