That Saudi national working at OpenAI and arrested by the FBI "has not been charged with foreign espionage," writes the Washington Post, "and the U.S. government has not said whether he was acting alone or as an agent of a foreign government." But "there are signs that the U.S. government is exploring the latter possibility," they add, citing comments from Chris McGuire, a member of the National Security Council during the Biden administration: The Department of Justice's press release about the incident says that the National Security Division's Counterintelligence and Export Control section, whose responsibility includes prosecuting spies, is assisting with the case... A Washington-based Middle East expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid incurring wrath from Saudi Arabia, said he believed the Saudi government was almost certainly involved in some way. "No one does this, not even for patriotism, without getting paid," said the person. And money would not be distributed without agreement by the Saudi royal court, he said. The Saudis lag behind their regional rival, the United Arab Emirates, in artificial intelligence development, he added. Friday America's Director of National Intelligence told CNBC that espionage, "both commercial espionage, and I would say state-sponsored espionage, are realities. It's something that our private sector companies need to be wary of." (And CNBC adds that"An ex-CIA official, who asked not to be named because they were discussing information that is not public, told CNBC this week that the case is 'probably the tip of the iceberg.'") The suspect had recently said he helped advise government agencies in Saudi Arabia on technology, reports the New York Times: In an Arabic podcast interview last month, Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national, said he and other Saudi tech professionals in Silicon Valley had formed a group that advised Saudi organizations, including the kingdom's social insurance agency... "Silicon Valley is ground zero for espionage from a variety of countries around the world," said Amy Zegart, a professor at Stanford University who specializes in national security and intelligence. She added that she was "troubled" by the OpenAI incident and expected more cases "because these companies are so important." The Washington Post says the arrest "has ignited a fierce debate about the potential risks of Silicon Valley's international workforce — employees who often hail from nations seeking to rival the AI superpower status of the U.S." Foreign nationals have long formed the backbone of the American tech industry, helping U.S. companies surpass their would-be international rivals... As recently as April, Katrina Mulligan, a senior member of OpenAI's national security team, called for an "accelerated pathway to citizenship" for such workers, referring to foreign hires as a "national strategic asset" at an event on Capitol Hill. She estimated that a significant number of OpenAI's employees were not U.S. citizens, including Chinese nationals. Just half of the 300 top AI researchers in the world, she said, were American. Other industry leaders — as well as some lawmakers — have long accused top-tier tech companies with many foreign workers of disadvantaging Americans and being breeding grounds for Chinese espionage. Palmer Luckey, CEO of weapons maker Anduril, and venture capitalist Shaun Maguire of Sequoia Capital took to X on Wednesday to revisit arguments that the industry should focus on hiring U.S. citizens. "Silicon Valley has operated with maximum openness and maximum naivete toward foreign tradecraft," Maguire wrote... At OpenAI on Wednesday, employees continued tense conversations about the political implications of the arrest for immigrant workers, two OpenAI employees said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions... The arrest triggered a discussion on OpenAI's internal Slack messaging platform among employees about whether the incident might increase pressure from the Trump administration on OpenAI to not hire foreign nationals, said one of the people. In March, Emil Michael, the Pentagon's chief technology officer, wrote in court papers that AI developer Anthropic's reliance on staff with ties to China was among the concerns that fueled the Defense Department's conflict with the AI company.

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TechCrunch writes: "Isn't it weird that I, like, did a TV show about kind of a business scam, and you got in trouble for like ... a business scam?" comedian and filmmaker Nathan Fielder gently asks Elizabeth Holmes. One month before the notorious Theranos CEO surrendered to begin her 11-year criminal fraud sentence in 2023, Holmes and her husband contacted A24 as a last-ditch effort to exonerate her in the public eye, suggesting they send a film crew to document her final days of freedom. Alongside director Lance Oppenheim, Fielder — a cringe-comedy mastermind whose work often walks the line between fact and fiction — embraced the impossible project of figuring out who the infamous Stanford dropout really is. "I never actually made that connection," says Holmes. "I think it's a pretty different situation...." We already know that Elizabeth Holmes is not innocent. What we still can't figure out, though, is whether she really, truly believes she did nothing wrong. Even as she sat on trial — listening to testimonies from investors who lost hundreds of millions of dollars, whistleblowers who were silenced when they flagged that Theranos' blood-testing devices didn't work, and patients who acted on incorrect blood test results — Holmes never wavered. Business Insider says the scariest thing about the new documentary "is how much I wanted to believe her." SFGate calls it "one of the finest works of journalism I've ever seen." As Fielder ingratiates himself with Holmes and [her husband] Evans, he gets them comfortable enough to ask the hard questions: about Theranos, about prison, and even about themselves. The resulting footage is often shocking. You will see Elizabeth Holmes, who still maintains she did nothing wrong, answer "no" when Fielder asks her if she's ever lied in her life... [Y]ou will also see Holmes and Evans spend a great deal of time in this movie attempting to boot up Theranos 2.0. They even go so far as to drag out some of the original Theranos blood testing apparatus, which looks like a bunch of random parts from TigerDirect they hooked together, to show Fielder what their product can do. We do not see it doing anything on screen, but the couple assures that it we would if it was, like, hooked up properly. These scenes are extremely funny, but funny isn't what Fielder is looking for. He's trying to figure out if this woman is a clueless naif, if she believes her own lies, or if she is playing the character of an innocent woman, and doing so with such effectiveness that, to paraphrase Fielder, she might be the most manipulative person in the world. The answer proves fabulously elusive, and so Fielder and Oppenheim go to extremes in their attempt to find it. They hold the camera on Holmes' rubbery elfin face for what feels like hours at a time, to see if she'll blink (figuratively or literally!). They interview Holmes' visiting parents, with the father, former Enron exec Christian Holmes, casually telling Fielder that everything changed for his daughter "when she was raped." To the furthest extreme, they bring in actress Amanda Seyfried — who played Holmes in the Hulu TV show "The Dropout" — to recreate any dialogues Fielder had with Holmes herself that couldn't be recorded on camera. Seyfried is so convincing in mimicking Holmes that you, the audience, might forget which scenes were Seyfried talking to the camera and not Holmes herself. I know I did. Continuing that theme in the film, TechCrunch notes, is how her husband Billy Evans "has constructed a lifelike AI avatar of his wife, trapped inside of a large vertical screen that he wheels over to the dinner table to sit with him and his kids as though she's actually there." Elizabeth Holmes "comes off in the doc as every bit as innately bizarre as anyone showing up for a cinematic freak show might hope," writes Variety: My personal hunch is that Fielder came away thinking Holmes is on the level, to the extent that someone who sometimes seems like an AI program's idea of how a human should behave can be on the level. There are a few possibilities that might explain how Holmes comes off the way she does in the movie: (a) She is a simpleton. (b) She is a conniving sociopath who happens to be utterly brilliant at playing a simpleton. (c) Somewhere between those poles, she is the very emblem of a woman who throughout her life has put herself in the sway of controlling men, to the detriment of her intellect, willpower and emotional development... Is it possible that the more you learn about someone, the less you might know how to think about them? Meanwhile, NBC News recently reported: Elizabeth Holmes, who was convicted of fraud for siphoning hundreds of millions of dollars from several high-profile investors, is scheduled to be transferred from a minimum-security federal prison to a halfway house next year, according to one of her victims... [America's Department of Justice "is required by law to notify victims of crime of case developments through letters and emails," the article points out.] She was sentenced in 2022 to 11 years and three months in prison. She and her business partner, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, were ordered to pay 12 victims a total of $452 million in restitution. Holmes has been serving that sentence at a minimum-security prison in Bryan, Texas. The halfway house will provide her greater freedom... In March, a judge cut Holmes' sentence from 135 months to 123 months. According to a court document, the judge agreed with Holmes that she did not personally cause "substantial financial hardship" to her victims. NBC News adds that a prison consultant they interviewed "said inmates who report to halfway houses can work, have phones, drive to religious services or shop for things they need and earn passes for weekends at home."

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