Espionage

Federal prosecutors disclosed on October 19, 2026 that Abdulrahman Alfozan, a former OpenAI engineer accused of planting a recording device in the company’s San Francisco conference room, received financial and operational support from the Saudi government. The FBI found a folder labelled ‘Saudi Gov Docs’ on his devices and intercepted WhatsApp exchanges involving Saudi royal family members. Before his arrest Alfozan had booked one-way flights to Saudi Arabia for himself and his family and is now held without bail. The case is the first publicly detailed allegation of foreign-state intelligence infiltration of a frontier US AI lab, raising fresh questions about talent security and cross-border AI governance.

The FBI has arrested an individual accused of acting on behalf of Chinese government intelligence and targeting family members of Taiwan’s senior leadership, the latest flashpoint in an intensifying US-China shadow war over the Taiwan Strait.