Tomek Korbak, Jasmine Wang and Mikita Balesni, the three safety and alignment employees OpenAI fired last week, published an open letter on 8 October 2026 to OpenAI’s Safety and Security Committee, Safety Advisory Group and Mission Advisory Council. They write that they were not the source of a leak to The Information about less monitorable architectures.
OpenAI said at the time of the dismissals that the three violated its policies by “accessing and handling sensitive company information,” according to TechCrunch. An internal OpenAI memo shared with TechCrunch denies that they were fired in retaliation.
Business Pill · HIDDEN REASONING
A short explainer of hidden reasoning: the working a model keeps private. It teaches the general idea only and says nothing about any company or person in this story.
The key insight: As we read it, the letter turns a dispute over three dismissals into a question about written rules: how OpenAI’s safety staff may work with outside evaluators. It asks OpenAI to set those rules out, and the memo reported by TechCrunch says OpenAI agrees with its recommendations.
“We do not know who it was,” the researchers write of the leak, adding that the article undermined their own work on cross-company limits on the development of unmonitorable architectures.
They write that at no point do they believe they engaged with external parties outside the mandates of their jobs. The letter says the Hugging Face incident investigation was without precedent and that internal policies were being developed in real time, and that Korbak made every effort to act within OpenAI’s policies as they then stood.
According to the letter, Balesni was stewarding cross-company work on commitments to prevent loss of monitorability, in coordination with board members and the C-suite, and Wang’s access to an executive’s email had been delegated for recruiting purposes, with permission.
The three parting recommendations in the open letter by Tomek Korbak, Jasmine Wang and Mikita Balesni of 8 October 2026: keep commitments to embed third-party safety auditors, preserve the monitorability of frontier models, and keep open dialogue with the wider safety ecosystem.
Their Three Recommendations
The letter asks OpenAI to adhere to last month’s public commitments to embed third-party safety auditors, and says the researchers hope it will follow through on Sam Altman’s September 12th commitment to give independent evaluators ongoing, employee-like access.
It asks OpenAI to preserve the monitorability of frontier models and to continue supporting open dialogue between its safety researchers and the wider safety ecosystem. “The monitorability of frontier models is degrading,” the letter states.
“If conduct that was considered normal last month now constitutes grounds for sudden dismissal, everyone at OpenAI is left guessing where the line is,” the researchers write.
The researchers’ account, from their letter of 8 October 2026, and OpenAI’s statements as reported by TechCrunch; neither account has been independently verified.
OpenAI’s Position
OpenAI has not formally responded to the open letter, TechCrunch reports. The memo it shared, attributed to a research leader, reads: “I want to be very clear that these decisions were not about raising safety concerns or speaking out.”
OpenAI agrees with the researchers’ recommendations, per the memo, according to TechCrunch. OpenAI did not directly address TechCrunch’s questions about which policies the researchers allegedly violated, the report says.
The Structural Read
The request is for clarity. The letter urges OpenAI to set out clearly how employees may work with external safety organizations.
Monitorability is the technical thread. The letter says OpenAI and other frontier companies should not move forward with developments that further decrease monitorability.
Outside evaluators are named. The researchers write that they are concerned their firings may be used to justify ending OpenAI’s work with METR.
Tomek Korbak, Jasmine Wang and Mikita Balesni, open letter, 8 October 2026
“AI is not a normal technology, and OpenAI is not a normal company.”
Three Implications
A REQUEST FOR WRITTEN RULES The letter asks OpenAI to set out how employees may work with external safety organizations.
EVALUATOR ACCESS It cites Sam Altman’s September 12th commitment to give independent evaluators ongoing, employee-like access.
STATED AGREEMENT Per the memo reported by TechCrunch, OpenAI agrees with the letter’s recommendations.
The framework’s starting point: “The governance layer sits at the intersection of capability, regulation, national security, access control, and geopolitical alignment.”
As we read it, the letter concerns one part of that layer inside a lab: which staff may share what with outside evaluators, and under which written rules. The researchers ask OpenAI to make those rules explicit.
What Is Not Established
We read the researchers’ letter in full. OpenAI’s statements come from TechCrunch’s reporting; we did not see the memo itself. OpenAI did not directly address TechCrunch’s questions about which policies the researchers allegedly violated; we did not read the Wall Street Journal’s reporting. Neither side’s account has been independently verified. We did not contact OpenAI or the researchers.
Business Engineer Framework
Inside Anthropic’s Permission Layer
A Business Engineer framework on the governance layer of the AI stack: who decides access, use and oversight.
Three safety researchers fired by OpenAI say in an open letter that they did not leak to The Information and acted within the company’s norms, and ask it to honour its commitments to embed third-party safety auditors and preserve model monitorability; OpenAI, per a memo reported by TechCrunch, denies retaliation and says it agrees with the recommendations.
A note on sourcing. We read the researchers’ open letter of 8 October 2026 in full; OpenAI’s statements are as reported by TechCrunch. We did not contact OpenAI or the researchers. Nothing here is a forecast, and nothing here is financial or investment advice.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
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