“OpenAI #15: More on OpenAI’s Paranoid Lawfare Against Advocates of SB 53” by Zvi
Description
A little over a month ago, I documented how OpenAI had descended into paranoia and bad faith lobbying surrounding California's SB 53.
This included sending a deeply bad faith letter to Governor Newsom, which sadly is par for the course at this point.
It also included lawfare attacks against bill advocates, including Nathan Calvin and others, using Elon Musk's unrelated lawsuits and vendetta against OpenAI as a pretext, accusing them of being in cahoots with Elon Musk.
Previous reporting of this did not reflect well on OpenAI, but it sounded like the demand was limited in scope to a supposed link with Elon Musk or Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, links which very clearly never existed.
Accusing essentially everyone who has ever done anything OpenAI dislikes of having united in a hallucinated ‘vast conspiracy’ is all classic behavior for OpenAI's Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane [...]
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Outline:
(02:35 ) What OpenAI Tried To Do To Nathan Calvin
(07:22 ) It Doesn't Look Good
(10:17 ) OpenAI's Jason Kwon Responds
(19:14 ) A Brief Amateur Legal Analysis Of The Request
(21:33 ) What OpenAI Tried To Do To Tyler Johnston
(25:50 ) Nathan Compiles Responses to Kwon
(29:52 ) The First Thing We Do
(36:12 ) OpenAI Head of Mission Alignment Joshua Achiam Speaks Out
(40:16 ) It Could Be Worse
(41:31 ) Chris Lehane Is Who We Thought He Was
(42:50 ) A Matter of Distrust
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First published:
October 13th, 2025
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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