[ITmedia Business Online] Annual salary of 600 million yen for anti-espionage personnel; NVIDIA's resignation as top official reveals overheating in recruitment of former intelligence officers at AI companies

Be careful about encounters at gyms or cafes that seem like coincidences.

Rapidly growing AI-related and other high-tech companies are strengthening their crisis response measures, such as countering espionage activities, and are increasingly hiring former "spies" and other information specialists.

According to a company that tracks hiring trends, in recent years major AI developers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and semiconductor giant NVIDIA have been hiring, with salaries often ranging from $200,000 to $500,000.

On November 12, NVIDIA announced the resignation of CEO Jensen Huang, who was revealed to have had an affair with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy and with an internal company executive.

Recruitment of former spies is heating up: Competition to attract former government employees

"AI-related companies are competing to acquire security talent," said an executive at a crisis management company who has served in the U.S. Secret Service (Presidential Guard). Highly skilled personnel from government agencies are now responsible for corporate security, and ``the supply of experienced personnel is not keeping up with demand.''

A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who works for a security company explained that intelligence professionals are highly valued because of their ability to spot threats such as theft of trade secrets by employees and exploitation of vulnerabilities through blackmail. What appears to be a chance encounter may actually be an attempt by a spy to befriend, intimidate, or coax a company's top executives into their organization.

In June 2024, OpenAI appointed a former National Security Agency (NSA) executive to its board of directors and safety-related committees. Anthropic has welcomed CIA veterans and others to a national security-related conference to be launched in 2025. Top corporate security officers can earn between $1 million and $4 million a year.

Spy targeting risks ignored by 90% of companies

An executive leading a cybersecurity-related business pointed out that the priority issues for corporate security officers are the need to counter AI-based hacking and protect data. For this reason, it is said that there is little interest in the risk of executives being targeted by spies, calling it ``unrealistic,'' and there are many cases where it is not sufficiently considered.

"Many companies I know, I'd say 90% of them, completely ignore this risk because as soon as you bring it up, the James Bond theme song starts playing in everyone's head," the executive said.

Given global “geopolitical competition,” big AI companies are now obvious targets.

Even a well-staffed team can't always avoid problems, nor can it dictate the personal lives of top executives, said Kathy Ravinder, founder of professional recruitment firm Security & Investigative Placement Consultants (SI Placement).