Stupidity in Spying (Night's Black Agents, Ripped from the Headlines)

I'm off for the next two weeks. Should be the last time this year, thank heaven.

This is going to be a brief one, inspired by the recent case of an alleged Saudi spy caught bugging a Silicon Valley AI firm.

Short version: MIT grad and new dad Abdulrahman Alfozan was caught trying to retrieve/replace a small bugging device he'd placed in a conference room at OpenAI, the firm that created ChatGPT.

There's a picture floating around that's too good not to share, posted by Justice:

That's Alfozan, caught trying to retrieve the device from the TV USB port it had been placed in.

The alleged spy used his wife's Chat GPT account to get the instructions to build the surveillance device. The presumption is he intended to hand over whatever data he collected to the Saudi government, though at time of writing none of this has been proved.

Honestly, if true, it makes you wonder just how stupid the average MIT grad is. 

Let's gamify this.

In Dracula Dossier there are several Edom establishments that might be espionage targets. Ring, Seward's Asylum, potentially Proserpine. That's before you consider that there might be outside British tech firms working with Edom, and any number of university science departments. 

The Saudis are nominal allies of the US, though they may not be feeling so friendly at the moment. Israel is a nominal ally of the UK and has already, thorough Prince, established connections to Edom.  

From this:

In Plain Sight

Edom has cause to believe that someone has planted a bug at one of its establishments (pick the one you like best) and sets up a sting operation to catch the spy. Your agents are either tasked with running this sting (if Edom) or with extracting the alleged spy (if working against Edom).

The spy is an Israeli, Aviel Malka, who was recently brought on board by Prince. The idea was that Malka would conduct research on the potential uses of AI clients in Edom. The unofficial presumption was that Malka, like Prince, had links to Unit 8200, though this was never confirmed. Malka is young, married, and his assignment is due to come to a close within a month. He'd return home once the assignment completed.

The surveillance device is a small electronic bug inserted into a USB port in one of the many, many bits of tech scattered about Edom's establishment. Edom already knows where and what it is. Steps have been taken to disable it, so the spy will return to retrieve it. 

What nobody realizes is that Malka used his wife's AI client to design the device, and he did that because his wife is Renfielded and is secretly running the show for the Conspiracy. It's the Conspiracy using the Malka family for its own ends; the agents, if working against Edom, think that they're operating on behalf of a more-or-less benign third party; the Mysterious Monseigneur, say. 

Potential Thrilling Chase; potential Thrilling Digital Intrusion. 

The bigger question, if the agents are Edom, is did Prince know about this? Is Prince working secretly for Israel? Or is this an attempt to blacken Prince's name by whoever's running Malka?

Potential Thrilling Interrogation.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!