OpenAI Employees Warned for Years About Internal Security Risks

Reuters reported on November 3, 2026, that some OpenAI employees had warned leaders and directors about operational-security weaknesses for years, with five people familiar with the company’s practices describing broad code access, a lack of regular security reviews for internal tools and concerns about insider threats. Some employees raised concerns before ChatGPT launched in late 2022 and shared them with top OpenAI leaders and board members.

Some staffers came away believing that management was more focused on keeping pace with Google and Anthropic than on security. In 2023, then-researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner wrote an internal memo titled “OpenAI is China’s leading AI lab” about his concern that China could infiltrate OpenAI and study its technology, three people familiar with the matter said.

He shared it with some directors later that year after an outsider hacked into OpenAI and obtained details about GPT-4. OpenAI said the hacker accessed only Slack channels available across the company. OpenAI stored most of its code in a single repository, known as a monorepo. The five people said anyone with code access could see technical details for…