Both the U.S. and Chinese governments have identified artificial intelligence as a strategic emerging technology with broad potential to boost economic output in civilian sectors, while also providing key capabilities for militaries and intelligence agencies. President Biden issued an AI executive order last year aimed at keeping the U.S. ahead in AI against countries like China.

A former Apple engineer has pleaded guilty to trade secret theft -- one of two people accused of stealing trade secrets from the iPhone maker's nascent self-driving car program. United States federal prosecutors have alleged that Xiaolang Zhang downloaded the plan for a circuit board for Apple's self-driving system after disclosing his intentions to work for a Chinese self-driving car startup and booking a last-minute flight to China. He was arrested at the San Jose airport after he passed through a security checkpoint. Zhang initially pleaded not guilty to the charges, but according to court documents on Monday, he had reached a plea deal with prosecutors and changed his plea to guilty. The plea deal is sealed and sentencing is set for November.

The federal government on Tuesday asked a federal judge to sentence Anthony Levandowski to 27 months in prison for theft of trade secrets. In March, Levandowski pleaded guilty to stealing a single confidential document related to Google's self-driving technology on his way out the door to his new startup. That startup was quickly acquired by Uber, triggering a titanic legal battle between the companies that was settled in 2018. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast.

Thinking about the fantastic pie-in-the-sky future is always a fun exercise. I, too, want a self-driving car. But some weeks, it's clear everyone needs to come down to earth. This was one of them. Tesla sued two other electric vehicle companies focusing on self-driving for trade secret theft, proving that building this tech will be a grind.

Today, after three weeks of legal hemming and hawing, the Northern District of California finally made public a potentially key piece of evidence in the rollicking, roiling, rolling trade secrets lawsuit between self-driving Alphabet spinoff Waymo and ridehailing company Uber. That evidence is the Jacobs Letter, a 37-page rundown of truly outrageous allegations about Uber's business practices, put to paper by the lawyer for former Uber employee Ric Jacobs. Originally sent to Uber's lawyers as part of a dispute between the company and Jacobs, it's now at the center of Uber's legal fight with Waymo. And while the letter's contents most definitely have not been proven true, they include some tremendous new assertions: that former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick himself directed trade theft; that the company employed spies to trail competitors' executives; that it illegally recorded a call with employees about sexual assault allegations; and that it used a meme-filled slideshow to teach employees how to hide implicating documents from nosy lawyers. So we--like you, presumably--have a few questions.