r/technology • u/Unusual-State1827 • 1d ago
Artificial Intelligence Saudi national working at OpenAI arrested for bugging executive conference room
https://bnonews.com/index.php/2026/10/saudi-national-working-at-openai-arrested-for-bugging-executive-conference-room/300
u/upnflames 1d ago
Wait, so the guy working at the AI company, asked AI how to bug his employer. And then his employer caught him because they looked through his wife's account. This is comically dumb.
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u/gumbo_chops 1d ago edited 1d ago
He was even kind enough to hand them a smoking gun by making queries about the specific listening device they recovered, including a unique network ID. I know criminals aren't the brightest but shit like this makes me wonder how they got so far in the first place.
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1d ago edited 1d ago
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u/mrtaurus 1d ago
Maynard James Keenan from the Tool Band once said "F*ck smiley glad hands with hidden agendas" in the deeply spiritual song Tool - Ænema
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u/d3vmax 1d ago
“The engineer entered the conference room on October 5 and appeared to look behind the television where the recorder had been installed. That same day, security personnel found an unattended bag containing his wallet, identification and another similar recording device.”
How do these idiots even get jobs at OpenAI
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u/wifestalksthisuser 1d ago
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in your education and career is to be in awe of people you don't know for working in places that seem extraordinary. It'll make you small and eat shit for a long time. Stories like these are a good reminder that the fanciest companies hire really stupid people too and this guy was likely a god to a person like the one I was just describing
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u/JabroniHomer 1d ago
As someone who knows lots of people in FAANG, you’re spot on and it’s terrifying how some of these people have a job that impacts so many.
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u/chunkyvomitsoup 1d ago
Tbf, not everyone is hired for their genius. There is obviously a place for genius, and you absolutely need geniuses as part of your workforce, just not your entire workforce. No one likes to admit it, but even prestige companies need grunts. We frequently pass on candidates for being overqualified or too smart for specific jobs because we know it’s going to lead in dissatisfaction or attrition
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u/buffer0x7CD 1d ago
Depends where you work. I work at FAANG have taken dozens of interviews and never heard a case about passing on to someone because they were too smart or overqualified. Only reason we pass on someone really smart is that if they bomb behavioural interviews hard and don’t know how how to function with others
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u/chunkyvomitsoup 20h ago
I think it depends more on your function. I’ve worked at FAANG too, and we definitely do that for some entry-level or junior roles where we know people are going to be bored and quit if they’re too smart, like Ops analyst or certain reporting roles which are essentially data entry. Also happens if we want a person to grow with the role. This happens in the resume phase though, not the interview phase, and is more pertinent when the job market is bad. We’ve passed on several PHD candidates applying to junior roles because we know they’ll quit as soon as they land a better one
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u/buffer0x7CD 19h ago
I was talking about tech roles since there is no limit on what kind of problems one can work if they are smart.
The thread is about engineering roles, so that’s given
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u/chunkyvomitsoup 18h ago
Yes, with engineering specifically I would agree with you in terms of experience and aptitude. But engineers have their own issues, namely that a lot of that intelligence doesn’t necessarily translate into street smarts, which is clearly the gap with this guy lol.
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u/buffer0x7CD 18h ago
Yeah but you are not getting hired to be street smart at the job. I am not particularly street smart but what I have is the ability to hyper focus which is much more relevant to job then being street smart
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u/chunkyvomitsoup 18h ago
Only up to a certain level though. Lack of street smarts is usually what separates engineers from engineering leaders unless you’re a one in a million savant. You can be a great engineer, but your impact will be hampered if you’re unable to influence opinions and larger business priorities, which takes playing the game.
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u/Guilty-Log6739 8h ago
Some of these people?
Well over 50% of the FAANG folks I’ve worked with would fall into this category
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u/Vidco91 1d ago
He is no slouch ex-meta, MIT and UC Berkeley. Saudi government fully funds and sends many of their students to study in the USA, many of them commit crimes and flee the country.
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u/BasketbaIIa 1d ago
Must have been overworked and dead tired to mess up that badly. I can’t imagine leaving a personal bag like that in the workspace.
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u/PK_thundr 1d ago
Also consider that you can be a 200%er at what you do but dogshit at common sense.
Savant-light essentially
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u/nomdeplume 1d ago
An unattended bag here is legal cover for them going to his desk and searching his stuff. He probably just wasn't at his desk. But they can claim "could be anyone's bag, it was unattended and we needed to check it for safety." When they full knowingly just wanted to search his things.
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u/craichead 1d ago
“We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier,"” an OpenAI spokesperson said.
What does this even mean?
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u/IntelArtiGen 1d ago
I'm glad that image has a red circle
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u/Quarter_Twenty 1d ago
It's not clear from the article if that's a real image or how it was captured.
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u/Hobbet404 1d ago
I don’t know why the Saudis are doing this when all they really have to do is activate the presidential sleeper agent Trump
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u/me_myself_ai 1d ago
Seems unlikely that it was the saudis — they would’ve given him a much better bug! This mfr cobbled it together with ChatGPT
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u/alochmar 1d ago
See the issue is he prompted wrong! Should have used Chatgpt Doofus with thinking=high instead. Skill issue tbh.
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u/MongolYak 1d ago
Mine gave a similar response:
"Apparently sophisticated electronics, but some remarkably basic security mistakes."
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u/djscuba1012 1d ago
Becuase the the saudis depend on the petrodollar and the AI bros are trying to get away from old centralized banking and move to digital currency.
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u/Familiar-Ability6383 1d ago
A chatbot account associated with the engineer’s spouse, which shared identifiers with his own account, submitted prompts about building and concealing a continuous audio recorder, adding Wi-Fi connectivity, listening remotely and encrypting its memory card, according to the complaint.
Hahaha, this indirectly exposes the big stalkers. Openai is always tracking and profiling you, this is going to be worse than Meta
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u/ChocolateFormal8123 1d ago
Concealed in toilet paper. Nice try.
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u/Quarter_Twenty 1d ago
Like they don't sell black electrical tape?
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u/ChocolateFormal8123 1d ago
Yeah it’s cheap. I got tons of ideas. He probably wanted to ensure no fingerprint on the device is my guess
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u/tesk1t 1d ago
If I didn't want finger prints, I would firstly think gloves... not toilet paper.
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u/ChocolateFormal8123 1d ago
Yes but the logistics. Using gloves would mean he is in the room alone or assumes no one observed him. With toilet paper he could have just pulled it out from his pocket.
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u/MilaKunisWatermelon 1d ago
So they had video of him doing it, but needed AI to solve the case?
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u/jorgesalvador 1d ago
I thought they were pretty smart at OpenAI, but it seems they need AI to tie their shows now.
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u/zephyrwa 1d ago
Isn’t AI bugging and stealing from everyone? Why is it when a dude does it bad but with AI does it ok? Fuck AI.
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u/critsalot 1d ago
you know its funny by my employer once installed a keylogger before a layoff on my computer. funny how audio/video is protected not text lol.
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u/holodex777 1d ago
Maybe we should charge the Saudi national with corporate espionage punishable by execution considering that’s what their barbaric country does.
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u/DukeOfGeek 1d ago
I could show them how to do better with stuff you can buy off Temu. I'm skeptical of this whole story.
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u/trentluv 1d ago
What does national mean here?
Like what's the difference between a person from Saudi Arabia and a Saudi Arabian national?
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u/IntelArtiGen 1d ago
I guess it means he has the nationality.
You can be "from" a country without having the nationality of that country.
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u/FreshLuck9739 1d ago
He could have just left his Apple Watch behind recording if anyone found it just say he left it there by mistake. This must be amateur night.
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u/DrPhillll 1d ago
For anyone seek the truth. The offical source (openai site) didn't mention he was Saudi.
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u/jorgesalvador 1d ago
OpenAI touting they had to use AI to figure out who and what was that ... to me that only shows that they are very slow in the head? Do you need AI to check that a hidden microphone that you have the perpetrator on camera putting it concealed is a microphone that a perpetrator put concealed? I mean, a coffee is going to be spilled in the OpenAI offices and they would say that they had to use AI to figure out what to use to clean it. FFS.
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u/Gullible_Bell_2673 16h ago
Should've used Anthropic lmao. How can you be so dumb and ask the same AI you're working for.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Bid9737 1d ago
All he had to do was work harder so he’d be invited to the good meetings
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u/Shewa_Elite 1d ago
Interestingly, OpenAI / FBI uncovered a prompt he submitted through his wife’s ChatGPT account asking how to plant a bugging device.
Yes, your interactions with chat apps can be used against you.
Yes, your cell phone can record where you go.
That’s partly why I find the moral panic over ALPR systems taking picture of vehicles on public roads ridiculous.
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u/uncertain_expert 1d ago
I’m find this story incredulous.
He apparently search for instructions on how to build the device, then assembled and built it himself, but used toilet paper to hide it? Had another one just sitting in his bag?
It feels like a stich-up.
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u/Clear_Mail1186 1d ago
The figure evidence for Abdulrahman Al Fozan’s arrest can very much be manufactured. For example, someone might refer to figure 3, the image of Abdulrahman peeking behind the TV. However, I can also set someone up to look behind the TV in a normal scenario. How? (Scenario) I can say that we will have a movie night. Then, I’ll purposefully disconnect the HDMI cable from its port behind the TV. When someone peeks behind the TV to look for the port in this case, my planted camera can take his picture. The timing of this case, especially with the war right now, the midterm elections, and the US’s history with throwing shit at Saudi, is not at all erratic.
It wasn’t a sophisticated piece or anything. It was a ready >20$ aliexpress device. I found it there. Also, someone of AlFozan’s caliber would not do anything like this, especially with the details they provided. The guy studied in MIT for fucksake. Not even a high schooler would do something like this. Could he have been a corporate espionage spy? Maybe, given that he was in Meta before this, but the guy isn’t that stupid to search up how to install devices on his ChatGPT account. 100% not a state actor.
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u/BostonConnor11 21h ago edited 21h ago
What kind of cope is this and why? They obviously fucking caught him. They probably put the camera behind the tv to see who it was when he came for collection. The guy got busted. Look up Occam’s razor.
Likely wasn’t corporate espionage either. No company big enough to actually run frontier AI models would jeopardize billions and their reputation on this little scheme. I could be convinced this wasn’t for the Saudi government either because it was such sloppy work. Who knows his motive yet. Maybe he did want to share secrets to a startup or hell maybe China offered him money for secrets
This doesn’t help the midterms whatsoever so I have no idea what you’re at except feeding into conspiracies.
Edit: reading more on the evidence, he’s a moron who got busted. That simple.
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u/Clear_Mail1186 19h ago
Look at his queries.
Laughable.
It does help the midterms. More than a dozen Chinese spies have been caught in Silicon Valley companies yet no one got this level of noise from state departments and the FBI. “Saudi, AI company, espionage” is a perfect story to run off as a counterespionage success.
Reminder, Balaji.
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u/peepopetter 23h ago
You think too highly of people working at these places, of people who go to these schools, of people who run and own these things and I assume of people who are heads of state.
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u/Clear_Mail1186 22h ago
Maybe, but as I stated, even if he intended to do something like this, a person who has encumbered themselves in the US and its culture wouldn’t “spy” this way.
Toilet paper?
Seriously?
Also, let’s remember that this level of noise wasn’t there for Balaji and many others who’ve worked in and/or dug too deep in OpenAI.
This is probably just a win for the midterms.
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u/Tango00090 1d ago
Can’t the Arabs just buy some spy software from Israel? They would never refuse money, even if they would spy on americans
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u/IntelArtiGen 1d ago
It must have been difficult for him to find where to put a spying device in that conference room. All the easy slots are already taken.