Edward Snowden wrote on social media to his nearly 6 million followers, “Do not ever trust @OpenAI … You have been warned,” following the appointment of retired U.S. Army General Paul Nakasone to the board of the artificial intelligence technology company.
Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) subcontractor, was charged with espionage by the Justice Department in 2013 after leaking thousands of top-secret records, exposing the agency’s surveillance of private citizens’ information.
In a Friday morning post on X, formerly Twitter, Snowden reshared a post providing information on OpenAI’s newest board member. Nakasone is a former NSA director, and the longest-serving leader of the U.S. Cyber Command and chief of the Central Security Service. He retired from the NSA, a position he held since 2018, in February.
Snowden wrote in an X post, “They’ve gone full mask-off: do not ever trust @OpenAI or its products (ChatGPT etc.) There is only one reason for appointing an @NSAGov Director to your board. This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on Earth.” He concluded the post, writing, “You have been warned.”
He didn’t really choose Russia, it was the only country that would protect him from rendition.
Not even that. He was headed to Cuba, the US government forced him to be in Russia.
“NSA leaker Edward Snowden got stuck at a Moscow airport after Cuba, feeling pressure from Washington, warned that it would not allow an Aeroflot flight from Russia to land in Havana if he were aboard”
I’m not justifying their reasons, I’m just explaining that’s what some of them say.
Maybe at first it was a lack of options, but he’s absolutely become a Russian asset since then. Doesn’t mean he’s wrong about OpenAI, but still.
He’s a Russian PR win, but I haven’t seen him be especially pro-Putin or anything.
He’s not overtly pro-putin, but he did accept Russian citizenship and was denying the possibility of Ukraine being invaded until like literally the day before the invasion started, which was long after it was obvious Russia was planning to invade.