A spy bugged OpenAI's executive conference room with toilet paper and a USB port

Let me paint you a picture. The most valuable company on the planet — chasing a reported $1.3 trillion valuation — holds its most sensitive conversations in an executive conference room in San Francisco. And an engineer on the product team allegedly wrapped a tiny recording device in toilet paper, plugged it into the USB port behind the TV, and walked away. The DOJ says the target was OpenAI's "superintelligence" work. Here's the part I can't stop thinking about: OpenAI caught him with its own AI. The company says it used one of its internal models to analyze the device, trace its origins, and identify the employee — 35-year-old Abdulrahman Alfozan, arrested by the FBI on October 9 and charged Tuesday with attempting to intercept oral communications. He was fired. The FBI says the device was encrypted and installed around September 28, discovered on September 30, and that a second device was found in a bag with his wallet and ID. Satya Nadella just told the world to assume every AI model is already compromised. Now the labs are getting bugged by humans. The race to superintelligence isn't playing out in some gleaming lab — it's playing out in a conference room, with a spy pulling a move a bored intern could have dreamed up. OpenAI says there's no sign model weights, source code, or customer data walked out the door, and the charges are allegations. But the signal is unmistakable: superintelligence is now a national security asset, and the cloak-and-dagger phase has officially started. Sources: U.S. Department of Justice press release (Oct. 13, 2026); The Times; Reuters (via Livemint); CNBC (via Mezha); Newsmax (DOJ release details).