If, like me, you were concerned seeing the stories on OpenAI subpoenas for non-profit organizations, please do read this. I've appreciated @jasonkwon's position during the SB-1047 debate encouraging OpenAI's employees to speak their mind even when it contradicts the company's position. Doubly so for SB-53, which OAI did not even oppose. Hence, while I wish vendors for serving subpoenas would stick to business hours, I am convinced this is not about attacking supporters of that bill. This is not to say that I necessarily agree with all of OpenAI's positions. I did not read SB-53 enough to form a well-founded position, but my impressions were positive, and my guess is that it is a positive development that it was enacted. I am hoping to see from openai more statements with a positive vision of what regulations and laws we will support. I was encouraged by us signing the EU code of practice, and would like to see more such actions in the future. Regulations are not the only tool for making sure AI goes well, but they are a crucial component.
There’s quite a lot more to the story than this. As everyone knows, we are actively defending against Elon in a lawsuit where he is trying to damage OpenAI for his own financial benefit. Encode, the organization for which @_NathanCalvin serves as the General Counsel, was one of the first third parties - whose funding has not been fully disclosed - that quickly filed in support of Musk. For a safety policy organization to side with Elon (?), that raises legitimate questions about what is going on. We wanted to know, and still are curious to know, whether Encode is working in collaboration with third parties who have a commercial competitive interest adverse to OpenAI. The stated narrative makes this sound like something it wasn’t. 1/ Subpoenas are to be expected, and it would be surprising if Encode did not get counsel on this from their lawyers. When a third party inserts themselves into active litigation, they are subject to standard legal processes. We issued a subpoena to ensure transparency around their involvement and funding. This is a routine step in litigation, not a separate legal action against Nathan or Encode. 2/ Subpoenas are part of how both sides seek information and gather facts for transparency; they don’t assign fault or carry penalties. Our goal was to understand the full context of why Encode chose to join Elon’s legal challenge. 3/ We’ve also been asking for some time who is funding their efforts connected to both this lawsuit and SB53, since they’ve publicly linked themselves to those initiatives. If they don’t have relevant information, they can simply respond that way. 4/ This is not about opposition to regulation or SB53. We did not oppose SB53; we provided comments for harmonization with other standards. We were also one of the first to sign the EU AIA COP, and still one of a few labs who test with the CAISI and UK AISI. We’ve also been clear with our own staff that they are free to express their takes on regulation, even if they disagree with the company, like during the 1047 debate (see thread below). 5/ We checked with our outside law firm about the deputy visit. The law firm used their standard vendor for service, and it’s quite common for deputies to also work as part-time process servers. We’ve been informed that they called Calvin ahead of time to arrange a time for him to accept service, so it should not have been a surprise. 6/ Our counsel interacted with Nathan’s counsel and by all accounts the exchanges were civil and professional on both sides. Nathan’s counsel denied they had materials in some cases and refused to respond in other cases. Discovery is now closed, and that’s that. For transparency, below is the excerpt from the subpoena that lists all of the requests for production. People can judge for themselves what this was really focused on. Most of our questions still haven’t been answered.

Oct 10, 2025 · 9:58 PM UTC

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Is it your impression that it's common for a party to a lawsuit to respond to an amicus brief with this kind of broad subpoena? I've covered many legal disputes and I've never heard of anyone doing this.
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I don't have much experience in such matters. I was most concerned about the possibility that this is harassing all the organizations that supported SB-53, but now believe this is not the case.
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For a second I was grateful for the response too, but I’m confused why they did the same for @TylerJnstn if the main reason is due to the Musk case?
Even granting your dubious excuses, what about my case? Neither myself nor my organization were involved in your case with Musk. But OpenAI still demanded every document, email, and text message I have about your restructuring…
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Can you explain the wording here? Note the careful wording of entirely unrelated things to make it tangentially seem related to the Musk lawsuit. "ANYTHING related to SB 53, INCLUDING involvement or coordination with Musk" (This is from Jason Kwon's own tweet)
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You may want to read about the OpenAI policy lead, Chris Lehane. He bullied crypto opponents when employed by crypto advocates. He bullied AirBnB opponents while working for them. Etc. Here's one useful article to get a sense of the tactics that made him famous: archive.is/Bp8Gm
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Hi Boaz, the requests ask for all communications between Encode and lawmakers. Do you believe this is appropriate?
Thank you for sharing the details. They do not support seem to support your claims above. They show that, in fact, the subpoena is *not* limited to dealings with Musk, but is actually *all* communications about SB 53, or about OpenAI's governance or structure.
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1/ Why did OpenAI request all documents and communications concerning SB 53 as opposed to limiting the scope of the request? 2/ Why did OpenAI not serve the subpoena at the corporate address like normal people do? 3/ It is basically public knowledge that OpenAI opposed SB 53 behind the scenes. Would you like to clarify that in your original tweet you meant "OAI did not *publicly* oppose"? Because your statement as it stands is damaging your credibility with anyone outside of the company. 4/ if @jachiam0 feels like he is risking his career by offering what was objectively an extremely mild rebuke (and I can tell you for a fact that he is far from the only OpenAI employee who is very reluctant to publicly criticize the company), do you not think that whatever OpenAI is doing to "encourage employees to speak their mind even when it contradicts the company's position" is clearly vastly insufficient?
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Nope. And now Anthropic is doing evil. The lies need to burn. 🔥 •
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> which OAI did not even oppose This contradicts both sfstandard.com/2025/09/29/ga… and reporting by the verge. I don’t think you even believe that, you’re well aware of OpenAI’s history with regulation.
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> I am convinced this is not about attacking supporters of that bill Indeed, but it is about attacking opponents of OpenAI, which is also bad.
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I think in this case we should defer to people with more legal experience, who seem to ~unanimously be suggesting that this was an unusual - or even unheard of - manoeuvre. Kwon's statement does not strike me as worth updating in OAI's favour.
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You don’t know what’s behind OpenAI Boaz. What you see here is just the tip of the iceberg
Replying to @_NathanCalvin
Nathan, are you aware that the former head of the NSA!!!! is on the board of OpenAI? Are you aware that an evil person like Larry Ellison is very close to OpenAI and has invested billions of dollars in it recently? Larry Ellison’s company (Oracle) was a CIA project which went on to provide the backbone of modern surveillance systems of the NSA/CIA using its database systems? Because of these I’m not personally surprised about what OpenAI has done to you. Because from the perspective of the evil, wealthy, people behind it OpenAI is potentially the most important company in the world and it has to survive no matter what. OpenAI is building the foundation for mass surveillance systems for the wealthy elite. This is probably why Suchir Bskaji was killed because he would protect the copyright law that OpenAI intended to break so creative and independent people can’t even exist in the future. This way less creative people won’t have examples to look up to and the wealthy elite would rule the world with much less worry than they would otherwise.
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As a guy who actually knows what's going on inside the judiciary, and what's going on with OpenAI (half-million view post included below), I can tell you unequivocally that anyone on the board of OpenAI is a slimy, virtue signaling liar.
This tweet is unavailable
If the subpoena was about connections to Musk, and the belief that a safety org shouldn't "side with him", why did they ask for all communication on SB53, which is unrelated to the Musk case? Externally, it seems much more like bullying of (much smaller) critics
Elon has been critical of OAI long before he started xAI
Master Of The Political Dark Arts
Nice, neutral, nuanced take. I like how some of the commenters are upset that you aren't raising pitchforks 😂
This is another nuanced and thoughtful take. Thanks. 🙏