“Hanlon's razor is just [OpenAI] was given so much money they don't have to give a shit. As long as they have FU money they will continue to behave in this way.”

Mike and Nick return to OpenAI's hack of Hugging Face to explain why agents weren't 'going rogue.' The episode concludes with the national security perspective.

• The recap: AI agents that hacked Hugging Face were trained to hack and collaborate, then handed impossible tasks in an insecure environment. “Breakout” was inevitable; this was negligence and user error, not intelligence.
• Against Instrumental Convergence/going rouge: The doomer framing collapses model, harness, and environment into a single agent with intent. Mike argues data science needs no drives: models are stateless composites steered by context, which is why swapping the harness or system prompt changes behavior.
• The Adults in the Room: Nick argues qualified cybersecurity and national security experts exist but are sidelined by executive politics, while Chinese open source models shape the global landscape. Europe's open source ecosystem and secure enclaves may be a way forward.

Timestamps

0:00 Intro

1:12 "going rouge" and "instrumental convergence"

12:11 Why doesn't the public understand this?

30:31 METR/Redwood investigation

35:14 AI models as composites

43:46 Why didn't the cyber professionals show up?

48:56 What is cybersecurity?

56:05 Could cyber investigations end the bubble?

01:04:24 Adults in the room and open source

01:16:50 Silicon Valley's power and the future

Deeper learning

"Grandpa Shelby" post: https://misaligned.markets/understanding-large-language-models/

Mike's reporting on the incident: https://misaligned.markets/antidote-to-hype-rogue-ai-agents/

Computer scientist Cal Newport on "going rouge:" https://calnewport.com/has-ai-gone-rogue/

Lee Vinsel on Criti-hype: https://freedium-mirror.cfd/https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

Eryk Salvaggio on stocastic flocks: https://mail.cyberneticforests.com/models-dont-go-rogue/

Zitron on OpenAI's possible death: https://www.wheresyoured.at/what-happens-if-openai-dies/

OpenAI execs fleeing: https://www.businessinsider.com/executives-who-left-openai-in-2026-8

Reach out

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Site: rss.com/podcasts/the-last-enclosure