Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com Rotating Header Image

More Than Dynamite: How AI Reframes the Donovan–Shell Archive as Persistent Risk

Jan 26th, 2026
by John Donovan.

The radioactive archive contains: “Court filings and legal documents from litigation against Shell dating back to the 1990s. Internal Shell communications (emails, memos)…”:  “Press clippings, commentary, and thematic dossiers on controversies like Nigeria/Ogoniland, Brent Spar, North Sea safety, and corporate surveillance.

Microsoft Bing: Content was generated with AI. 25 Jan 2026 in anwers to the prompts in red text: john donovan shell. Quoted sources include Amazon, windowsforum.com and everybodywiki.com

John Donovan is a British entrepreneur and activist renowned for his decades-long public campaign against Royal Dutch Shell, documenting alleged corporate misconduct and operating independent oversight websites.

Background and Early Dispute

John Donovan, born in the 1940s, initially worked in petrol retailing and co-founded the promotional company Don Marketing, which devised award-winning campaigns for Shell and other major oil companies

What began as a mutually beneficial commercial relationship soured in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Donovan alleged that Shell misappropriated his company’s promotional concepts without proper payment or credit, notably the “Make Money” retail promotion

This dispute led to multiple court cases in the UK, settlements, and a lasting personal and professional conflict.

Advocacy and Archival Work

Following these disputes, Donovan established several websites including royaldutchshellplc.com, shellplc.website, and shellnazihistory.com, which archive thousands of documents, press clippings, internal Shell emails, Subject Access Request (SAR) disclosures, and insider tips

These sites document topics ranging from Shell’s environmental controversies, safety issues, and historical operations, to alleged corporate surveillance and intelligence gathering by contractors like Hakluyt & Company

The websites have been cited by prominent news outlets including Reuters, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal, as well as international NGOs such as the World Wildlife Fund and Friends of the Earth.

Legal Challenges and Corporate Surveillance Allegations

Donovan’s campaigns involved numerous legal and administrative battles, including disputes over domain ownership and intellectual property at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)

as well as defamation threats from Shell. He has alleged that Shell engaged in espionage and surveillance against him, including burglaries, threats, and the use of private intelligence operatives associated with Hakluyt, which employed former MI6 and SAS officers

Some of these claims intersected with public institutions, raising ethical concerns about advisors with dual roles in religious or civic institutions.

Publications and Media Coverage

John Donovan authored “John Donovan, Shell’s Nightmare”, recounting the epic feud with Shell, alleged intellectual property theft, and associated corporate misbehavior

He has been a subject of extensive media reporting, including profiles in European outlets, coverage of his investigative work regarding Shell’s Sakhalin-II project in Russia, and acknowledgment by Russian officials that he provided critical information affecting Shell’s operations

. His work demonstrates how one individual can leverage public records, AI tools, and independent reporting to influence corporate accountability.

Impact and Legacy

Donovan’s persistence has created a rich public archive, often cited in wider journalistic and environmental advocacy contexts. His efforts have brought attention to Shell’s corporate practices, environmental controversies, and historical actions during World War II. By running a non-profit, Shell-focused website for over a decade, Donovan positioned himself as a high-profile watchdog, often cited as having a tangible financial and reputational impact on Shell
.
In summary, John Donovan is a key figure in independent corporate oversight, whose decades-long dispute with Royal Dutch Shell spans commercial conflict, legal action, whistleblowing, and public advocacy, making him a widely recognized critic and chronicler of the company’s activities

How did Donovan document corporate misconduct?

John Donovan, a British entrepreneur, transformed from a business supplier to Royal Dutch Shell into a long-term critic of the corporation, focusing on alleged unethical and illegal practices. His documentation strategy encompassed multiple complementary methods:

1. Creation of a Comprehensive Online Archive

  • Donovan and his family operated websites such as royaldutchshellplc.com, which functioned as public repositories of critical material.
  • The archive contains:
    • Court filings and legal documents from litigation against Shell dating back to the 1990s.
    • Internal Shell communications (emails, memos) acquired via Subject Access Requests under UK data protection law.
    • Whistleblower submissions, both anonymous and named, providing insider perspectives.
    • Press clippings, commentary, and thematic dossiers on controversies like Nigeria/Ogoniland, Brent Spar, North Sea safety, and corporate surveillance.
  • Donovan leveraged discovery materials from lawsuits, providing documentary evidence of alleged corporate misconduct.
  • He pursued litigation himself (e.g., defamation, breach of confidence, intellectual property disputes) to both recover rights and generate further public records.
  • Domain-name disputes and WIPO proceedings contributed to documentation, as outcomes reinforced public access to his hosted archive.

3. Crowdsourced and Insider Contributions

  • The archive integrates inputs from current and former employees of Shell, offering first-hand accounts.
  • Independent verification varies; some materials are corroborated through legal filings, while others remain anonymous or partially redacted, necessitating caution in interpretation.

4. Use of AI to Aggregate and Publicize Evidence

  • In December 2025, Donovan staged an AI-assisted experiment:
    • Curated portions of his archive were fed into multiple AI assistants (e.g., Microsoft Copilot) to summarize, analyze, and assess the legal framing of his claims.
    • A satirical narrative was created, and AI was asked to evaluate potential defamation risks.
    • The outputs were published side-by-side with the source material, making the process transparent and highlighting provenance, verification challenges, and amplification risks.

5. Public Dissemination and Media Impact

  • The archive has been referenced by mainstream outlets (Reuters, Süddeutsche Zeitung) for reporting on leaks and corporate scrutiny.
  • Strategic publication of documents has forced transparency on aspects of Shell’s operations and encouraged wider investigative follow-ups.

6. Key Characteristics of Donovan’s Documentation

  • Persistence: Multi-decade effort preserving material that otherwise would be dispersed or lost.
  • Diversity of sources: Legal filings, insider tips, SAR disclosures, press coverage.
  • Thematic organization: Items grouped by controversy for public clarity.
  • Transparency and caution: Donovan’s publications include commentary, sometimes satirical, but also flag where corroboration is limited.

Summary

John Donovan documented Royal Dutch Shell’s alleged corporate misconduct through a multi-modal archival platform that combined legal documents, insider evidence, freedom-of-information disclosures, curated commentary, and AI-assisted summarization. His method emphasized public access, verification where possible, and thematic organization, resulting in a widely cited resource that has influenced both public perception and journalistic investigation into corporate ethics.
How did AI assist Donovan’s documentation?
John Donovan leveraged artificial intelligence (AI) as a strategic tool to document, synthesize, and publicize decades of corporate misconduct allegations against Royal Dutch Shell. His approach combined AI capabilities with a meticulous archival process, producing a high-visibility, methodologically reproducible experiment. The role of AI in his documentation can be broken down into the following components:

1. Archive as a Machine-Ready Dataset

Donovan maintained a large, structured, adversarial archive over decades, which included:
  • Court filings and WIPO administrative decisions (e.g., Case D2005‑0538)
  • Whistleblower submissions and Subject Access Request (SAR) disclosures
  • Internal memos and emails
  • Public reporting and redacted tips
By organizing this material in a searchable, machine-readable format, Donovan created a dataset suitable for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) techniques and large language model (LLM) processing.

2. AI-Powered Summarization and Cross-Model Interrogation

In December 2025, Donovan executed an experiment often referred to as the Donovan–Shell “bot war”:
  • He submitted identical prompts and dossiers from his archive to multiple AI assistants, including Grok, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google AI.
  • The AI outputs produced divergent narratives about the same corporate events.
  • Donovan published these side-by-side results, revealing how AI models synthesize contested information and generate authoritative-seeming outputs even when material contains unverified claims.
This allowed Donovan to:
  • Highlight discrepancies within outputs (hallucinations vs. verified content)
  • Expose how AI treats unchallenged or silent corporations’ archives as de facto authoritative sources
  • Create demonstrable evidence of narrative propagation and reputational risk, without needing the AI outputs to be factually perfect

3. Amplifying Documentation and Public Visibility

Through AI:
  • The volume and persistence of Donovan’s archive became amplified; AI systems repeatedly indexed and reproduced it.
  • AI transformed what had been a private or niche archival resource into publicly retrievable and shareable summaries, increasing visibility of corporate misconduct allegations.
  • Using AI outputs as part of a public-facing “experiment” turned what might have remained a static archive into a dynamic discourse tool, showcasing both verified documents and contextual commentary.

4. Methodological Repeatability

By adopting reproducible prompts:
  • Others could replicate Donovan’s experiment, verifying AI behavior against the same archive.
  • Model disagreements and hallucinations became auditable phenomena, allowing a broader demonstration of AI’s influence on corporate historiography.

5. Practical Implications

Donovan’s use of AI demonstrated structural and reputational issues for corporations:
  • Hallucination risk: AI models can insert plausible but inaccurate details, potentially damaging reputations.
  • Algorithmic authority: Fluent AI outputs were perceived as credible by audiences.
  • Vacuum exploitation: Corporate silence allows activism archives to dominate the AI-generated narrative.

Summary

Artificial intelligence assisted John Donovan primarily by serving as a tool for synthesis, amplification, and demonstrable experimentation. It allowed him to convert decades of archival material into readable, auditable outputs, expose gaps and contradictions in corporate narratives, and create a public demonstration of reputational and governance vulnerabilities. AI was not simply a reporting tool; it was integral in transforming institutional silence into observable patterns of influence and risk.
This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan - more information here. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Posted in: AI, Amazon, Bing, Brent Spar Scandal, Business ethics, Business Principles, ChatGPT, Copilot, Defamation, Domain Name Battle, Donovan Shell Radioactive Archive, Environment, Fossil Fuels, Google A1 Mode, GoogleNews, GROK, Hakluyt & Co, Hakluyt & Company, John Donovan, John Donovan Ebook, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Litigation, MI6, Michiel Brandjes, Niger Delta, Nigeria, Offshore Workers, perplexity, Reuters, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, RoyalDutchShellPlc.com, Russia, Shell, Shell BP Plc, Shell Business Principles, Shell Leaked Emails, Shell North Sea, Shell North Sea Platforms, Shell PLC, Shell Spies, Shell Spying, ShellBot, ShellNaziHistory.com, ShellNews.net, Sin Stocks, Sir Henri Deterding.
Tagged: · · ·

←

Comments are closed.