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Nathan Calvin
2,385 posts
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Nathan Calvin
@_NathanCalvin
General Counsel Encode AI
Washington DC
encodeai.org
Joined February 2014
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  • Pinned
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    Nathan Calvin
    @_NathanCalvin
    Jun 13
    Some quick takes: (1) Wow things are getting real. (2) The government's order focusing on prohibiting transfer to foreign nationals (even e.g. those living in the US, our close allies who help evaluate model safety in the UK, individuals who work at frontier labs like
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    Anthropic
    @AnthropicAI
    Jun 13
    The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees. The net effect of
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    Nathan Calvin
    @_NathanCalvin
    Oct 10, 2025
    One Tuesday night, as my wife and I sat down for dinner, a sheriff’s deputy knocked on the door to serve me a subpoena from OpenAI. I held back on talking about it because I didn't want to distract from SB 53, but Newsom just signed the bill so... here's what happened: 🧵
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    Nathan Calvin
    @_NathanCalvin
    Oct 10, 2025
    Replying to @_NathanCalvin
    This is not normal. OpenAI used an unrelated lawsuit to intimidate advocates of a bill trying to regulate them. While the bill was still being debated. 7/15
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    Nathan Calvin
    @_NathanCalvin
    Oct 10, 2025
    Replying to @_NathanCalvin
    You might recall a story in the SF Standard that talked about OpenAI retaliating against critics. Among other things, OpenAI asked for all my private communications on SB 53 - a bill that creates new transparency rules and whistleblower protections at large AI companies. 2/15
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    Emily Dreyfuss
    @EmilyDreyfuss
    Sep 2, 2025
    Inside OpenAI, there's a growing paranoia that some of its loudest critics are being funded by Elon Musk and other billionaire competitors. Now, they are going after these nonprofit groups, but their evidence of a vast conspiracy is often extremely thin sfstandard.com/2025/09/02/ope…
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    Nathan Calvin
    @_NathanCalvin
    Oct 10, 2025
    Replying to @_NathanCalvin
    Why did OpenAI subpoena me? Encode has criticized OpenAI’s restructuring and worked on AI regulations, including SB 53. I believe OpenAI used the pretext of their lawsuit against Elon Musk to intimidate their critics and imply that Elon is behind all of them. 3/15
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    The Midas Project
    @TheMidasProj
    Aug 4, 2025
    🚨 Breaking: A group of 100+ Nobel laureates, professors, whistleblowers, public figures, artists, and nonprofit organizations just released a letter asking OpenAI to tell the truth about its restructuring. Here’s what they had to say: 🧵
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    Nathan Calvin
    @_NathanCalvin
    Oct 10, 2025
    Replying to @_NathanCalvin
    A magistrate judge even chastised OpenAI more broadly for their behavior in the discovery process in their case against Musk. 9/15
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    Nathan Calvin
    @_NathanCalvin
    Oct 10, 2025
    Replying to @_NathanCalvin
    There’s a big problem with that idea: Elon isn’t involved with Encode. Elon wasn’t behind SB 53. He doesn’t fund us, and we’ve never spoken to him. 4/15
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    Nathan Calvin
    @_NathanCalvin
    Oct 10, 2025
    Replying to @_NathanCalvin
    Does anyone believe these actions are consistent with OpenAI’s nonprofit mission to ensure that AGI benefits humanity? OpenAI still has time to do better. I hope they do. 15/15
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    Nathan Calvin
    @_NathanCalvin
    Oct 10, 2025
    Replying to @_NathanCalvin
    OpenAI had no legal right to ask for this information. So we submitted an objection explaining why we would not be providing our private communications. (They never replied.) 8/15
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    Nathan Calvin
    @_NathanCalvin
    Oct 10, 2025
    Replying to @_NathanCalvin
    But they didn’t stop there. They also sent a sheriff’s deputy to my home and asked for me to turn over private texts and emails with CA legislators, college students, and former OAI employees. 6/15
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    Nathan Calvin
    @_NathanCalvin
    Oct 10, 2025
    Replying to @_NathanCalvin
    OpenAI went beyond just subpoenaing Encode about Elon. OpenAI could (and did!) send a subpoena to Encode’s corporate address asking about our funders or communications with Elon (which don’t exist). If OpenAI had stopped there, maybe you could argue it was in good faith. 5/15
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    Nathan Calvin
    @_NathanCalvin
    Oct 10, 2025
    Replying to @_NathanCalvin
    Prior to OpenAI, Chris Lehane’s PR clients included Boeing, the Weinstein Company, and Goldman Sachs. One person who worked on a campaign with Lehane said to the New Yorker “The goal was intimidation, to let everyone know that if they fuck with us they’ll regret it” 12/15
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    Nathan Calvin
    @_NathanCalvin
    Oct 10, 2025
    Replying to @_NathanCalvin
    I want to see that side of OAI, but instead I see them trying to intimidate critics into silence. This episode was the most stressful period of my professional life. Encode has 3 FTEs - going against the highest-valued private company in the world is terrifying. 14/15
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    Nathan Calvin
    @_NathanCalvin
    Oct 10, 2025
    Replying to @_NathanCalvin
    There is more I could go into about the nature of OAI's engagement on SB 53, but suffice to say that when I saw OpenAI’s so-called “master of the political dark arts” Chris Lehane claim that they "worked to improve the bill," I literally laughed out loud. 11/15
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