> "Scott Schelble, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco field office, said the agency is committed to protecting sensitive research and proprietary technology."

While the headlines and quotes seem designed to imply sophisticated industrial espionage, potentially by a state-level actor, what's public so far isn't adding up that way.

1. You're not going to get much actionable research material on proprietary technologies by audio bugging what's said in an executive conference room. That's what you'd do if you were after economic or deal negotiation info.

2. Hard to imagine a state-level actor buying a ~$15-$35 hobbyist ESP32 board from Seeed Studio (I've ordered a couple from there for home automation myself) and then asking a public chatbot for set up instructions.

3. They say he was an "engineer" who'd been there ~15 months. If you're an actual engineer at OAI and past the 1 year cliff, you're probably already sitting on RSUs likely to be worth at least $1M after OAI's IPO - and maybe much more. That's a lot of incentive to not get fired and probably makes you pretty hard to recruit as an internal mole for cash.

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binlog 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

1. Research is not the only espionage target. Executive level discussions – future launch decisions, major deals signed with other companies, relationships with governments, blackmail material – are all very valuable.

2. An operation can be state-sponsored and still amateurish/botched. We have seen plenty of examples of these. Remember a certain bone saw?

3. The incentive can be a lot more than financial. Plenty of governments are very…persuasive.

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dabinat 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A certain level of amateurishness helps with plausible deniability. No-one would believe the Saudi government wasn’t involved if it was professional.

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dmbche 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm out of the loop, what bone saw are we talking?

	▲	criemen 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Jamal_Khashog... Not sure why OP would call it amateurish/botched.
	▲	pjm331 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I’m guessing they’re referring to jamal khashoggi
	▲	5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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overfeed 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 3. They say he was an "engineer" who'd been there ~15 months. If you're an actual engineer at OAI and past the 1 year cliff, you're probably already sitting on RSUs likely to be worth at least $1M after OAI's IPO - and maybe much more.

They may have been thinking they could make >$5-10M on trading options on insider knowledge on upcoming OpenAI deals (or ending thereoff)

> That's a lot of incentive to not get fired and probably makes you pretty hard to recruit as an internal mole for cash.

Most criminals assume they won't get caught.

	▲	mrandish 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> They may have been thinking they could make >$5-10M on trading options on insider knowledge on upcoming OpenAI deals (or ending thereoff) I agree he may have been thinking that, but it's another sign this guy was not the sharpest tool in the shed. I'm not an expert myself but was once stranded in an airport with an F500 CFO who definitely was. That's when I learned it's surprisingly difficult to make millions of dollars trading on insider information. While you can definitely make the trades, the hard parts are: 1. Getting away with it. Making a lot of money quickly requires being right when almost everyone else was wrong, which is easy for watchdog algorithms to spot. And if you work for a company involved in the transaction you're already on a watch list, so you have to enlist someone else you really trust as your accomplice to make the trades in their name - and it really helps if they're someone who has an existing history of making this size and kind of trade. Otherwise, your accomplice's name will automatically start at the top of the suspect list for investigation. 2. You need the right kind of actionable opportunity to come along. Transactions for which insider info could let you double or triple your money in one deal are pretty rare. More than that usually requires leveraging yourself up or having a lot of cash to put at risk. Unfortunately, the nature of insider info is it's about transactions which can end up being delayed or not happening at all at the very last minute for random reasons. So 'going big' with cash or leverage usually comes with a >~10% chance you could lose that cash or whatever assets you borrowed against. Yes, it's potentially possible for an expert to find or engineer exactly the right kind of oppty, already have the resources required, and to have already prepared the mechanisms needed to get away with it undetected. But if you're that person, you already know all this. This CFO had been at the nexus of insider info for 14 years and could only think of one instance where he might have made big money trading on info he had, and that one blew up 6 hours before the announcement when the CEO of the acquisition target was randomly arrested in a prostitution sting (partying too early I suppose).
	▲	cindyllm 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[dead]

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clueless 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> incentive to not get fired / hard to recruit as an internal mole

but I guess the $1 million was not incentive enough to not commit a dumb insider trading scheme...

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dist-epoch 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

1. You could get trading material though - hear about the next AMD/Broadcom/whatever deal and buy options in advance