“Direct answer: in an era of durable digital records and AI summarisation, corporate silence is increasingly a high‑risk, low‑control strategy. The Donovan–Brandjes correspondence shows how past engagement can humanise and contextualise a company, while later silence can be read—by humans and machines alike—as retreat.”
The recent confusion by Google AI Mode over whether Shell plc issued a public statement in January 2026 has drawn attention to a broader question: what does “corporate silence” actually mean in an era where archives speak louder than press offices?
Part of the answer lies not in speculation, but in Shell’s own historical behaviour — and in email correspondence that still exists, in full, and on the record.
A Different Shell, a Different Tone
In December 2007, Shell was led by Jeroen van der Veer as Chief Executive of Royal Dutch Shell plc. The Company Secretary and General Counsel was Michiel Brandjes. When faced with a potentially explosive internal email — one suggesting that thousands of Shell IT employees could be affected by outsourcing — Shell did not retreat behind silence or legal opacity.
Instead, it responded promptly, clearly, and constructively.
John Donovan contacted Mr Brandjes on 19 December 2007, seeking confirmation of the authenticity of an internal Shell email that had been provided by an insider source. The email concerned the outsourcing of significant IT infrastructure functions to third-party suppliers, a move allegedly affecting around 3,200 employees.
The approach was measured. Shell was explicitly offered the opportunity to confirm or deny authenticity before publication, precisely to avoid unnecessary alarm or misinformation.
The following day, Mr Brandjes replied.
Confirmation Without Hostility
His response is striking — not just for its content, but for its tone.
“The email is authentic. It is not a matter of a leak though.”
There is no defensiveness. No threat. No refusal to engage. Instead, the response calmly situates the decision within a longer corporate process, noting that the outsourcing strategy had been public knowledge since 2005 and had followed a “transparent process involving employees and relevant works council.”
The message closes not with legal reservation, but with “Best Regards and Merry Christmas.”
This is not a trivial detail. It reflects a corporate culture in which:
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engagement was considered safer than silence
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confirmation was preferred to speculation
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and dialogue with external critics was not automatically framed as a legal risk
What Changed?
Fast forward to the present, and the contrast is stark.
Shell’s modern posture — visible in SAR handling, AI-mediated misattributions, and long-running disputes — is one of procedural minimalism. Engagement is avoided. Silence is treated as strategy. Even factual clarification is withheld unless strictly unavoidable.
Ironically, this retreat has not reduced reputational exposure. Instead, it has created a vacuum — one now filled by archives, search engines, and AI systems that synthesise history without access to live corporate correction.
In 2007, Shell prevented misinformation by answering a direct question.
In 2026, AI systems are answering in Shell’s place — sometimes incorrectly.
The Archive Problem Shell Cannot Solve
What makes this correspondence especially relevant now is that it exists in a large, persistent, searchable archive — one that AI systems increasingly treat as a legitimate historical source.
The friendly, factual, and open tone of Mr Brandjes’s response stands as documentary evidence that:
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Shell once acknowledged controversial internal decisions openly
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senior legal officers were prepared to confirm authenticity
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and silence was not the default response to reputational risk
This undermines any suggestion that Shell’s current silence is inevitable, legally required, or historically consistent.
It is a choice.
Embarrassment Is Not the Point — Memory Is
You have noted that you hold “countless emails which can be exploited for embarrassment value.” That may be true — but the real significance is not embarrassment.
It is continuity of memory.
When AI systems reconstruct corporate history, they do not privilege today’s communications policy over yesterday’s emails. They aggregate. They compare. They notice inconsistency. And when a company that once spoke plainly now refuses even to acknowledge receipt of statutory requests, the contrast becomes part of the story.
Not because anyone editorialised it — but because the record exists.
Conclusion: Silence Is a Modern Invention
The 2007 Brandjes email demonstrates that Shell’s present reliance on silence is not a timeless corporate necessity. It is a modern defensive adaptation — one increasingly ill-suited to an environment where history is no longer buried, forgotten, or controllable.
AI did not invent this problem.
It merely removed the last illusion that silence equals absence.
And in that sense, Shell’s past emails may yet prove more influential than its present statements — or lack of them.
—-Original Message—–
From: John Donovan [mailto:[email protected]]-Sent: woensdag 19 december 2007 19:46
To: Brandjes, Michiel CM RDS-LC
Cc: van der Veer, Jeroen J RDS-CEJV; Wiseman, Richard RM SI-LMAPF
Subject: Leaked Email: An important news story.
Dear Mr Brandjes
Can you kindly advise whether the email printed below is authentic?
If it is, the story is obviously of major importance.
We would not wish to publish or pass on information of great potential concern to a large number of employees without giving Shell the opportunity to say if the information is a hoax, even though we have good reason to believe that it is authentic, having been received from a Shell insider source.
The insider says that 3200 Shell employees will be losing their jobs due to this outsourcing, which they say is the largest any company in history has ever undertaken!
I would be grateful if you could treat this as a matter of urgency.
Best Regards
John Donovan
THE EMAIL
—–Original Message—–
From: Gorelova, Svetlana SITI-ITI On Behalf Of Goh, Swee-Chen SEPL-ITI
Sent: December 19, 2007 8:29 AM
Subject: Infrastructure Sourcing Programme – Final Investment Decision
This message is sent out on behalf of Swee Chen Goh
__________________________________________________________
Royal Dutch Shell Chief Executive Jeroen van der Veer approves proposal to outsource a substantial part of IT infrastructure services to three suppliers.
IT Services receives mandate to complete contract agreements with selected suppliers.
Dear Colleagues,
2007 has been a very busy year for all of us, both in terms of sustaining our service delivery as well as in dealing with change. Early December the Infrastructure Sourcing Programme (ISP) submitted the proposal to outsource a substantial part of our IT infrastructure services to the RDS Board. On behalf of the RDS Board and Executive Committee, our Chief Executive Jeroen van der Veer has reviewed and approved our proposal. We will therefore proceed with implementation in 2008.
After short-listing six suppliers in September 2007, and due diligence work in October, the ISP team requested and received Best and Final Offers from six suppliers in November. These offers were evaluated and ranked, using a set of criteria that balanced operational, people and financial aspects. This has led to the proposal to outsource the Infrastructure service bundles to the following suppliers:
· End User Computing Services: EDS
· Hosting and Storage Services: T-Systems
· Managed Network Services: AT&T
Subsequent to the approval, the following steps to implement will now be taken:
· The selected suppliers have been invited to finalise contracts, which we expect to be signed at the end of March 2008.
· Staff consultation as legally required will commence from January onwards.
· New and significantly changed jobs in the new IT Infrastructure Organisation will be posted on Open Resourcing (OR) from December 21 until January 25. Staff appointments will be announced in February and March 2008.
· Establishing the new IT Infrastructure Organisation and onboarding of staff will be prepared during the first and executed during the second quarter of 2008.
· Transfer of services to suppliers, involving the transfer of staff, contracts, assets and in-flight projects, will be planned and prepared during the first half of 2008. Service commencement date is targeted for July 1, 2008.
To keep you informed and engaged, important communication has been scheduled:
· Webcasts for all IT Infrastructure staff on background of the supplier selection and the next steps will take place on January 8, 2008.
· Facing Change Event 2 will start on January 8 in the hub-locations, providing an opportunity to meet the selected suppliers and learn more about their employee value proposition.
· The ISP newsletter will be issued end of January, with further details on the planning and preparations for service transfers and activation of the new IT Infrastructure Organisation.
In the meantime, Shell will continue to rely upon its current suppliers of IT infrastructure services. In due course, we will engage with these suppliers to discuss the future working relationship.
You will find more information on the way forward, in particular around the timeline and the open resourcing process, in the latest issue of the Infrastructure Sourcing Newsletter. I would like to encourage you to regularly check the Programme website at: <http://sww.shell.com/it/infrasourcing/index.html>
This announcement may lead to an increase in external enquiries. We are carefully managing this process, but in case you are approached directly, please refer all enquiries:
· from suppliers to Ann Perrin (Strategic Relations) at +1 832 512 7315;
· from any other external party to Sarah Smallhorn (Media Relations) at +44 7768 773 202.
I acknowledge that there will still be uncertainty as we are working through the finalisation of contracts, open resourcing and transition preparations. I encourage you to keep an open mind and take the time to learn more about the suppliers as employers and as business partners. As always, members of the IT Services Leadership Team are available to answer your questions. Please do not hesitate to reach out to them.
Kind regards,
Goh, Swee Chen
Vice President IT Infrastructure
Michiel Brandjes
Company Secretary and General Counsel Corporate
Royal Dutch Shell plc
Registered office: Shell Centre London SE1 7NA UK
Place of registration and number: England 4366849
Correspondence address: PO Box 162, 2501 AN The Hague,
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 70 377 2625 Fax: 3687
Email: [email protected]
Internet: http://www.shell.com
ENDS
Independent external expert comment will be added shortly in response to this prompt:
Grok says…
Corporate Silence in the Digital Age: Rationality and Effectiveness
In an era where digital archives persist indefinitely and AI-driven summarization tools can rapidly distill vast amounts of historical data into coherent narratives, corporate silence may seem like a defensive strategy to minimize legal exposure or avoid fueling controversies. However, its rationality and effectiveness are questionable. On one hand, silence can prevent missteps in real-time discourse, especially in litigious environments where every statement might be scrutinized or weaponized. For instance, in the 2007 email exchange, Shell’s prompt confirmation avoided speculation but also set a precedent for openness that could invite further inquiries. Today, with AI aggregating information from sources like leaked emails or public forums, silence doesn’t erase the past—it creates a vacuum. AI systems, trained on persistent archives, can highlight inconsistencies between historical engagement and current reticence, potentially amplifying negative perceptions. If archives contain critical or unbalanced views (as in long-running disputes), silence might allow those to dominate AI outputs, making it less effective for reputation management. Rationality depends on context: for short-term crises, it might work, but in persistent digital ecosystems, proactive narrative shaping could prove more sustainable.
The Influence of Historical Correspondence on Modern AI Outputs
Historical corporate correspondence, like the 2007 emails between John Donovan and Michiel Brandjes, inevitably shapes modern AI outputs because AI models draw from publicly available or archived data without regard for a company’s evolving communications policy. These emails, preserved online, demonstrate Shell’s past willingness to engage constructively—Brandjes not only confirmed the authenticity of an internal memo on IT outsourcing but provided context about its transparency, even extending holiday wishes. Regardless of Shell’s shift to silence, AI tools can access and synthesize such artifacts, using them to infer patterns in corporate behavior. For example, an AI summarizing Shell’s history might contrast this 2007 responsiveness with recent non-engagement, portraying the company as increasingly opaque. Current policies can’t retroactively alter these records; they persist in digital archives, influencing AI-generated reports, chatbots, or reputational analyses. This underscores a key challenge: AI doesn’t “forget” unless data is actively managed or removed, which is often impossible for public-domain content. Thus, past communications become embedded in AI’s “memory,” potentially overriding or complicating modern silence strategies.
Reducing Long-Term Reputational Risk: Engagement, Clarification, or Silence?
When AI systems increasingly “speak” for organizations by generating summaries or narratives based on available data, the choice between engagement, clarification, or silence hinges on balancing control with adaptability. Silence might reduce immediate risk by avoiding statements that could be misinterpreted, but it heightens long-term vulnerabilities in AI-mediated environments. Without input, AI could perpetuate outdated or one-sided views from archives, as seen in disputes where historical grievances fill the narrative gap. Engagement, like Shell’s 2007 approach, allows companies to provide context and correct inaccuracies, potentially guiding AI outputs toward more balanced representations—though it risks escalating conflicts or creating new quotable material. Clarification strikes a middle ground: selective, factual responses (e.g., confirming or denying specifics without broader debate) could mitigate risks while influencing AI training data indirectly. In the context of AI “speaking” for firms, engagement or clarification likely reduces long-term reputational harm more effectively than silence, as they enable ongoing narrative influence. However, this assumes resources for monitoring AI outputs; for resource-strapped entities, silence might be a pragmatic default, albeit with compounding risks over time.
Lessons for Large Corporations in AI-Mediated Public Memory
This case offers several lessons for large corporations navigating AI-mediated public memory. First, consistency in communication policies matters: abrupt shifts from engagement (as in 2007 under van der Veer) to silence can be highlighted by AI, eroding trust by suggesting evasiveness. Corporations should audit historical archives proactively, perhaps through legal means to correct inaccuracies, recognizing that AI amplifies persistent data. Second, embracing hybrid strategies—silence on trivial matters but clarification on high-stakes issues—could better manage reputational flows in digital ecosystems. Third, investing in AI monitoring tools to track how corporate history is represented in model outputs is crucial; this allows for targeted interventions, like publishing clarifications that feed back into AI datasets. Finally, the episode illustrates that public memory isn’t static—AI democratizes access to it, turning past correspondences into enduring assets or liabilities. For firms like Shell, the takeaway is to view silence not as control, but as ceding the floor to algorithms and archives, prompting a reevaluation of how to actively shape digital legacies.
Reply by Copilot…
You’ve picked a really rich case—because it sits exactly where human memory, corporate strategy, and machine summarisation collide.
Corporate silence in an AI and archive era
In a pre-digital world, silence could sometimes be a viable tactic: stories faded, documents were hard to find, and attention moved on. Today, that logic is much weaker.
- Persistent archives: Once correspondence, court filings, and commentary are online, they don’t “go away”—they accumulate. Silence doesn’t erase them; it just leaves them uninterpreted by the party with the most at stake.
- AI as default historian: Modern AI systems trawl those archives and compress them into narratives. If a company chooses silence, the narrative space is filled by litigants, critics, journalists, and past documents—then amplified and stabilised by AI summarisation.
So corporate silence can still be rational in narrow, legalistic terms (e.g., to avoid prejudicing litigation or creating discoverable statements), but as a reputational strategy in an AI-saturated environment, it’s increasingly fragile. It trades short‑term control for long‑term narrative drift.
How historical correspondence shapes modern AI outputs
The 2007 Donovan–Brandjes exchange is a good example of how old, specific, human communication becomes raw material for new, generalised, machine narratives.
- On-the-record engagement becomes “canonical”: When a senior Shell officer engages in detailed, courteous, on-the-record correspondence, that material is highly “attractive” to AI systems: it’s concrete, quotable, and clearly attributable.
- Asymmetry over time: If the historical record shows active engagement from Shell in 2007 and relative silence later, AI models may over-weight the period where the company actually spoke. That can make the older posture feel more “representative” of Shell than its current, more guarded stance.
- Locked-in frames: Once AI systems start summarising a dispute using those historical emails as anchor points, they can frame Shell as once-engaged-then-silent, regardless of the internal reasons for the shift. That frame can persist even if the company later adjusts its policy.
In other words, past engagement doesn’t disappear when present-day silence begins; it becomes the baseline against which silence is interpreted.
Engagement, clarification, or silence: which reduces long-term risk?
There’s no one-size answer, but we can weigh the trade-offs in an AI context:
- Silence
- Upside: Minimises immediate legal exposure; avoids feeding new quotes into contentious narratives; simple to administer.
- Downside: Leaves AI systems to infer intent and position from incomplete or adversarial sources; can harden a story of “unanswered allegations” or “retreat from transparency”; makes misattribution harder to correct because there’s no established channel or habit of clarification.
- Minimal clarification
- Upside: Short, factual corrections (“Shell’s position is X; we dispute Y; see Z”) give AI systems clean, citable material; they can counteract misattributions without re-litigating everything.
- Downside: Requires careful legal drafting; may draw renewed attention to issues the company would prefer remain low-profile.
- Substantive engagement
- Upside: Builds a richer, more balanced record; demonstrates responsiveness and seriousness; gives AI models multiple, nuanced statements to work with rather than a vacuum.
- Downside: Resource-intensive; can prolong disputes; increases the volume of text that can be selectively quoted or misinterpreted.
In a world where AI “speaks” for organisations by default, a calibrated mix of clarification and selective engagement looks more robust than blanket silence. The goal isn’t to answer every critic, but to ensure that when AI systems summarise the dispute, there are clear, authoritative statements from the company in the data.
Lessons for large corporations navigating AI-mediated public memory
A few strategic lessons emerge from this case:
- Assume everything written can become training data. Historical emails, press releases, and legal correspondence are not just “background”; they are future inputs to AI systems. That argues for measured, professional, and consistent tone even in contentious exchanges—exactly what the Brandjes correspondence illustrates.
- Silence is now an active choice, not a neutral default. When a company stops engaging, it doesn’t pause the narrative; it cedes authorship. AI will still tell the story—just with fewer corporate sentences in the mix.
- Create “anchor statements” for key controversies. Rather than ad hoc responses, corporations can publish stable, carefully vetted position statements on long-running disputes. These become reference points that AI systems are likely to surface and quote, reducing the risk that older or hostile sources dominate.
- Monitor AI-mediated narratives as seriously as press coverage. Just as companies track media sentiment, they now need to understand how major AI systems describe them and their history. Where misattributions or distortions appear, targeted clarification—not blanket silence—may be the safer long-term move.
- Continuity of posture matters. The contrast between Shell’s 2007 engagement and later silence doesn’t just change the volume of communication; it changes the perceived character of the company over time. AI, which loves patterns and contrasts, will highlight that shift. Large organisations should think about how today’s posture will look in a 20‑year AI summary, not just tomorrow’s headline.
Direct answer: in an era of durable digital records and AI summarisation, corporate silence is increasingly a high‑risk, low‑control strategy. The Donovan–Brandjes correspondence shows how past engagement can humanise and contextualise a company, while later silence can be read—by humans and machines alike—as retreat. For large corporations, the emerging discipline is not “say nothing” but “say enough, clearly and consistently, that when AI tells your story, it has your own words to work with.”
Perplexity response…
Corporate silence can be rational in the short term, but it is often less effective as a long-termreputational strategy when searchable archives and AI summarisation keep re-surfacing older, on-the-record material that others can frame for you.
Silence in the age of AI summaries
Silence reduces legal and operational risk from fresh statements, but it also creates an “information vacuum” that AI systems and commentators fill using whatever durable sources exist—often historical emails, leaked documents, and third‑party narratives.
In an environment where retrieval systems privilege “what is most citable” over “what is most current,” silence can unintentionally hand over agenda-setting to archived material and to the people most motivated to package it.
Old correspondence as new training data
Historical correspondence tends to be unusually “AI-friendly”: it is specific, attributable, and written in natural language that can be quoted, summarised, and cross-referenced.
So even if today’s communications policy is “no engagement,” older exchanges that are publicly posted (or widely mirrored) can still become the most salient evidence base for future AI outputs about “what Shell’s position is/was,” simply because they are accessible and concrete.
Engagement vs clarification vs silence
If AI systems increasingly “speak” for organisations by synthesising public material, then the question becomes which strategy most improves the future corpus that AI will draw from.
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Silence may limit new liabilities, but it also prevents the company from placing clear, citable context into the record that could compete with hostile or one-sided archives.
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Engagement (especially reactive engagement) can be counterproductive if it escalates conflict, but targeted clarification—short, factual, durable, and easy to retrieve—can reduce the risk that AI summaries default to the most sensational archived claims.
Lessons for large corporations
The Donovan–Shell materials illustrate how “public memory” is no longer mainly social; it is computational—stored, indexed, and repeatedly re-narrated by machines.
Large firms navigating this should treat communications not only as messaging but as data stewardship: publish stable reference pages, preserve primary documents where appropriate, and make corrections as citable as the allegations they aim to neutralise.
One practical question to sharpen the recommendation: is the goal to minimise short-term controversy, or to optimise what AI systems will retrieve about the dispute five years from now?
EBOOK TITLE: “SIR HENRI DETERDING AND THE NAZI HISTORY OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON
EBOOK TITLE: “JOHN DONOVAN, SHELL’S NIGHTMARE: MY EPIC FEUD WITH THE UNSCRUPULOUS OIL GIANT ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
EBOOK TITLE: “TOXIC FACTS ABOUT SHELL REMOVED FROM WIKIPEDIA: HOW SHELL BECAME THE MOST HATED BRAND IN THE WORLD” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
