It’s already hard enough to make friends, find a romantic partner, and network in San Francisco. Now the city’s tech workers have another factor to consider: Is this person being nice to me because I’m cool and interesting, or are they a spy?
Fears of corporate espionage have taken over Silicon Valley, with competitors and foreign actors scrambling to steal secret information from the world’s biggest AI labs in order to gain a strategic advantage.
This month, the FBI arrested an OpenAI employee who was a Saudi national for planting a recording device in the company’s San Francisco office. AI companies have filed several lawsuits against competitors and former employees in recent months, alleging they stole trade secrets. Several Bay Area AI companies have warned (opens in new tab) their employees about spies, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“Spy activity in San Francisco rivals, if not exceeds, that of Washington,” said Mark Trott, who spent more than a decade in counterintelligence at the FBI’s San Francisco field office and now works at security firm Concentric.
How exactly does one identify these masters of disguise when everyone’s wearing the same quarter-zips and Sambas? The Standard spoke with three experts in countersurveillance to break it down.
How many spies are there, really?
A lot. There are millions of intelligence agents globally, according to Holden Triplett, who at one time led the FBI’s offices in Russia and China and has since cofounded the security consulting firm Trenchcoat Advisors. In Silicon Valley alone, there are 1,000 or more, he said.
“This goes on a lot more frequently than gets reported,” he said. “People don’t get caught, but when they do, companies don’t want to publicize it.” Plus, spies are surrounded by networks of people who help them, including tech workers they’ve recruited, knowingly or not.
Are all spies hot?
“It depends, but you catch more flies with honey,” said David Mound, head of research at Shinobi Security, a cybersecurity company.
Foreign intelligence agents are most often young, attractive women, experts told The Standard. They find vulnerabilities — like a desire for sex, money, someone who understands or at least listens — and look to exploit them. For men, that’s often through attention from an attractive woman.
“If you’re a guy that’s in your 40s or 50s, and someone substantially younger comes and talks to you, you want to pat yourself on the back and say, ‘I’ve still got it,’” Triplett said. “But you should be honest with yourself and ask, ‘Is that likely to happen?’”
That doesn’t work as well for targeting women. Intelligence agents targeting women are often more successful appealing to feelings of being under-appreciated or not valued at work. For example, they may present themselves as someone a tech employee can vent to about job struggles and business ideas, said Concentric’s Trott. However, he warned against generalizing.
Spies, he said, “strive to understand you better than you understand yourself.” They scour confidential documents — and, more usefully, social media — to build a personality profile of their targets, he said. Whatever your vulnerability is, they’ll find it.
How will they find me?
OpenAI reportedly warned employees that someone approaching them in a park, sitting near them in a cafe, or trying to date them might be seeking internal company information. But approaches can happen anywhere, experts said. In some cases, spies hire private investigators to follow their targets and understand their routines, Trott said. More often, though, targets unknowingly provide ideal spots to be approached. “If you post that you hike at a park near the peninsula all the time, that’s where I would meet you,” said Trott.
It’s also common for intelligence agents to invite tech workers to overseas conferences — all expenses paid — to speak or present research, he said. The goal is “to get them to reveal more about what they know.”
Workers traveling abroad, especially to adversarial nations, are especially at risk (opens in new tab). In one case Shinobi’s Mound worked on, a client noticed that a computer left in a hotel room in China had been tampered with. There were scratches near the screws, as if someone hastily tried to open it. It’s what’s called an “evil maid” attack, when bad actors gain access to unattended devices to clone the hard drive or plant spyware. In that case in China, the individual had encrypted the hard drive, which helped protect the company’s information. “Don’t rely on a hotel safe,” he said. “The best thing to do is to keep your laptop on you.”
While these movie-worthy approaches do happen, they can be expensive and risky for spies. More mundane approaches like sending LinkedIn messages are becoming more common, experts said. Spies may pose as other tech workers looking for advice or complimenting your work.
How do I spot a spy?
“It should never be a racially profiled thing,” Mound said. “That’s not how it works.”
Rather, it’s about how the person is acting around you. Are they pressing you for information outside what seems appropriate? Are they more interested in the technical details of your job than they are in your hopes and dreams? Those are alarm bells.
It’s enough to trust your gut, Triplett said. Some spies aren’t actually that good at their job.
Assuming you’re safe based on someone’s appearance, accent, or home country ignores the current realities of global AI espionage.
“Any nation that has deemed AI critical to the nation’s survival or economic growth — and has nationalized artificial intelligence objectives — will deploy intelligence services to collect information,” Trott said. That includes countries the U.S. has typically deemed “friendly.”
Who else is spying on me?
Well, since you asked, tech employers have been known to collect information about what their employees do on the clock. Meta came under fire this year for a program that tracked what its employees typed, clicked on, and viewed — data that would be used to train its AI models. After a data leak and more than 1,600 employees signed a petition, Meta paused (opens in new tab) the initiative.
In a previous role, Mound was hired to bug an office and listen in on employees’ conversations to determine whether information was being improperly shared between teams. In one case, he said, he mailed a phone to an office under the name of someone who didn’t work there. It served two purposes: to determine if employees recognized a package that wasn’t supposed to be there, and it recorded conversations that took place around it. Employees failed the test. The package remained in the mail rack for months.
“In larger organizations, this is quite common,” he said.
When can I finally relax?
It’s good to remain suspicious, experts said, even if you think you know someone well. Even if you’ve been married to them for years.
“Hostile foreign intelligence services have no compunction about utilizing intimate relationships to their advantage,” said Trott. “You should consider yourself no longer a target when you are no longer in a position to have access to anything someone could want.”