Who is surprised by this development?
The closest involved Apple selling Xerox pre-IPO shares [1]. And there are zero allegations any PARC employees who moved to Apple with confidential information the this has gone down.
> acting like this is not commonplace in today’s business environment
It's not. It's why it gets litigated and criminally charged. I won't disagree that there is a section of Americans who think it's commonplace. But that's because they're either personally doing the crimes or surrounded by criminals.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-02-21/larry-tesl...
This however does actually seem far worse, reminds me more of Waymo vs Uber, people can go to jail.
The word "coaching" is very malleable, and could refer to perfectly legal conduct, or conduct that is illegal, unethical, or both. How would an OpenAI employee know what Apple's security processes for departing employees are? One would assume he was told by previously-departed Apple employees. Would they have been forbidden to disclose information about the outgoing process? I would think so, given how careful Apple is about these things.
> Apple accused another former employee, Chang Liu, of using a former colleague’s Apple-owned laptop to access and download technical documents while working at OpenAI. Mr. Liu told that Apple employee what information about unannounced products she should study before job interviews, Apple said.
I would be very hesitant to assist a former colleague who is still at Apple in this way. Apple is well known for using deliberate leaks to smoke out leakers, and it would be easy for them to get a current/loyal employee to go through the interview process at a competitor for the purpose of finding out if the competitor is trying to get Apple employees to act unethically/illegally.
EDIT: I see my comment, which I posted on the HN thread for an NYT article, has been merged into the comment section of a different article, and is now being downvoted a bunch. Please understand I did not post this comment here, so if it seems out of place that's why.
The openAI employee in question is also a former Apple employee.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28453229-apple-v-ope...
Lawsuits like this tend to be surprisingly easy to read, partly because they intend for the public/journalists to read them.
Either by being a former Apple employee, or polling former Apple employees.
But it was design copying and IP infringement stuff: duplication of things already in the wild.
This is on another level. If any of this is true, it's extraordinary, and I think OpenAI will likely want to settle quickly, thus increasing Apple's AI-related earnings.
And a company openly instructing poached employees to exfiltrate documents on their way out the door, well…
The Liu guy seemingly did so but he wouldn't be the first person to try to take his own work product out the door for personal reasons.
I distrust statements like:
> “pattern by employees who depart for OpenAI of taking steps to evade the security processes intended to protect Apple’s confidential information.”
This could mean almost anything.
> OpenAI also instructs new hires on how to avoid scrutiny when they leave Apple. For example, Mr. Tan warns them not to tell Apple that they have taken jobs at OpenAI, so they can stay at Apple as long as they can.
> Apple says it discovered a pattern of OpenAI recruits emailing themselves confidential information when leaving Apple, including Tan.
> OpenAI apparently used confidential Apple hardware information when approaching Apple suppliers, and tricked one company into using a "specific trade secret metal-finishing technique" for an OpenAI device by claiming it had Apple's permission to do so.
> Liu allegedly kept an Apple-issued laptop after departing the company and exploited a vulnerability to download dozens of confidential Apple documents while he was working at OpenAI.
Non-competes and the like are gross but what's described here isn't just "bring your expertise to OpenAI" it's "here is how to steal secrets on your way out" which is even grosser.
> Liu allegedly kept an Apple-issued laptop after departing the company and exploited a vulnerability to download dozens of confidential Apple documents while he was working at OpenAI. He also maintained a relationship with Yu-Ting "Alyssa" Peng, an Apple employee who continued to give him updates on Apple's projects, vendor decisions, and engineering details. When Liu learned he still had access to Apple's systems, he texted Peng "LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny."
This is how you behave when you think you're so much smarter than everyone around you that consequences don't apply to you.
Whenever I leave a company I make sure everything that belongs to the company goes back to them and I wipe any access credentials or authenticator codes that might be on any of my devices. I can't imagine being so brazen that you'd keep the company laptop and then start using an exploit to download confidential information for your new employer.
Doing it at a the company that most aggressively enforces secrecy is even crazier.
At $WORK we have the option of getting a work smartphone or having the company pay for (at portion of) our monthly mobile bill.
I chose a work device because I do not want any cross-contamination. (Others chose payment because they did not want the 'hassle' of carrying a second device (and to save some cash).)
Right. I noticed a coworker who recently left the organization was still running some of our software on his personal computer (evident in the access logs) and notified him that I could see, he should be more careful, etc. We agree to these contracts because compliance matters, not just because we need the job.
But its also that companies responsibility to ensure that the employer doesn't take anything.
Apple know how to use MDM on Apple laptops, why wasn't the device locked and located.
Because you're probably come from a high trust culture where you've been taught reciprocal trust, responsibility and accountability, but there's people coming from low trust environments where exploiting loopholes and scamming everyone outside their inner circle is the norm, and it's the way they learned to get ahead in life, from school all the way to work and business.
They're brazen because they've never been caught or suffered consequences for their actions.
This isn't something you can screen for in a classic job interview.
Meh, I'm not returning my nice 4k wfh monitor unless they ask for it specifically
It’s weird too, these people’s history will show up on job sites and etc, people will find out… fast.
"Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage."
> we’re not looking for the sort of obedient, middle-of-the-road people that big companies tend to hire. We’re looking for people who like to beat the system.
You can beat the system and be disobedient while still behaving ethically. In fact that's the very best time to beat the system and be disobedient.
> Liu celebrated the exploit, according to the filing. "LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny," he said in a message to a former colleague who was still employed by Apple.
https://www.axios.com/2026/07/10/apple-sues-openai-trade-sec...
The surprise in their eyes is always very genuine.
I was more surprised by how they managed to keep using work devices after termination. This sounds to me like a failure of their manager to do their job to follow the standard exit process.
- Steve Jobs
If someone calls himself open, you should know who it is and what to expect.
Do you mind if I MITM all of your work output, your emails, your code, your messages, and attach my name to it and then receive your paychecks in exchange for my work?
Discovery is going to be great fun (for Apple).
I think Amodei may actually be quite a good human, despite my trust in big tech being at an all-time low.
I’m guessing a wrist wearable
They might have had an inkling that this was coming.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.47...
9. In the months before he left Apple, Mr. Tan met with OpenAI or its collaborators and discussed meetings with a key Apple supplier. He began emailing himself information about Apple’s suppliers and internal summaries of the consumer electronics industry. And today, when interviewing Apple employees for jobs at OpenAI, Mr. Tan uses Apple’s confidential information to gain access to even more insider knowledge. He has used an Apple internal project codename to ask, “What’s the plan[?]” for an unannounced Apple product. He has directed job candidates still working for Apple to bring “Actual parts” from Apple to their interviews for “show and tell” sessions in which he and his team at OpenAI can elicit still more Apple confidential information. These directions to bring Apple’s parts to OpenAI job interviews surprised at least one of the candidates, who commented that he “didn’t even know we could take those from the office.”
10. This is part of OpenAI’s strategy to extract Apple’s confidential information. OpenAI has been instructing Apple employees to bring “CAD/design artifacts” and “prototypes” to their interviews and to divulge details about their work such as “subsystem and component selection,” the “tools or methodologies you use for system integration, such as CAD software, simulation tools,” and “Vendor selection and communication/collaboration with vendors.”
11. OpenAI also instructs new hires on how to avoid scrutiny when they leave Apple. For example, Mr. Tan warns them not to tell Apple that they have taken jobs at OpenAI, so they can stay at Apple as long as they can. After his own departure, Mr. Tan improperly retained or obtained an internal Apple managers’ document marked “Need to Know” that describes security procedures for employee departures. Messages left on Apple-issued work devices show that Mr. Tan and his OpenAI colleagues have been sharing this document with new hires before they give notice to Apple of their departures, previewing Apple’s security protocols. Unsurprisingly, Apple’s investigation has found a pattern by employees who depart for OpenAI of taking steps to evade the security processes intended to protect Apple’s confidential information.
Only because both companies have access to billions and infinite lawyers.
OpenAIs billions are in IOUs to Nvidia
They can make legal fillings and calls to Bloomberg to keep the story going as long as they want to and suck some oxygen out of any IPO ramp up.
In this thread 90% is taking sides with them after they robbed us blind for more than a decade both when developing and when buying the actual overpriced products, services etc.
Their regime was much worse than Microsoft's , at least with Windows/Office you could get it for free if you knew where to look for (and accepted a slim possibilty of malware), or you could boot from bios and install Linux instead, or a VBox in place, you name it.
With Apple it has been 10+ years of pure closed source dictatorship, if their empire goes down I'll be dancing when the figurate Coloseum goes down in shambles .
It's time for something new .
OpenAI isn't perfect but it's new. These are juvinile sins. Actually they are not even a sin , they are an affront to a despot.
Within the context of this battle I'd say Go sama ! The Jimmy Page of the tech world , good artists create, great artists steal hehe :)
These people think OpenAI can/will protect them?
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/05/29/everything-we-know-abou...
Little no-name companies have this capability with off the shelf software.
Large companies like Apple have entire departments of staff whose job it is to monitor data theft.
It's bonkers and I love every single story as if it's never been told before.
Except OpenAI needs every cent of that money for compute, and they don't have healthy profits that can replenish what they spend.
Their financial situation is simply not comparable to that of Apple's.
I'm also wondering about all these involved ex-Apple people who decided to pivot to crime, it seems like OpenAI has to fire all of them, no? Because how do you just keep them, knowing that they're all basically tainted, and that Apple will be coming back to sue you again for anything that seems "inspired" by Apple products or tech.
What a massive cock-up for whoever (Tan?) is at the top of this conspiracy, to think this was worth the risk, and to have not known that the chances of getting caught going this far outside the legal boundaries were less than 100%.
- ~murdered~ (dead) employee who's mother is on a anti-sam hate campaign - ceo fired then coup's his way back into the company - conflict of interest with Microsoft
Despite Anthropic's bad press, they haven't been as dishonest as this company.
Are we discussing Steve Jobs in 1985?
Any time there is that much money and power involved there is going to be intense drama.
It’s possible this kind of behavior is endorsed throughout, or it’s possible it’s limited to this specific group.
We know nothing beyond what Apple has alleged.
If they can't prove any of this stuff they wouldn't file the suit. No matter what you or I think of Apple, the chances that this went down at least as criminally as they allege, are very high.
A company locking down their phone platform cannot be trusted with their laptop OS.
You get paid for about a year to do nothing so that the trade secrets from your firm (trading strategies) expire.
That's very different from a non-compete. A non-compete is about your own know-how, not the company's.
Don’t be such an idiot simp for billionaires who don’t give a shit about you
pretty sure PG and sama had a pretty serious falling out because it turns out sama is a complete snake
but you know, go off king (or whatever)
> To hide the truth, Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath. Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly. The real evidence, detailed herein, more than meets the clear and convincing standard to find a violation. The Court refers the matter to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate.
> [..]
> Neither Apple, nor its counsel, corrected the, now obvious, lies. They did not seek to withdraw the testimony or to have it stricken (although Apple did request that the Court strike other testimony). Thus, Apple will be held to have adopted the lies and misrepresentations to this Court.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...
Steve Jobs left because he lost a corporate power struggle. Sam Altman was fired because the board thought he was too fundamentally untrustworthy to remain as CEO (if we're to believe their statement ofc).
Different kinds of "controversy" IMO
You’re describing patents?
Hit them with state charges. Altman being a brat makes this politically attractive for any AG with ambitions.
Also, normalizing stealing IP is only going to have bad consequences for everyone.
I know there's some evidence of Chinese people working at big tech and feeding data back to the CCP but is this a "low trust culture" issue in general or an extrapolation of that one pattern?
Of course not. Have you been following national news or politics the past few years, and the continued incredibly strong support bad actors received despite atrocious behavior and even allegedly criminal acts?
The grandparent commentor is just racist.
And while its somehow "cultural" it's more about people hanging together having similar moral views.
Steve declared thermonuclear war on Google because Android re-skinned to use BUTTONS.
No. Steve's rage was justified, IMO. It was because Eric Schmidt was on Apple's board while simultaneously being Google's CEO and Google was surreptitiously building Android at the time. Mother of all conflict of interests.
There was a recent story that reminded me of it. Mike Krieger was on Figma's board and Anthropic's CPO, while Anthropic was surreptitiously building Claude Design.
Was there ever a point in time where Google was not the default search engine on iOS?
But, I don't work in Silicon Valley.
joke
But thats very different than scheming to steal actual property, which these files are.
The idea behind the quote most likely came from T.S. Eliot: Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
Some people like to talk about “some people” snidely, instead of just coming out and saying “GP is bloodthirsty and gets a little thrill [etc].” Because of course, that’s what they mean, but they can’t back it up.
Just to clarify, I’m talking about you.
I do the same as GP does; I don't want there to be any chance that my former employer has forgotten to revoke access to something, so I make sure to clear out anything that might remain on any device that I don't return to them.
Who knows, maybe another former employee will decide to steal from them around the same time I leave, and me having access credentials on a personal device, even if I haven't used it, might arouse suspicion.
In any top r&d area, one wonders if they perhaps should be searching staff on way out and making then sign out and return CAD drawings etc.
Should USA just destroy all theirs as no one can used them anyway due to the laws?
The utility of laws isn’t in stopping something from occurring, it’s in establishing remedies for when they do. Someone illegally transferred IP to a competitor that had knowledge they were stealing, and now Apple is seeking their remedy.
“They could have prevented it” is victim blaming.
> Liu also failed to return an Apple-issued laptop after his departure.