OpenAI employee arrested for allegedly using AI and toilet paper to record confidential meetings – FBI director Kash Patel jumps at the chance to say AI companies are ‘essential’ for national security

Welcome to PC Gamer club ! Hi , Your membership journey starts here.

Keep exploring and earning more as a member.

Earn badges by reading articles, leaving comments, and taking quizzes. Show off your website-using chops!

Finding the best discounts on PC gaming hardware has never been more important. Check out our handpicked hardware deals.

Get the latest PC gaming news, rumors, recommendations, and deals delivered to your inbox. (You can turn them off anytime.)

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.

Unlock instant access to exclusive member features.

Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards.

According to FBI director Kash Patel’s summary of the complaint, Saudi Arabian national Abdulrahman Alfozan “allegedly concealed a covert recording device inside his employer’s executive conference room to secretly capture sensitive communications about the company’s super intelligence technology.”

In case you hadn’t heard, that’s what the US bigwigs are calling AI now: superintelligence. Courtesy of President Trump, of course, who said last month that the Administration will use this term in place of artificial intelligence “in any applicable setting.”

The FBI director also said, “Protecting American SI innovation is essential to safeguarding our nation’s economic strength and national security, and the FBI views that mission as one of our highest counterintelligence priorities.”

The complaint says that Alfozan had worked for OpenAI since July 2025 as an engineer, and at the end of last month OpenAI discovered a USB audio recording device plugged into a conference room TV. According to the Justice Department, the device, which had been installed for a couple of days before discovery, was “concealed in toilet paper.”

The complaint also alleges that Alfozans’ spouse’s “chatbot” account (no mention of whether that’s a ChatGPT account or something else) submitted prompts related to things such as “build[ing] a continuous audio recorder”, “improv[ing] audio and live listening”, and “encrypt[ing] the SD card.” There were allegedly also prompts relating to the specific recording device that was found.

The conference room in question seems to have been an important one. The Department of Justice explains:

Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.

“According to the complaint, meetings in the executive conference room where Recording Device 1 was discovered frequently involved discussions of highly confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information, including proprietary research, product plans, and business-development opportunities, as well as nonpublic information about Open AI’s technical progress and strategic decisions, capabilities, priorities, government engagements, and commercial relationships.”

Various appendages of the state seem to be taking this very seriously. Which isn’t surprising, of course, given AI development—no, I’m not calling it ‘SI’—is deemed important to national security and prosperity.

Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton said: “This serious situation underscores why winning the global super intelligence race is a national security prerogative… The intelligence community remains committed to safeguarding America’s cutting-edge intellectual property from foreign threats.”

US Attorney Craig H. Missakian for the Northern District of California seems to agree: “For us it is a matter of national security. This arrest highlights our relentless efforts in partnership with the FBI to identify and prosecute those who seek to steal our technology, as alleged in the complaint.”

My question, however, is this: If the allegations are true, would Alfozan have been able to do this without the use of an AI chatbot? Snakes and tails, and all that.

Best gaming laptop 2026 1. Best overall: Razer Blade 16 (2025)

5. Best high-performance: Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

👉Check out our full gaming laptop guide👈

Jacob Fox Hardware Writer Jacob got his hands on a gaming PC for the first time when he was about 12 years old. He swiftly realised the local PC repair store had ripped him off with his build and vowed never to let another soul build his rig again. With this vow, Jacob the hardware junkie was born. Since then, Jacob’s led a double-life as part-hardware geek, part-philosophy nerd, first working as a Hardware Writer for PCGamesN in 2020, then working towards a PhD in Philosophy for a few years while freelancing on the side for sites such as TechRadar, Pocket-lint, and yours truly, PC Gamer. Eventually, he gave up the ruthless mercenary life to join the world’s #1 PC Gaming site full-time. It’s definitely not an ego thing, he assures us.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.

1 ‘123456’ password was all a hacker reportedly needed to expose over 8 million people’s personal data 2 Haunted Chocolatier is still ‘a town game’, but it’ll be more of an action RPG: ‘It’s for the people in Stardew Valley that go into the mines’ 3 This is the first 32 GB RTX 5070 Ti gaming laptop I’ve seen for under $1,500 in months 4 I just tricked DLSS into running on my AMD GPU in Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake 2 and all it took was running a single script 5 Steam’s new Big Art Mode is a lovely visual upgrade for my living room setup Close Please login or signup to comment