alt Hacker NewsThis isn’t the first time something like this happens and I always wonder how are these seemingly smart people earning good money so dumb.
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It’s even more ridiculous when choosing to do it Apple. It’s hard to think of a company with more legal resources and which is more protective of its hardware IP.
I’ve been present when the world comes crashing down around people who thought they were too smart to get caught.
The surprise in their eyes is always very genuine.
Google/Waymo + Uber/Otto comes to mind here with Anthony Levandowski.
Either people are being really, really silly (which cannot be discounted), or the potential reward is so high as to override whatever qualms a normal person must have. Is that it? Is this people looking at a solid career at Apple or sudden millions from OpenAI, and thinking the risk is worth it somehow? Or, more darkly, is it people thinking _this is my only chance and I have to take it_? Or is it trickle-down lawlessness?
Intelligence is domain-specific. People who have put too many skill points in technical knowledge often have none left for common sense and street-smarts.
More like lot of people are leaving Apple for OpenAI (no surprise) and an Apple manager wants to send a signal to everyone leaving to chill with what they walk out with. Corps have to perform a lot of theatre because there is lot of info constantly leaking out.
Overconfidence. These people think they are much smarter than others to be caught.
Those people are designers. And they don't necessarily understand software, data, or security. When I explained to my non-technical friends about how they were being tracked by website cookies, it sounded like a sci fi story to them. But yes, it's dumb.
I was more surprised by how they managed to keep using work devices after termination. This sounds to me like a failure of their manager to do their job to follow the standard exit process.
seemingly smart is the key here. intelligence doesnt make up for ethics.
Because companies get an advantage by having their people do this. You only hear about the times they get caught, but apparently they get caught so rarely that it's worth it.
"Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy; great artists steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."
- Steve Jobs
Right? Just straight up documentation with no shame: From an Axios article on this
> Liu celebrated the exploit, according to the filing. "LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny," he said in a message to a former colleague who was still employed by Apple.
https://www.axios.com/2026/07/10/apple-sues-openai-trade-sec...