It\u2019s already hard enough to make friends, find a romantic partner, and network in San Francisco. Now the city\u2019s tech workers have another factor to consider: Is this person being nice to me because I\u2019m cool and interesting, or are they a spy?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fears of corporate espionage have taken over<\/a> Silicon Valley, with competitors and foreign actors scrambling to steal secret information from the world\u2019s biggest AI labs in order to gain a strategic advantage.\u00a0<\/p>\n This month, the FBI arrested<\/a> an OpenAI employee who was a Saudi national for planting a recording device in the company\u2019s 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)<\/a> their employees about spies, according to The Wall Street Journal.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSpy activity in San Francisco rivals, if not exceeds, that of Washington,\u201d said Mark Trott, who spent more than a decade in counterintelligence at the FBI\u2019s San Francisco field office and now works at security firm Concentric.\u00a0<\/p>\n How exactly does one identify these masters of disguise when everyone\u2019s wearing the same quarter-zips and Sambas? The Standard spoke with three experts in countersurveillance to break it down.<\/p>\n How many spies are there, really?<\/p>\n A lot. There are millions of intelligence agents globally, according to Holden Triplett, who at one time led the FBI\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis goes on a lot more frequently than gets reported,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople don\u2019t get caught, but when they do, companies don\u2019t want to publicize it.\u201d Plus, spies are surrounded by networks of people who help them, including tech workers they\u2019ve recruited, knowingly or not.\u00a0<\/p>\n Are all spies hot? <\/p>\n \u201cIt depends, but you catch more flies with honey,\u201d said David Mound, head of research at Shinobi Security, a cybersecurity company.\u00a0<\/p>\n Foreign intelligence agents are most often young, attractive women, experts told The Standard. They find vulnerabilities \u2014 like a desire for sex, money, someone who understands or at least listens \u2014 and look to exploit them. For men, that\u2019s often through attention from an attractive woman.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re a guy that\u2019s in your 40s or 50s, and someone substantially younger comes and talks to you, you want to pat yourself on the back and say, \u2018I\u2019ve still got it,\u2019\u201d Triplett said. \u201cBut you should be honest with yourself and ask, \u2018Is that likely to happen?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s Trott. However, he warned against generalizing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Spies, he said, \u201cstrive to understand you better than you understand yourself.\u201d They scour confidential documents \u2014 and, more usefully, social media \u2014 to build a personality profile of their targets, he said. Whatever your vulnerability is, they\u2019ll find it.<\/p>\n How will they find me? <\/p>\n 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. \u201cIf you post that you hike at a park near the peninsula all the time, that\u2019s where I would meet you,\u201d said Trott.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s also common for intelligence agents to invite tech workers to overseas conferences \u2014 all expenses paid \u2014 to speak or present research, he said. The goal is \u201cto get them to reveal more about what they know.\u201d<\/p>\n Workers traveling abroad, especially to adversarial nations, are especially at risk (opens in new tab)<\/a>. In one case Shinobi\u2019s 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\u2019s what\u2019s called an \u201cevil maid\u201d 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\u2019s information. \u201cDon\u2019t rely on a hotel safe,\u201d he said. \u201cThe best thing to do is to keep your laptop on you.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n How do I spot a spy?<\/p>\n \u201cIt should never be a racially profiled thing,\u201d Mound said. \u201cThat\u2019s not how it works.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Rather, it\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s enough to trust your gut, Triplett said. Some spies aren\u2019t actually that good at their job.\u00a0<\/p>\n Assuming you\u2019re safe based on someone\u2019s appearance, accent, or home country ignores the current realities of global AI espionage.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAny nation that has deemed AI critical to the nation\u2019s survival or economic growth \u2014 and has nationalized artificial intelligence objectives \u2014 will deploy intelligence services to collect information,\u201d Trott said. That includes countries the U.S. has typically deemed \u201cfriendly.\u201d<\/p>\n Who else is spying on me?<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 data that would be used to train its AI models. After more than 1,600 employees signed a petition and a data leak, Meta paused (opens in new tab)<\/a> the initiative.<\/p>\n Mound has been hired to bug an office and listen in on employees\u2019 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\u2019t work there. It served two purposes: to determine if employees recognized a package that wasn\u2019t supposed to be there, and it recorded conversations that took place around it.<\/p>\n \u201cIn larger organizations, this is quite common,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n When can I finally relax?<\/p>\n It\u2019s good to remain suspicious, experts said, even if you think you know someone well. Even if you\u2019ve been married to them for years. <\/p>\n \u201cHostile foreign intelligence services have no compunction about utilizing intimate relationships to their advantage,\u201d said Trott. \u201cYou should consider yourself no longer a target when you are no longer in a position to have access to anything someone could want.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s already hard enough to make friends, find a romantic partner, and network in San Francisco. 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