OpenAI has been warning employees to beware of foreign spies who could try to seduce them in order to steal company secrets, according to a bombshell report.
So-called “honey pot” schemes are among the dangers that OpenAI has flagged to put its engineers on guard against espionage, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources. Risks took on fresh urgency this week after a Saudi engineer was caught planting secret recording devices in executive conference rooms.
The report cited an incident in which a stranger approached an OpenAI employee who was with their child at a San Francisco playground and began making small talk – before shifting the conversation toward their work at the AI company. The stranger was actually a spy, according to the Journal.
In trainings related to “honey pot” schemes, OpenAI employees are warned that foreign agents could try to use sex to get close to a target and steal secrets. To illustrate the risk, OpenAI told its workers about a US diplomat based in Russia who was targeted by foreign spies who sent a blond woman to his hotel room with Champagne.
When the diplomat refused to allow the woman to enter, the foreign spy service sent a redheaded woman and then a young man to try to entice him, sources told the Journal.
OpenAI’s security experts have also outlined other possible methods used by spies, including offering bribes or eavesdropping on employees in public spaces like cafes, the report said.
Employees are specifically told to make measures to protect themselves, including using screen protectors to hide their phones and computers in public and to erase any information on white boards after meetings. They’re also told to avoid wearing clothes with company logos in public.
Other companies in the high-stakes AI race, including Anthropic and Google, have reportedly given similar warnings to their employees.
“Honey pot” schemes may seen far-fetched, but they are a well-known threat to figures in both the business and political worlds.
One such case purportedly ensnared former Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, who confessed to having “physical relations” with suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang, also known as “Fang Fang,” according to investigative documents made public by the White House Transparency Task Force in August.
The Post has reached out to OpenAI for comment.
The Saudi engineer who planted a listening device at OpenAI’s headquarters was identified as 35-year-old Abdulrahman Alfozan. The feds arrested him last Friday and charged with him with “using or endeavoring to use an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications.”
The Justice Department said OpenAI had “discovered a surreptitious audio recording device (Recording Device 1) inserted into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room inside one of their buildings in San Francisco.” The device “had been concealed in toilet paper” in an attempt to avoid suspicion.
After the arrest, FBI Director Kash Patel said protecting confidential information about AI development was “essential to safeguarding our nation’s economic strength and national security, and the FBI views that mission as one of our highest counterintelligence priorities.”
Alfozan faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
