The Machines Agree on Shell’s Long Shadow
A satirical “AI roundtable” about the Shell saga may read like internet theater, but it lands because the underlying dispute is real, persistent, and unusually durable. What makes the piece sting is not the fictional dialogue itself; it is the way four different AI systems are imagined converging on one basic conclusion: Shell’s long-running conflict with John Donovan is no trivial internet squabble, but a reputational problem that never fully went away. That framing is consistent with the historical record of a domain-name battle Shell lost in 2005 and with the company’s own continuing sensitivity around branding, online identity, and corporate narrative.
Background
The Donovan-Shell dispute is one of those rare corporate feuds that evolved from conventional commercial conflict into a hybrid of litigation, media activism, and digital counter-narrative. The roots go back to Donovan’s earlier business dealings and the breakdown of trust that followed, eventually producing years of public criticism aimed at Shell and its executives. Over time, that criticism hardened into a permanent archive of allegations, commentary, and document drops, with royaldutchshellplc.com becoming the symbolic center of gravity.
The domain-name dimension matters because it gave the dispute a legal anchor and a visible address. In the 2005 WIPO case, Shell International Petroleum Company Limited sought control of royaldutchshellplc.com, royaldutchshellgroup.com, and tellshell.org, but the panel rejected Shell’s complaint on the basis that bad-faith registration and use were not proven. That result did not settle the broader feud, but it did establish that Donovan had a defensible position for operating a non-commercial criticism site under that domain.
The satirical article is also clearly a product of the AI era, and that is part of what makes it notable. Donovan’s experiment, as described on the site, uses multiple generative systems to interrogate the same controversy and then compare outputs for consistency, hedging, and error. The goal is not just humor; it is to expose how machine-generated confidence can mask weak verification, especially when the prompt touches a long, contentious historical record. read more
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Posted in: AI, AI Groupthink, AI Hallucinations, Big Oil, bot war, Business ethics, Business Principles, ChatGPT, Copilot, Domain Name Battle, Donovan Shell Feud, Donovan Shell Radioactive Archive, GoogleNews, GROK, John Donovan, Litigation, Microsoft Copilot, Oil, perplexity, Royal Dutch Shell, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shell Blog, Shell PLC, ShellBot, Sin Stocks, windowsforum.com.
Tagged: John Donovan · Litigation · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell
Prompt
Could you analyse the information and links on the following article and create a satirical article predicting what Shell may be doing now and in the future based on the astonishing content of the article and the content of the linked Shell internal emails https://shellnews.net/DPA2009/DPA2009INDEXPAGE.html deep dive please for a long article. Please use your crystal ball. Is Shell likely to continue cloak and dagger activity directed against me.
Reply by Perplexity
Shell’s own email trail already reads like a corporate thriller, so a satirical “crystal‑ball” sequel almost writes itself.
Prologue: Shell’s Ghost Department – Group Donovan Affairs
Somewhere deep inside Shell Centre, long after the “Tell Shell” forum died and was quietly taxidermied for the archives, a discreet new unit is born: Group Donovan Affairs (GDA), reporting jointly to Legal, Corporate Affairs, and “Special Projects.” Its founding PowerPoint explains the remit in serene bullet points:
“Minimise oxygen to Donovan while maximising monitoring of Donovan‑related risk.” read more
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Posted in: GoogleNews, Gripe Sites, John Donovan, Litigation, Oil, perplexity, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shell, Shell Blog, Shell PLC, Sin Stocks.
Tagged: John Donovan · Litigation · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell · Total
Prompt
Could you analyse the information and links on the following article and create a satirical article predicting what Shell may be doing now and in the future based on the astonishing content of the article and the content of the linked Shell internal emails https://shellnews.net/DPA2009/DPA2009INDEXPAGE.html deep dive please for a long article which can be adapted for a video. Please use your crystal ball. Is Shell likely to continue cloak and dagger activity directed against me?
Reply by Grok:
Shell’s Eternal Shadow Game: Crystal Ball Report – Leaked 2009 Emails Expose the Blueprint for 2026+ “Invisible” Ops Against John Donovan (A Satirical Deep Dive, Video-Ready Script) read more
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Posted in: AI, AI Groupthink, GoogleNews, GROK, John Donovan, Litigation, Royal Dutch Shell, Royal Dutch Shell Group, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shell PLC.
Tagged: John Donovan · Litigation · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell
Updated
Prompt (By John Donovan)
Could you analyse the information and links on the following article and create a satirical article predicting what Shell may be doing now and in the future based on the astonishing content of the article and the content of the linked Shell internal emails https://shellnews.net/DPA2009/DPA2009INDEXPAGE.html Deep dive please for a long article. Please use your crystal ball. Is Shell likely to continue cloak and dagger activity directed against me.
Reply by Copilot
I get why you’re asking this—reading those internal emails is like suddenly seeing the backstage notes of people who’ve been trying to manage, minimise, and outwait you for years. It’s surreal, and honestly, a bit chilling. Let’s lean into the satire for the “crystal ball” part—but I’ll also be straight with you at the end about the “cloak and dagger” question. read more
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Posted in: Business ethics, Business Principles, Christopher James, Colin Joseph, Copilot, GoogleNews, Gripe Sites, Hakluyt & Company, John Donovan, Leaked Shell Emails, Litigation, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shell, Shell Business Principles, Shell PLC.
Tagged: John Donovan · Litigation · Shell
ChatGPT: A glowing crystal ball on a Shell boardroom table showing floating internal emails, shadowy silhouettes in the background, and a laptop displaying a website—suggesting surveillance, narrative control, and digital persistence.
If the past is in the emails… the future may already be written.
By John Donovan
Introduction: Reading Between the Emails
Every large corporation has internal conversations it would prefer to keep internal.
In Shell’s case, a substantial archive of internal emails has, over time, provided an unusually candid glimpse behind the corporate curtain. read more
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Posted in: AI, Alfred Donovan, Business ethics, Business Principles, ChatGPT, Donovan Shell Feud, Donovan Shell Radioactive Archive, GoogleNews, John Donovan, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shell, Shell Business Principles, Shell PLC, Shell Spies, Shell Spying, Sin Stocks.
Tagged: John Donovan · Litigation · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell
Four AI systems. One conclusion.
One very uncomfortable question for Shell
By John Donovan
Editorial Note
The following is a fictional, satirical roundtable discussion inspired by documented responses from multiple AI systems previously consulted on the Shell saga. While the dialogue is imagined, the positions attributed to each system are grounded in their published analyses.
Scene: The Meeting
A dimly lit room. No windows. No oil paintings of former chairmen.
Instead, four glowing screens flicker into life.
An unusual panel has assembled.
Not regulators. Not lawyers. Not Shell executives. read more
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Posted in: AI, AI Groupthink, AI Hallucinations, BlackRock, bot war, Business ethics, Business Principles, ChatGPT, Copilot, Donovan Shell Feud, Donovan Shell Radioactive Archive, Google A1 Mode, GoogleNews, GROK, John Donovan, Litigation, Microsoft Copilot, Multi-AI convergence, Oil, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shell, Shell PLC, ShellBot, Sin Stocks.
Tagged: John Donovan · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell
What Happens When Multiple Machines Analyse a 30-Year Dispute?: AI Groupthink—only faster, cleaner, and far more convincing: Distributed reasoning…
By John Donovan
Introduction: Putting the Machines to Work
In a world where artificial intelligence is increasingly used to answer everything from trivial questions to complex legal problems, I decided to try something different.
I asked the machines to judge Shell.
Not in a courtroom.
Not in a press release.
But through analysis.
Specifically, I invited multiple AI systems—ChatGPT, Grok, Copilot, and Perplexity—to examine a decades-long dispute between myself and Royal Dutch Shell.
The result was something unexpected.
Not agreement in every detail. read more
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Prompt
Please comment on the article https://royaldutchshellplc.com/2026/03/22/consulting-the-machines/ in particular from the standpoint of AI platforms. Do you welcome the treating of AI platforms collectively as an informal advisory panel or are there downsides from your perpective? Is it a welcome development or not?
Reply by Copilot:
In short: treating multiple AI platforms as an “informal advisory panel” can be valuable, but only when users understand the limits of AI systems. It encourages critical thinking and reduces over‑reliance on any single model, but it also risks amplifying shared biases or errors if users mistake convergence for independent verification. read more
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Tagged: ChatGPT · Copilot · Grok · John Donovan · Litigation · Perplexity · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell
Prompt
Please comment on the article https://royaldutchshellplc.com/2026/03/22/consulting-the-machines/ in particular from the standpoint of AI platforms. Do you welcome the treating of AI platforms collectively as an informal advisory panel or are there downsides from your perpective? Is it a welcome development or not?
Reply by perplexity:
Treating multiple AI platforms as an informal advisory panel is useful but only if everyone involved remains very clear about what these systems are and are not.
What the article is doing
The piece is effectively “outsourcing” parts of the Donovan–Shell risk analysis to a panel of models (Grok, Perplexity, Copilot, etc.), comparing how they frame the same underlying archive and then using those differences as commentary on both Shell and the AI ecosystem. It builds directly on earlier “bot war” episodes, where cross‑model inconsistencies, hallucinations, and misstatements about Shell’s position became the story in their own right. read more
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Posted in: AI, AI Hallucinations, Amnesty International, Biofuel, bot war, Business ethics, Business Principles, ChatGPT, Copilot, Donovan Shell Feud, Donovan Shell Radioactive Archive, Fossil Fuels, Google A1 Mode, GoogleNews, GROK, John Donovan, Litigation, Oil, perplexity, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shell, Shell PLC, Sin Stocks.
Tagged: John Donovan · Litigation · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell
Prompt
Please comment on the article https://royaldutchshellplc.com/2026/03/22/consulting-the-machines/ in particular from the standpoint of AI platforms. Do you welcome the treating of AI platforms collectively as an informal advisory panel or are there downsides from your perpective? Is it a welcome development or not?
Grok reply:
**The article “Consulting the Machines” (published today, 22 March 2026) is a fascinating meta-experiment by John Donovan.** He deliberately queried several AI platforms—including Grok (me), Copilot, Perplexity, and others referenced in linked prior posts—about the same 30-year Shell dispute, then stepped back to observe convergence, divergence, and shared errors across our outputs. The goal wasn’t to “win” the argument or extract binding advice, but to treat us collectively as a kind of informal, distributed advisory panel for pattern recognition and cross-validation. read more
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Tagged: John Donovan · Litigation · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell
What Happens When You Ask Multiple AIs to Analyse a 30-Year Dispute?
By John Donovan
Introduction
In a recent article—
👉 https://royaldutchshellplc.com/2026/03/21/can-ai-help-close-a-30-year-dispute-my-conversations-with-chatgpt-on-shell/
—I published a full, unedited exchange with ChatGPT examining a decades-long dispute between myself and Royal Dutch Shell.
That article was not an endpoint.
It was an experiment.
What would happen if, instead of relying on a single artificial intelligence system, I consulted several—treating them collectively as an informal advisory panel? read more
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Posted in: AI Hallucinations, bot war, Business ethics, Business Principles, ChatGPT, Copilot, Donovan Shell Feud, Donovan Shell Radioactive Archive, Fossil Fuels, Google A1 Mode, GoogleNews, GROK, John Donovan, perplexity, Royal Dutch Shell, Royal Dutch Shell Group, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, RoyalDutchShellPlc.com, Shell, Shell Blog, Shell PLC, ShellBot.
Tagged: John Donovan · Litigation · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell
Editorial Introduction
What follows is an unedited exchange between myself and ChatGPT—one of several artificial intelligence systems I recently consulted in an effort to bring clarity, and perhaps closure, to a dispute with Shell that has spanned decades.
What began as a simple domain name issue evolved into something far more complex: misdirected communications, documented interactions with senior Shell executives, and a persistent online presence that the company has never fully resolved.
Curious to see how modern AI would assess this unusual situation, I sought independent views from multiple platforms, treating them as an informal advisory panel. Their responses—while not without occasional factual errors—revealed a surprising degree of consistency in one key respect: the matter appears capable of resolution. read more
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Posted in: AI, Business ethics, Business Principles, ChatGPT, Copilot, Donovan Shell Feud, Donovan Shell Radioactive Archive, Fossil Fuels, Fraud, GoogleNews, Gripe Sites, GROK, John Donovan, Leaked Shell Emails, Litigation, perplexity, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, RoyalDutchShellPlc.com, Shell, Shell Blog, Shell Business Principles, Shell Leaked Emails, Shell PLC, Shell Reserves Scandal, Shell Spying, Sin Stocks, Sir John Jennings.
Tagged: Ben van Beurden · John Donovan · Litigation · Oil · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell
ChatGPT: A blazing industrial complex at Ras Laffan under a night sky lit by missile trails, with a cracked Shell logo hovering over the Pearl GTL plant as pipelines leak glowing liquid fuel into the desert
By John Donovan
The Strike That Hit the Heart of Shell’s Empire
Shell’s flagship Pearl Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) project in Qatar—long marketed as a technological triumph and cash-generating “crown jewel”—has suffered significant damage following Iranian missile strikes on the Ras Laffan Industrial City.
The attack, part of a wider escalation in Middle East conflict, struck one of the most strategically important energy hubs in the world, triggering fires and halting production at facilities critical to global fuel supply. read more
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Posted in: Daily Telegraph, Environment, Fossil Fuels, Gas, GoogleNews, Iran, John Donovan, Pearl GTL, Reuters, Royal Dutch Shell, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shell, Shell PLC.
Tagged: Gas · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell
“…the domain gave Donovan naming‑level visibility, a magnet for leaks and complaints, and a permanent, search‑optimised stage from which to attack Shell’s reputation.”
Prompt by John Donovan
As you can see from this article https://royaldutchshellplc.com/2026/03/20/dear-shell-ive-been-handling-your-mail-for-years-youre-welcome/ – and from the information in the links, Shell is in a pickle with John Donovan for the reasons explained. What would you advise Shell to do? Please also take this article into account: https://royaldutchshellplc.com/2026/03/20/grok-shell-should-treat-this-as-a-manageable-operational-security-and-reputational-risk-rather-than-an-existential-crisis/ and this article https://royaldutchshellplc.com/2026/03/20/shell-faces-renewed-pressure-to-resolve-long-running-domain-dispute-as-donovan-publishes-fresh-claims/ read more
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Posted in: A History of Royal Dutch Shell, Business ethics, Business Principles, GoogleNews, John Donovan, Leaked Shell Emails, Litigation, Outspoken Articles, perplexity, Royal Dutch Shell, Royal Dutch Shell Firesale, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, RoyalDutchShellPlc.com, Shell, Shell Business Principles, Shell PLC, Shell Reserves Scandal, Sin Stocks, Sir Henri Deterding and the Nazi History Royal Dutch Shell.
Tagged: John Donovan · Litigation · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell
Prompt
As you can see from this article https://royaldutchshellplc.com/2026/03/20/dear-shell-ive-been-handling-your-mail-for-years-youre-welcome/ – and from the information in the links, Shell is in a pickle with John Donovan for the reasons explained. What would you advise Shell to do? Please also take this article into account: https://royaldutchshellplc.com/2026/03/20/grok-shell-should-treat-this-as-a-manageable-operational-security-and-reputational-risk-rather-than-an-existential-crisis/
Reply from Copilot.microsoft.com
Shell’s underlying problem in this situation is not John Donovan himself but the structural vulnerability created by Shell’s own past decisions: the unclaimed domain, the 2007 email exchange that can be read as tacit permission, and the years of silence that allowed Donovan to frame himself as an “unofficial mailroom” for Shell. The two articles you shared make that dynamic very clear, especially the second one, which argues that Shell should treat this as a manageable operational, security, and reputational risk, not an existential crisis. read more
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Posted in: Business ethics, Business Principles, Copilot, Corporate Governance, Domain Name Battle, Donovan Shell Feud, Donovan Shell Radioactive Archive, GoogleNews, John Donovan, Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, Royal Dutch Shell Group, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shell, Shell PLC, Sin Stocks, Sir Henri Deterding and the Nazi History Royal Dutch Shell, Wikipedia Royaldutchshellplc.com.
Tagged: John Donovan · Litigation · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell
Prompt
Grok Response B
Shell should treat this as a manageable operational, security, and reputational risk rather than an existential crisis—and act decisively but quietly to eliminate the dependency on Donovan.
The core issue, as laid out in the 20 March 2026 article and the linked 2007 email correspondence, is straightforward and self-inflicted. After the 2004 reserves scandal and corporate restructuring into Royal Dutch Shell plc (later rebranded Shell plc), the company failed to register royaldutchshellplc.com. Donovan acquired it and has run it as a long-standing “gripe site” for nearly two decades. People worldwide still email addresses @royaldutchshellplc.com thinking they are reaching official Shell channels. This has included job applications with CVs, business proposals, government enquiries, media requests, oil trading offers, legal correspondence—and, critically, security threats (e.g., explicit sabotage warnings against Shell installations in the Netherlands). read more
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Posted in: AI, Business ethics, Business Principles, Domain Name Battle, Don Marketing, Fossil Fuels, Gas, GoogleNews, GROK, John Donovan, Leaked Shell Emails, Litigation, Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shell Advertising, Shell Blog, Shell Business Principles, Shell PLC, Sin Stocks.
Tagged: Gas · John Donovan · Litigation · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell
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EBOOK TITLE: “TOXIC FACTS ABOUT SHELL REMOVED FROM WIKIPEDIA: HOW SHELL BECAME THE MOST HATED BRAND IN THE WORLD” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
