Former Apple engineer charged with stealing autonomous car tech for Chinese company

Former Apple software engineer, Weibao Wang, has been charged by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) with allegedly stealing Apple's autonomous technology for a Chinese self-driving car company.

Wang is accused of stealing Apple's entire autonomy source code, tracking systems, behaviour planning for autonomous systems, and descriptions of the hardware behind the systems.

He is the third former Apple employee to be accused of stealing autonomous trade secrets for China.

According to the DOJ indictment, Wang accepted a job at a US-based subsidiary of an unnamed Chinese company that was developing autonomous driving technology, where he began to siphon "large amounts" of sensitive commercial technology and source code.

Law enforcement executed a search of Wang's home in California on Jun. 27, 2018, where they found large quantities of stolen, confidential, and proprietary data. If Wang is extradited and convicted, he could face ten years in prison for each count.