Former Apple Engineer Charged with Stealing Autonomous Technology for Chinese Company

The US Department of Justice announced on Tuesday that a former Apple software engineer, Weibao Wang, has been accused of stealing autonomous technology for a Chinese self-driving car company. This is the third time a former Apple employee has been accused of this type of theft.

The Allegations

Wang, who worked at Apple from 2016 to 2018 on the Annotation Team, was granted access to databases that could only be accessed by 2,700 of Apple’s 135,000 employees. He 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.

The Timeline of Events

The indictment alleges that Wang accepted a job at the US-based subsidiary of an unnamed Chinese company in 2017, four months before he quit his job at Apple. Wang then began to siphon “large amounts” of sensitive commercial technology and source code. Law enforcement executed a search of Wang’s home in California on June 27, 2018, where they found large quantities of stolen, confidential, and proprietary data. Despite promising not to flee, Wang boarded a flight to Guangzhou, China from San Francisco International Airport.

Other Similar Cases

This case is not the first of its kind. Another Apple employee, Xiaolang Zhang, pleaded guilty in San Jose federal court to a similar theft involving trade secrets in Apple’s car division. Like Wang, Zhang had planned to flee to China. Both Zhang and Wang were working at Apple’s autonomous division at the same time, and both left their employment at Apple in 2018. Jizhong Chen, another former Apple employee, was also facing federal charges over his alleged 2019 theft of sensitive information. Chen also attempted to flee to China, according to court documents.

Apple Declines to Comment

Apple has declined to comment on the case. The charges were announced as part of a sweeping enforcement action led by the Disruptive Technology Strike Force. Four other cases were unveiled across the United States, involving criminal behavior to supply Iranian forces with sensitive ballistic technology, Russian intelligence and research units with quantum technology, and sanctions-violating exports. If Wang is extradited and convicted, he faces ten years in prison for each count.