Why the Hugging Face Attack Was Worse Than We Thought

This week, we’re diving into two new reports about the OpenAI-Hugging Face hack, which fundamentally changed our understanding of what happened and upgraded our worry about A.I. Then we’re joined by Ajeya Cotra, one of the investigators at METR, to discuss the rogue agents’ message board and chain-of-thought transcripts and how the world should respond. Guest: Ajeya Cotra, co-author of the METR and Redwood Research report on the OpenAI-Hugging Face hack. 00:00 What was the Hugging Face attack? 02:22 Takeaways from the new reports 26:00 Ajeya Cotra joins us Additional Reading Brief Independent Investigation of Agents’ Behavior, Reasoning and Collaboration in the OpenAI / Hugging Face Hacking Incident https://metr.org/blog/2026-08-26-openai-hugging-face-incident-investigation/ The Hugging Face Attack Surprised Me https://www.planned-obsolescence.org/p/the-hugging-face-attack-surprised The Hugging Face Incident and the Road Ahead https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-ahead/ Nvidia Buys Hugging Face in $12.9 Billion Deal https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/technology/nvidia-hugging-face.html FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hardfork Instagram: Kevin Roose - https://www.instagram.com/kevinroose/ Casey Newton - https://www.instagram.com/crumbler/ Twitter (X): Kevin - https://x.com/kevinroose Casey - https://x.com/CaseyNewton Threads: Kevin - https://www.threads.net/@kevinroose Casey - https://www.threads.net/@crumbler Subscribe to our podcast: Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hard-fork/id1528594034 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/44fllCS2FTFr2x2kjP9xeT?si=86ba626802b849cd Amazon - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7c7fe198-e6a8-41a8-b0fe-1d46b976dcd8/hard-fork YouTube Music - https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB9gMmtMLXxsa8C0PzHFL2tJFh7FrKrYD&si=Fwb9Uwon1ZneNsBp The New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/column/hard-fork Credits “Hard Fork” is hosted by Kevin Roose and Casey Newton. Produced by Rachel Cohn and Whitney Jones. We’re edited by Vjeran Pavic. Engineering by Chris Wood and original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Sophia Lanman and Rowan Niemisto. Fact-checking by Caitlin Love. Video production by Chris Schodt and Sawyer Roque. Video QC by Isabella Anderson. Podcast Art Direction by Benjamin Wilkerson Tousley. Podcast Art & Animations by Julian Hespenheide. Additional Motion graphics by Phil Robibero. Thumbnails by Julia Moburg, Elizabeth Bristow, and Benjamin Wilkerson Tousley. Special thanks to Brooke Minters, Paula Szuchman, Pui-Wing Tam and Dahlia Haddad.