A Chinese national and former Apple Engineer Weibao Wang has been charged by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). The six-count charges border primarily on theft and attempted theft of autonomous car technology. This is yet another incident that continues to dampen Sino-American relations over the years.

US prosecutors allege that Wang stole troves of source code on Apple’s autonomous technology for a Chinese company. The suspect is reported to have fled the US on the same day his residence was searched by law enforcement. The former Apple software engineer worked at Apple between 2016 and 2018, according to the DOJ indictment sheet. He worked on Apple’s Annotation Team and was granted broad access to databases accessible to just about 2% of Apple’s 135,000 employees at the time.

The Wang case is the third such related to the theft of Apple’s autonomous technology for Chinese interests. He is accused of stealing or attempting to steal Apple’s entire autonomy source code, tracking systems, behavior planning for autonomous systems, and hardware descriptions supporting the autonomous system. While still working with Apple, Wang accepted a job at the US-based subsidiary of the yet-to-be-named Chinese company. The company was developing autonomous driving technology and Wang started to siphon large amounts of sensitive Apple technology and source code to the company. The DOJ indictment also indicated that at a time only about 4% of Apple employees were aware of the project.

The search of Wang’s home in California on June 27, 2018, turned up large quantities of stolen, confidential, and proprietary data. He subsequently fled from the US even after making promises not to do such. He is confirmed to have boarded a flight to Guangzhou, China from San Francisco International Airport. If extradited and convicted, Wang could face 10 years in jail for each count. Four other cases were also unveiled as part of sweeping enforcement action led by the DOJ’s Disruptive Technology Strike Force. Apple has yet to make any official statement on the issue.

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