Mercor is the $10 billion company quietly supplying the human workforce that trains ChatGPT, Meta's models, and Anthropic's Claude. Last month, hackers walked out with 4 terabytes of their data — 40,000 Social Security numbers, passport scans, W9 forms — and Mercor said nothing.

The entry point was three steps upstream: malicious code pushed into LightLLM, an open-source Python tool downloaded 95 million times a month. Forty minutes later, attackers had 900GB of Mercor's source code, 200GB of contractor personal data, and a direct window into the training pipelines of the biggest AI labs in the world.

A company with a $350 million Series C had zero multi-factor authentication on the systems holding that data. The SOC 2 certification meant to catch exactly this? A whistleblower confirmed the auditing firm was rubber-stamping instead of checking. If you assumed someone responsible was watching AI infrastructure — this is what that actually looks like.

ABOUT SLOP WORLD

AI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life. From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don't add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone's hyping but nobody's verifying. New episodes every Thursday.

DISCLAIMER

All content is commentary and opinion based on publicly available documents, interviews, and verifiable sources. References to "scams," "grifts," or related terms reflect our editorial opinion, not legal conclusions. Anyone featured who believes a statement is inaccurate may contact us.

CHAPTERS

00:00 A $10B AI Contractor Got Hacked. 40,000 SSNs Gone.

01:45 Meet Mercor: The Hidden Company Training ChatGPT

04:07 How the Hack Worked in 40 Minutes

07:27 What a Stolen SSN Does to You

09:11 The Security Audit Was a Rubber Stamp

13:52 The Workers Knew. Nobody Listened.

16:42 Who F***ed Up: Mercor, the AI Labs, or Everyone?

Meta pushed keylogging software onto every U.S. employee's computer — keystrokes, mouse movements, screenshots, no opt-out — one month before 8,000 layoffs begin. The same employees generating the training data are being replaced by the AI agents they're training.

Juan and Kate break down the internal memo sent to Meta Superintelligence Labs employees, the GDPR loophole that exempts EU workers entirely, the Andrew Bosworth CTO quote that says the quiet part out loud, and why the OpenAI contractor data requests and dead startup Slack archive sales confirm this is an industry playbook, not a one-company story.

Meta already lied about the smart glasses. The employees asked for a personal computer. And we called this 20 episodes ago. The receipts are now public.

ABOUT SLOP WORLD

AI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life. From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don't add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone's hyping but nobody's verifying. New episodes every Thursday.

DISCLAIMER

All content is commentary and opinion based on publicly available documents, interviews, and verifiable sources. References to "scams," "grifts," or related terms reflect our editorial opinion, not legal conclusions. Anyone featured who believes a statement is inaccurate may contact us.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Meta's Internal Memo: Every Keystroke, No Opt-Out

0:36 What Meta Says This Is Actually For

2:07 8,000 Layoffs, Zero Opt-Out, Two Memos

3:24 Meta Already Lied About the Smart Glasses. Why Believe Them Now?

4:17 Why EU Employees Are Protected and US Workers Are Not

4:52 Bossware Is Back. This Time It Trains Your Replacement.

6:06 Tech Workers Training Themselves Out of a Job

6:51 The CTO Quote That Confirms the Automation Plan

7:36 OpenAI Did It Too. This Is an Industry Strategy.

8:22 Who Is Doing the Labor of the AI Era (And Who Profits)

9:23 We Called This 20 Episodes Ago

OpenAI told employees to stop chasing side quests. Then they spent $200 million on a podcast and put their head of lobbying in charge. The memo came from Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of AGI Deployment. She also cut the check.

TBPN was the SportsCenter for tech bros. Silicon Valley's inside baseball show. $5 million in ad revenue in 2025. On pace to 6x that this year. Profitable. Independent. The place where Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, and Sam Altman sat down to take softballs from their bros. So why sell?

Juan Faisal and Kate Cook go through the full receipt: the internal memo that says the quiet part out loud, Sam Altman's pre-existing personal investment in TBPN founder John Coogan's first company, and why this acquisition reports to OpenAI's head of lobbying Chris Lehane, not their CMO, not their head of communications. That last part tells you everything.

A $200 million influence machine targeting enterprise clients, government decision-makers, and IPO investors. OpenAI has an image problem: employees quitting over the Pentagon deal, a Ronan Farrow piece in The New Yorker, and a public that thinks AI risk outweighs the benefits. And they think a podcast fixes that.

Follow the money. The truth shall be revealed.

ABOUT SLOP WORLD

AI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life. From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don't add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone's hyping but nobody's verifying. New episodes every Thursday.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

- TBPN https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

- Why OpenAI bought 'SportsCenter for Silicon Valley' https://www.npr.org/2026/04/08/nx-s1-5775734/openai-tbpn-tech-media-silicon-valley

- Why OpenAI’s Fidji Simo Bought the TBPN Podcast Amid Crusade Against ‘Side Quests’: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openais-fidji-simo-bought-tbpn-podcast-amid-crusade-side-quests

DISCLAIMER

All content is commentary and opinion based on publicly available documents, interviews, and verifiable sources. References to "scams," "grifts," or related terms reflect our editorial opinion, not legal conclusions. Anyone featured who believes a statement is inaccurate may contact us.