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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> Spies used to put effort into these sorts of things

Assuming this is espionage—for which I have seen zero evidence—isn’t Saudi Arabia notorious for having a fuckup of an intelligence operation? The literal hatchet job that was the Khashoggi murder comes to mind.

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The guy was murdered.

The guilty got away with it.

Dissidents noticed.

How was it a fuckup?

We all know about Mossad agents doing all sorts of nefarious things (and occasionally getting caught for it). Do you consider them fuckups because they got caught?

Umm, excuse me, according to the President of the United States, he wasn't a very good guy and a lot of people really didn't like him, so you should really just let that whole incident go

"You're mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial," Trump said, referring to Khashoggi. "A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about. Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen, but he knew nothing about it. And would you leave it at that? You don't have to embarrass our guest by asking a question."

https://www.npr.org/2025/11/18/nx-s1-5612504/trump-saudi-ara...

Watch out you'll get flagged for this like my comment was

Why would you assume that he was working for the Saudis? Spy agencies will recruit people of any nationality. Much more likely he was working with (or planning to work with) one of the two countries that are building AI.

I mean, why bother? Nobody will do anything and the US president can be bribed or flattered to say whatever you want later.

> why bother? Nobody will do anything and the US president can be bribed

To exfiltrate OpenAI's executive-level planning? Probably not. I doubt he has that access anymore, what with the IC's decimation over the last two years.

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