It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue.
When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds.
Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic and not moral grounds. To do so, they have to couch it in language clarifying that they would love to support war, actually, except for these two narrow exceptions. And their careful word choice suggests that they are either navigating or expect to navigate significant blowback for asking for two narrow exceptions.
Yes, and even their two exceptions, only one is on moral grounds. They don't want to provide tools for autonomous killing machines because the technology isn't good enough, yet. Once that 'yet' is passed they will be fine supplying that capability. Anthropic is clearly the better company over OpenAI, but that doesn't mean they are good. 'lesser evil' is the correct term here for sure.
The flip side is it's very unlikely that AI won't become that good any time soon, so it'll always remain a means to hold out. Especially since nobody has explicitly defined what "good enough" entails.
Hypothetically if we had a choice between sending in humans to war or sending in fully autonomous drones that make decisions on par with humans, the moral choice might well be the drones - because it doesn't put our service members at risk.
Obviously anyone who has used LLMs know they are not on par with humans. There also needs to be an accountability framework for when software makes the wrong decision. Who gets fired if an LLM hallucinates and kills people? Perhaps Anthropic's stance is to avoid liability if that were to happen.
Isn't this the moral hazard of war as it becomes more of a distance sport? That powerful governments can order the razing of cities and assassinate leaders with ease?
We need to do it because our enemies are doing it, in any case.
It came later than I anticipated, but it did come after all. There is a reason companies like 9mother are working like crazy on various way to mitigate those risks.
I do not think that anyone but the US and Israel have assassinated leaders in the last 30 years. I also question their autonomous drone advancement. Russia and China did not have the means to help Venezuela and they do not have the means to help Iran.
I do believe there are major technical impediments; other than a modern attack sub reaching that far undetected I can't think of how they would do it. The US is the only nation that can effectively project power so far away from its borders, almost anywhere in the world.
Furthermore, you mentioned this in response to "helping Venezuela", but even damaging a carrier (something technically very, very difficult for Russia or China) would not have helped Venezuela one bit.
It'd be more technically feasible for them to help Iran than Venezuela, and even that is not particularly feasible now, other than very indirectly.
I think it would, meaning that right from that exact minute the US and Russia will be very busy and Venezuela left to it's own devices. Does not mean Venezuela would feel any better of course.
There's no effective way of Russia to militarily help Venezuela and strike any US carrier. Same with China. You haven't proposed any because there is no feasible way.
Even if they could, such action would have been followed by the US knocking Venezuela out and taking them out of the equation. A neighboring ally of an actively engaged hostile power wouldn't be "left to its own devices".
I think it's the opposite. The human cost of war is part of what keeps the USA from getting into wars more than it already is - no politician wants a second Vietnam.
If war is safe to wage, then it just means we'll do it more and kill more people around the globe.
Your post reads as if you would rather those aggressors who threaten America to not be disposed of. How is the world a better place with the aggressors than without?
Do you not perceive a threat from a country with nuclear capability that chants "Death to America, Death to Israel" to be a threat to America? Venezuela I don't know about, but Iran was (is) most certainly a threat to America.
Iran has a strong nuclear weapon development program. Negotiations could not halt it - they stall negotiations and continue development. So if they continue development during negotiations, why shouldn't the US continue her own parallel military route?
As for delivery, Iran does have missiles capable of launching a nuclear weapon at American assets in the Middle East, or American allies. Or even to just float it over on a ship.
Negotiations did halt it. Then Trump went back on the deal.
There's reports Iran agreed to limit themselves to only medical grade centrifuges as recently as last week.
And no, Iran does not have weapons capability to reach the US, period.
They fundamentally did not pose an imminent threat to the United States. A threat to American strategic goals is not an imminent threat to the American people.
Negotiations halted Iran's nuclear program for, as per words of the treaty, "10 to 15 years". That was in 2016. If that treaty were not torn up, then Iran would be allowed to unveil their nuclear weapon in January 16, 2026. Yes, two months ago.
Is your claim that the deal was not preventing Iran from developing a nuke? Then why does the existence of the agreement matter either way?
Are you saying Iran would magically produce a nuke the very day the deal expired? Then why don't they have one today?
How does ending the agreement make it harder for Iran to get a nuke? How does "tearing it up" prevent anything that the agreement itself wasn't preventing?
If it's moral to strike at a country with nuclear capability that talks constantly about your country's destruction, then it's no less acceptable for Iran to strike the US than the other way around.
You can't condemn one and condone the other on that basis.
Iran has both reason and were developing capability to destroy a significant part of American national security. America absolutely must prevent that at any cost.
You could argue about how the rhetoric between the states got so bad that they each threatened each other's destruction. But the fact is that they got there.
I'm not familiar enough with Korean culture to know if suicide-for-ideology is culturally acceptable and expected. In Islamic ideology that is the highest honour.
No, my reasoning is culture. I do not live in the United States, I don't base my worldview on race.
There exists a culture for which it is an honour to kill Jews. Pretending that this culture does not exist is racism. Disregarding the differences in values of other cultures is the most disgusting form of racism - pretending that one's own culture is dominant or universal.
Treating culture as uniformly distributed and absolute is racism. Your racism is blinding you to truths, leading you to illogical conclusions like the idea that it's possible to make an accurate assessment of military threat based on "culture." Hence why I called it caveman logic - you're literally defining your level of fear of another group of humans based on how different you (erroneously) perceive them to be.
You seem quite concerned with the plight of the Palestinians so I'll use that as an example: Jewish people experienced the worst, most widescale crime against humans ever committed, and then a few decades later, a subset of Jewish people turned around and began doing the same (at a smaller, less industrialized scale). This demonstrates the perfect universality and programmability of a human, which includes "human culture."
Any human culture can be molded to justify any existent human action. To pretend otherwise is to engage in ethnocentrism - what you accused me off, the presumption that there's something special about your culture that prevents atrocities happening under it.
The second that makes your argument racist rather than logical (if you refuse to budge on the word "racist," swap in "prejudice" - the fallacies are the same either way) is the homogeneous angle you're applying. This should be an obviously fallacious statement: "Christianity is a violent culture that supports violence against Jewish people, discrimination against gay people, and school shootings." Why is it fallacious, though? I know lots of christians that have done all of the above, proudly tying it back to their religion. You see my point, right? You would, presumably, never walk into a room of white people and assume they all share identical values - do it in America, half probably are tearing their hair out in frustration at the values of the other half. Yet you do it to Islam / Arabs / Muslims, because, frankly, you are racist against Muslim people.
An argument that depends on making a blanket statement about a group of people fails for many reasons: categorization (how do you accurately and scientifically select who falls into this grouping and who doesn't?), resolution (how do you account for outliers within this grouping, and how do you determine who might be an outlier?), absolutism (how do you account for the fact that people change?), and due to above, how could you justify making any decisions based on a prejudiced framing?
Racist arguments are completely dependant on fallacy. With a rigid application of rational reasoning, they fall apart. They're illogical.
None of the recently attacked countries posed an imminent threat to the US.
In what kind of deranged world are we living that people are fighting against the notion that waging war on another country should be a costly decision!?
China threatens us, Russia threatens us, should we bombing them? Canada is threatened by us, demark, Spain, mexico, Cuba have all been threatened by us, should they be bombing us?
The danger is that we won't be sending these fully-autonomous drones to 'war', but anytime a person in power feels like assassinating a leader or taking out a dissident, without having to make a big deal out of it. The reality is that AI will be used, not merely as a weapon, but as an accountability sink.
What do you mean, "hallucinates and kills people"? Killing people is the thing the military is using them for; it's not some accidental side effect. It's the "moral choice" the same way a cruise missile is — some person half a world away can lean back in their chair, take a sip of coffee, click a few buttons and end human lives, without ever fully appreciating or caring about what they've done.
The people that actually target and launch these things do think about what they have done. It is the people ordering them to do it that don't. There is a difference, I hope.
I'm sure it was meant as "kills the wrong people."
People are always worried about getting rid of humans in decision-making. Not that humans are perfect, but because we worry that buggy software will be worse.
War is not moral. It may be necessary, but it is never moral. The only best choice is to fight at every turn making war easy. Our adversaries will, or likely already have, gone the autonomous route. We should be doing everything we can to put major blockers on this similar to efforts to block chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The logical end of autonomous targeting and weapons is near instant mass killing decisions. So at a minimum we should think of autonomous weapons in a similar class as those since autonomy is a weapon of mass destruction. But we currently don't think that way and that is the problem.
Eventually, unfortunately, we will build these systems but it is weak to argue that the technology isn't ready right now and that is why we won't build them. No matter when these systems come on line there will be collateral damage so there will be no right time from a technology standpoint. Anthropic is making that weak argument and that is primarily what I am dismissive of. The argument that needs to be made is that we aren't ready as a society for these weapons. The US government hasn't done the work to prove they can handle them. The US people haven't proven we are ready to understand their ramifications. So, in my view, Anthropic shouldn't be arguing the technology isn't ready, no weapon of war is ever clean and your hands will be dirty no matter how well you craft the knife. Instead Anthropic should be arguing that we aren't ready as a society and that is why they aren't going to support them.
> War is not moral. It may be necessary, but it is never moral.
This is the right answer. When war becomes inevitable, we are forced to choose between morality and survival. I pass no judgement on those who choose survival.
The problem in modern wars is that those who start them claim that they do this for survival, but the claim is not based on any real action of the adversary or on any evidence that the adversary is dangerous, but on beliefs that the adversary might want to endanger the survival of the attacker some time in an indefinite future, and perhaps might even be able to do that.
Nobody who starts a war today acknowledges that they do this for other reasons than "survival", e.g. for stealing various kinds of resources from the attacked.
It has become difficult to distinguish those who truly fight for survival from those who only claim to do this.
Yes, agreed 100%. Some groups see it as their mission to dominate Eastern Europe, or the entire Middle East, or the entire southern Asian continent. The smaller states in the areas are under constant threat.
However in the case of Iran, who openly calls for the destruction of America and is blatantly developing technology that seriously threaten America and other Middle Eastern states, decisive military action to prevent the threat is important. Don't watch the bully themself and wait for him to confront you, when he is telling you the whole time his intention to destroy you.
> Some groups see it as their mission to dominate Eastern Europe, or the entire Middle East, or the entire southern Asian continent.
Agreed that some countries seek to dominate other regions by force or threat, but you and I are not thinking of the same "groups".
> However in the case of Iran, who openly calls for the destruction of America and is blatantly developing technology that seriously threaten America and other Middle Eastern states, decisive military action to prevent the threat is important. Don't watch the bully themself and wait for him to confront you, when he is telling you the whole time his intention to destroy you.
No, Iran poses no real threat to America, and according to Trump last year suffered a 10+ year setback in their nuclear ambitions. Do you think Trump was lying back then, now, or both?
The US is asserting dominance. Even Trump occasionally says so. Iran mostly poses a danger to their own citizens and, arguably, against Israel when conflict flares up in the region, but not to the US.
By the way, the current situation in Iran is heavily influenced by actions by the UK and the US in the region, back in the 50s. So maybe meddling is not the right course of action?
> Hypothetically if we had a choice between sending in humans to war or sending in fully autonomous drones that make decisions on par with humans, the moral choice might well be the drones - because it doesn't put our service members.
I guess let the record state that I am deeply morally opposed to automated killing of any kind.
I am sick to my stomach when I really try to put myself in the shoes of the indigenous peoples of Africa who were the first victims of highly automatic weapons, “machine guns” or “Gatling guns”. The asymmetry was barbaric. I do hope that there is a hell, simply that those who made the decision to execute en masse those peoples have a place to rot in internal hellfire.
To even think of modernizing that scene of inhumane depravity with AI is despicable. No, I am deeply opposed to automated killing of any kind.
The “machine gun” has a more complicated history, and the first practical example may have been Gatling’s, or an earlier example used in Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_gun
Forgive me I got the detail wrong. If your point was to deny that my imagined scenario never happened, read this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_gun
Basically all types of weapons have been used in all sorts of conflicts; the British used aircraft in their mandates, and the Italians used chemical weapons in Ethiopia. That said, I am not aware of any weapon which was developed specifically for use against a less technologically advanced adversary, most novel weapons are developed for use against peer-adversaries.
> That said, I am not aware of any weapon which was developed specifically for use against a less technologically advanced adversary, most novel weapons are developed for use against peer-adversaries.
This is a strange take that I didn’t expect to hear. I suppose that the strongest defensive systems do require the most sophisticated offensive systems to defeat, in theory. But there exists asymmetry there as well ($50k drone destroys $1B radar).
My take on weapons development is that there were plenty of mass killing (or mass punishment) devices developed specifically for use by colonial powers against indigenous peoples. This happened alongside weapons development for weapons intended for, as you put them, peer-adversaries.
Revolts happened, and colonial powers needed effective ways to keep indigenous peoples enslaved.
True, but this doesn't in any way undermine the point that making war easier is not a good thing. It should be a costly decision, lest leaders of even those cultures find it too appealing.
But the AI cat-for-war has left the box for both Iran and the US. Opposing US development of AI for warfare will not suppress US's adversaries from developing the technology.
> Fisher [...] suggested implanting the nuclear launch codes in a volunteer. If the President of the United States wanted to activate nuclear weapons, he would be required to kill the volunteer to retrieve the codes.
>> [...] The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being. [...]
>> When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, "My God, that's terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President's judgment. He might never push the button."
> — Roger Fisher, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 1981[10]
That's so idealistic. We should know by now the reality of power and what kind of people end up in power. Anyone who could climb all the way to the top would kill the volunteer without a second thought, and then go smile on TV.
You're confusing lazy cynicism with realism. Patrick Bateman is a fictional character. The vast, vast majority of people, including even most soldiers, and definitely pretty much all businesspeople, no matter how unscrupulous, do not have the capacity to violently murder a person they know and harbor no ill will towards with their own hands on short notice.
The whole damn point behind the idea is to achieve the exact opposite. Make it someone, through whatever criteria, whom the president will have a problem killing, so he'll only do it under the most extreme circumstances.
Do you think a continuation of the firebombing campaign and an invasion of the Japanese home islands would have resulted in fewer deaths of civilians (particularly of the 'volunteer fighting corps')?
That's to say nothing of the deaths in a potential US/USSR conflict that goes hot without the Damocles Sword of MAD...
This is a false dichotomy. In the words of the post-war US strategic bombing survey:
"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
While this is all speculation, that was at the very least a defensible point of view held by a bunch of Americans shortly after the war.
Regarding firebombing: Hiroshima alone killed probably more civilians than the entire Tokyo firebombing campaign. A firestorm is a terrible thing, but you can still run from a fire even if your whole city burns down; you can't run from a nuke.
So if you measure collateral damage primarily in civilian deaths, firebombing still looks much better (a hypothetical firebombing campaign would have probably killed <40k civilians in Hiroshima instead of 100k, guesstimating from Tokyo numbers).
Edit: I don't think dropping the nuclear bombs was especially ethically questionable compared to the rest of the war, but I feel it is very important to not whitewash that event as valiant effort to save young American conscripts. Regarding it as a slightly selfish weapon demonstration feels much more accurate to me.
I don't think regarding it as a "demonstration" is accurate either.
Nuclear bombs appear as uniquely horrifying and requiring special justification only in hindsight. Back then, it was just another type of bomb. The thought process behind dropping it was simply "let's hit them as hard as we can until they surrender".
> Nuclear bombs appear as uniquely horrifying and requiring special justification only in hindsight. Back then, it was just another type of bomb.
I disagree slightly with that take. Decisionmakers knew that those singular bombs were gonna glass an entire city each, and previously almost untouched targets were selected to better show and observe the effect.
If you're at a point where you can afford to slash the primary target (Kyoto) because of nostalgic value to your secretary of war then it becomes difficult to rationalize the whole thing as "normal genuine war effort" and makes the thing look somewhat of an optional choice.
But from my point of view much more questionable decisions were made than the atomic bombings, and hindsight is always 20/20.
> previously almost untouched targets were selected to better show and observe the effect.
I read that this was not the primary motivation; rather, those cities were basically on the top of the "list of industrial centers we didn't get around to bombing conventionally yet, but were going to do next".
Did Americans know or believe that the Japanese were planning to surrender when the bombs were dropped, or only after the fact? That’s important because the Japanese didn’t even entertain the idea of surrender in July (Potsdam Declaration).
Because the Japanese were still fighting, the wartime economy was still trying to produce what it could, and the Japanese government was arming and instructing its civilians for fighting.
Post-surrender, it’s easy to say “we were planning to surrender”, especially to save face and pass the buck to the Americans for what the Japanese government brought on their people by continuing to prosecute the war effort.
> Do you think a continuation of the firebombing campaign and an invasion of the Japanese home islands would have resulted in fewer deaths of civilians (particularly of the 'volunteer fighting corps')?
I don't know, but there's a lot of evidence this wasn't a factor in the decision to drop the bombs on Japan. The planners for the invasion and the planners for the bombing weren't exactly talking to each other and coordinating the strategy.
They had the bomb and they were going to use it. Everything else was an a posteriori justification.
Now think what will happen with easily deployed AI-powered weapons.
> the moral choice might well be the drones - because it doesn't put our service members at risk.
Not so clear cut. Because now sending people to die in distant wars is likely to get a negative reaction at home, this creates some sort of impediment for waging war. Sometimes not enough, but it's not nothing. Sending your boys to die for fuck knows what.
If you're just sending AI powered drones, it reduces the threshold for war tremendously, which in my mind is not "the moral choice".
Our drones will fight their drones, and then whichever side loses, will have their humans fighting the other side's drones, and if the humans somehow win, they will fight the other side's humans. War doesn't have an agreed ending condition.
> Anthropic is clearly the better company over OpenAI
Why do people keep falling into traps of anthropomorphize companies like this? What's the point? Either you care about a company in the "for-profit" sense, and then money is all that matters (so clearly OpenAI currently wins there), or you care about pesky things like morality and ethics, and then you should look beyond corporations, because they're not humans, stop treating them as such. Both of them do their best to earn as much as possible, and that's their entire "morality", as they're both for-profit companies,.
If LLM's are indeed a game changer professionally, you kind of need to pick one.
Personally, I loathe seeing power shift towards mega corporations like that, away from being able to run your own computer with free software, but it feels like the economics are headed that way in terms of productivity.
You cannot rely on a closed source "AI" in someone else's cloud for your work. After all, it can be disabled for you at any time. "AI" can easily steal all your technological secrets. At the request of the owner, "AI" can easily mislead you and insert backdoors into your products. "AI" can even easily incorrectly answer some questions specifically for you if the owner of "AI" wants to remove your competition. And you may not even understand it.
> it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds.
(spoiler alert)
Wasn't this one of the plot points of the Val Kilmer movie Real Genius? They had to trick the students into creating a weapon by siloing them off from each other and having them build individual but related components? How far we've fallen! Nobody has to take ethics during undergrad anymore I guess...
Reminds me of the story of someone's woman working for a research lab to improve the computer-controlled automatic emergency landings of planes with total power failure.
... or so she was told.
She was unknowingly designing glide-bomb avionics.
I feel like these stories are apocryphal. I mean, I can't say for certain that no US DoD research program used subterfuge to trick the performers into working on The Most Racist Bomb. But I can say that in 20 years I've never seen a dearth of people ready, willing, able, and actively participating with full knowledge that they are creating The Fastest Bomb and The Sneakiest Bom and The Biggest Bomb Without Actually Going Nuclear.
IDK, maybe it's different outside the National Capitol Region. But here, you could probably shout "For The Empire" as a toast in the right bars and people wouldn't think you were joking.
What? I'm not questioning whether the weapons research actually happened. I'm questioning the sincerity of people claiming they didn't know what they were doing. I've seen plenty of weapons programs. They aren't a secret to the people working on them. My point is, the government doesn't need to lie to researchers or even pay them very well to get them to develop weapons because there are plenty of intelligent-enough people willing to do it almost for free.
If "This doesn't fit into my mental model, so everyone else must be lying" is how you deal with things you didn't personally experience, do what you have to.
The inability to accurately cite any story about this, and the "friend of a friend" structure is what implies it's garbage.
Not to mention it itself requires a conspiracy theory: "no one would do this work voluntarily" (or "all the smart people have to be tricked because they're so smart they obviously agree with me").
As though people don't just go and work at Boeing or Lockheed Martin.
The much more common reason is compartmentalisation. Employees are told as much as they need to know, no more.
If someone can design a glide bomb without knowing that it has an explosive payload, then they're not told.
The fear is not so much the employees themselves (they might be quite patriotic!) but that the information will leak out to the enemy, giving them a chance to counter the weapon or copy it.
That's a very different proposition to what the various parent posters are implying though. Like if you work for a defense contractor, you know what your work is for even if you wouldn't know exactly what the product or application was.
They knew the US was at war and they knew it was a government program for military purposes and they knew they were dealing nuclear materials.
A journalist not involved at all figured it out just fine, but at the very least it's not like it wasn't going to be a weapon.
Frankly though I wonder what the various judgemental people in these comments think about say, the tens of thousands of people who at the time were just straight up making artillery ammo.
I've worked as a contractor for a safety system that turned out to be for a foreign military. I was given a signal, and told to write software to fit it. The signal could plausibly be collected for a wide variety of civilian purposes.
What I realized later was that none of the civilian markets could possibly justify the cost of the project.
The particular type of signal fitting I was doing was only achievable by a few thousand expensive domain experts in the world, so, I think that addresses your other point.
I once saw the word nickel autocorrected incorrectly into something far worse. It was funny given the context (metals, not coins) but I wondered why someone would even have that word in their autocorrect dictionary.
What's in the autocorrect dictionary usually has nothing to do with what you typically write. No reason to wonder (i.e. if the insinuation being that that's a word they'd typically use).
We could joke about the auto correct knowing your subconscious mind.
Except if Facebook has auto correct, you can be sure it’s driven by a personal dossier on each of us, correlated by AI with every other person on the planet.
I see you have not met my (ex) sister in law. Alternatively, you have, and you are a much better (stronger? More stoic? More charitable? I don’t even know what it would take) man than I am. Hats off to you, and Godspeed!
My worst autocorrect story is a message to my mother in law referring to my sister in law. I told my mother in law that I’d give my wife’s sister “a*al’ when I got there. It was supposed to be ”a call” I’m still traumatized decades later.
The name of that Department was chosen to be aspirational, to encourage it to try to keep within its Constitutional guardrails, to keep it focused on the right mission.
Sure, it often didn't live up to its aspirations and a lot of the fence posts of those Constitutional guardrails got moved, but wearing those aspirations on its sleeve left some room for people to challenge it and openly criticize it by reminding the Department of its guardrails and its mission.
The name change is disrespectful to the Constitution, if not terrifying for other reasons.
"Half" is obviously an exaggeration but apart from time-sharing operating systems, the Internet, what is now CSAIL and (partially) GPS, they sponsored a ton of open source projects. They used to maintain a catalog[0]. The Web Archive version[1] contains a partial list (e.g. OpenBSD was sponsored only for a few years and is not included there).
The bigger issue with your perspective is that you do not realize that the underlying purpose of the things you do not attribute to the military or equate as bad, is still groundwork or “capacity building” deliberately for militaristic purposes and objectives, usually very intentionally so that you don’t realize it. You would likely not support things if you were overly told what the underlying objective was.
Let me put it this way, if you wanted a populace that will willingly enter the military to serve your purposes of world domination through constant warfare, would you promote TV and movies, rather than reading classical literature and philosophy; and fund and press movie houses to make films that put joining the military to go to war and templating being a “warrior” as a positive thing instead of a negative, murderous thing?
I don't have any perspective, just state a fact - DARPA did contribute to things we find useful.
The core issue itself is terribly complex because in an ideal world we would never need military at all, and at least in Europe we had this hope that humanity is evolving in this direction, and that eventually even the wars in the Middle East and Africa will calm down. 2014 and 2022 were rude awakenings - there are crazy people out there, and they became nation leaders, and will start a war for one reason or another. That's why I don't have a unified opinion on that, especially that some military tech like interceptors are saving people's lives.
Ender's Game the novel, but I would say that it's not actually super relevant. First, the original short story was 1977, and then Card expanded it into a novel which was published mid-1980s. The point in the story is that kids are sensitive, and supergenius kids more so, and that they don't want to interrupt performance with concerns about guilt. But Real Genius wasn't about that! It was about an anti-war stance born of the Vietnam War and creative-class hatred for Ronald Reagan's presidency.
Gotcha, I haven't actually seen the movie I just meant the concept of tricking and silo'ing genius kids to make them think they are playing a game when they're actually doing war/genocide is similar to the Ender's Game book. I don't know if this was just an idea floating around in the air or if it was inspired by Ender's Game, just interesting
The late 90s were full of media that questioned reality and authority - like X-Files, The Matrix, Dark City, all sorts of websites about conspiracy theories and UFOs, etc. The zeitgeist was full of speculation about hidden truths. The cultural mood was defiant and sardonic. There was rap, rap-rock, Beavis and Butthead, Fight Club, Office Space... One of the most popular pro wrestlers in the world played a character who beat up his boss and gave him the middle finger. Then after 9/11 it kinda seemed like suddenly the TV shows were all about cops and soldiers. Admittedly, my memories might be somewhat deceiving me. But I do feel that the mood suddenly shifted, much more than the actual damage done to America by the attack should have justified.
No, you're right, and I distinctly remember the conspiracy theorists and counter culture thinkers immediately circling around "this is going to be used to restrict our freedom." And of course they were absolutely right.
I also remember it was the worse possible cultural faux paux to indicate you thought invading foreign nations wasn't a good response to 9/11. I mean go look at the votes for invasion of Iraq, damn near 2/3 of both the house and Senate in favor. Every radio blaring patriotic songs, every school doing patriotic projects, every brown kid living in hell.
And the military in movies used to be depicted as inflexible, stubborn, paranoid, incompetent, and usually either "the bad guys" or authorities that impeded the progress of the main characters. (With exceptions; I'm not forgetting about Top Gun).
Then there was a sudden switch, with the military shown with cool gadgets, airplanes, tech, heroics, and generally being glorified. The transition must have happened before the first Transformers, but it was in full swing by then.
Were one of a conspiratorial mind, one would guess massive amounts of money were spent in changing this image.
No conspiracy necessary. The CIA bought the rights to the 1954 film Animal Farm, modified the ending to fit propagandist ends, and it went undiscovered for four decades. The original Top Gun was intended to recover the image of the US Navy after the Vietnam War. Etc etc etc.
> No conspiracy necessary. The CIA bought the rights to the 1954 film Animal Farm, modified the ending to fit propagandist ends,
yea, I remember reading the book and then watching the movie and it had differences iirc, its available on youtube for free and I remember some comments talking about the different ending.
IIRC, in the movie, the animals finally kick the pigs out and everything. It was a good ending.
but in the book, there was not a good ending, the humans and the pigs were celebrating together and then ended up fighting in between each other
> Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
This is the last paragraph I found from the book (had to download it via archive.org to find the last para)
Mike Judge still does. Serendipitously there's a show called Silicon Valley... I also enjoyed the more recent Common Side Effects. But you even see it in King of the Hill and it's hard to miss in Idiocracy.
Gen-X was making the popular new art at the time. It was a strong reflection of the feelings of our generation. We were (maybe still are?) known for not liking authority.
As Gen-Xer I fully agree, I don't get the way things are with obedience, the rediculous situation that American families can lose their kids by having them playing alone in the garden, how everyone sells out for money (Punk would not happen today), the always smile and say no negatives at work being rediculous false (this one really drives me crazy),....
The exercised their rights not to vote. The “losing” side always thinks that higher turnout would have led to them “winning” which of course is a cry of a sore loser. The fact remains, 2024 election had the highest voter turnout ever and people have spoken (till the next one when we might get a chance to elect some adults to fix this shit)
every year we hear the same thing but wheels keep on turning. we will vote again, we will make more mistakes in 2026/28/30... this "there will be no election" comments are quite silly in my opinion, America gets stupid from time to time but we get the fuckers out and try something else (which inevitably leads to some progress followed by more failure followed by...).
Just remember it always comes down to - "it is the economy, stupid" - and economy is in absolute shambles and will get a lot worse before November and it'll be a massacre for the ruling part much like in 2018
I hope you are right, and that ICE isn't outside polling stations come November, pulling you away (just to "check your ID" for a couple of days, you know!) if you are a registered Democrat or look too brown or gay.
What worries me is that we are seeing unprecedented levels of lawlessness and open corruption in the presidency and a guy who has been open about his desire to be a dictator. Given what he did after the 2020 election I don’t see much hope that he would allow a congress to be seated that would impeach him.
When you don't vote, you're really just voting for "whoever happens to win". So I count the non-voters among (R) supporters, or at least as "OK with Trump". Otherwise, they would have voted.
Abstentions can be the most powerful vote, and with great power should come great responsibility. That's often not taught well enough in schools.
Abstentions can seem the laziest vote sometimes, but that doesn't diminish their power nor their responsibility. It is a freedom to be allowed to cast an abstention. Real democracy needs to allow for abstentions, especially explicit abstentions.
(In recent primaries there have been races where I have explicitly cast an abstention. No one will have read my "I don't care who wins this primary, I care who wins the general election" statements, but they are statements to be made. Right now some of the "strategy" in the US two-party system is one-party poisoning the primary vote of the other party by inflaming it with in-fighting in ways that leak into the general election. You have a harder time to win general elections when your candidate is already on fire coming out of the primary. "It doesn't matter who wins, let's stop in-fighting," is a message I can try to write on the ballot, even if not enough people hear it, it feels like the more powerful and responsible vote.)
The goal shouldn't be to get to 100% of people voting in every election, the goal should be to educate people that not voting is tacitly accepting the results of other people's votes. The goal should be teaching people that abstentions are a freedom, a right, a privilege, and should be treated as powerful and treated with responsibility.
I don't think that makes sense. If Harris had happened to win through some minor change in the timeline (she came very close after all), would those people whom you call R supporters instead somehow be D supporters, just because of that minor change in the timeline?
As for "OK with Trump", I think that describes some non-voters. However, there are also non-voters who are more accurately described as "not OK with either side, indeed dislike both sides so equally that neither one seems like the slightly better option".
There is also the factor of swing states. In most of the US, your vote for President pretty much doesn't matter. You almost might as well just put it in the trash. The vote in your state is, barring a massive political shift, locked in for one of the two major candidates. Now, yes, you can still send a message by voting in a non-swing state. But it's understandable why some people would just not bother to vote in a state where the outcome is almost predetermined.
> Gen-X was making the popular new art at the time. It was a strong reflection of the feelings of our generation.
I posted this in a thread about the 90's film 'Hackers'.....
In the 1990's and for us Gen-X'ers, the worst thing you could do was to sell out; to take the mans money instead of keeping your integrity. Calling people and bands 'sell outs' (sometimes without justification!) was to insult them.
With the rise of 'influencers' the opposite appears to be the case; people go out of their way to sell out and are praised for doing so. This is a massive change in the cultural landscape which perhaps many born in the 2000's aren't aware of. (Being aware of this helps give some perspective to Gen-X media and films like Hackers).
BTW: Remember the 'product scene' in the film Waynes World?
Post 2000s there has been a pretty fundamental change in the US economy. Things like rent and food were far cheaper. There was also a lot of potential income to be made by individuals by connecting buyers and sellers. Typically if you wanted to sell something like a car, you either went to a dealer that screwed you, or you put and ad in the local paper. If you watched around you could quickly buy cheap cars and turn them quickly for more than enough profit to make it worth while.
The internet quickly flattened this. First by pulling all the buyers and sellers on one advertising site it quickly turned into the fastest with the most capital won. Then the sites themselves figured out they should be the middle man keeping buying up the stock and selling it.
There has also been a huge consolidation to just a few players in many markets. This consolidation and many times algorithmic collusion has lead to the general ratcheting of prices higher. When you start adding things in like 'too big to fail' the market becomes horrifically unbalanced to large protected capital with unlimited funds from the money printing machine.
It's no wonder we quickly dropped ethics, most of us would starve to death in the system we've created.
My pet theory is that NYPD Blue and 24 paved the way in the American public mind for authoritarianism via the "good guys bending the rules and using violence because they know this guy did it" theme.
CSI and Law and Order as well contributed to the perception that the majority of police officers spend their time diligently and righteously investigating real crimes (usually resulting in finding the culprit) instead of spending their days watching traffic in pursuit of pretextual traffic stops, and solving less than 50% of violent crime cases.
I was absolutely disgusted by stuff like 24 and zero dark thirty when it came out. "If you cut the throat of the terrorist's son he'll break down and tell you where the bomb is" - they expected the audience to treat that as plausible narrative, and a lot of them clearly did.
A lot of the war propaganda from back then is also depressingly similar to what gets pumped out now: you can't argue with success, you don't want to be on the losers' side do you?
Similarly in the pilot episode of Designated Survivor. "Let's nuke Teheran" was seen as a valid, and brilliant, tactical move in order to get negotiations with Iran to go Kiefer Sutherland's way.
To give 24 some credit, it showed some Americans as complicit in the terrorism or corruption in the story. ZDT also touched on how torture wasn't as effective as assumed. I agree that the broader themes often feel biased/propagandized, framing the anti-hero, who's basically acting as a proxy for the government, as justified at almost any cost.
If you are waiting until undergraduate level to take ethics, it's far too late to matter anyways.
Doubly so for "business ethics" classes which became à la mode in the post-Enron era. They attempt to teach fundamental ethics, when at most it should be a very thin layer on top of a well founded internal moral framework and well-accepted ethical standards inculcated from day 1 of kindergarten.
Morals are taught 0-9 [0], Ethics perhaps slightly later as it requires more complex thought processes.
Same with Ender's Game. They are playing war games but they're actually real. He sacrifices his units and commits genocide (xenocide) at the same time. Something he probably wouldn't have done had he known.
> Nobody has to take ethics during undergrad anymore I guess...
My undergrad wasn't in CS but my grad was. I was incredibly surprised to find that ethics isn't a requirement in most CS programs. That's a sharp contrast to traditional engineering and the hard sciences. CS people seem to love philosophy, yet I'm surprised not so much about this subset. We'll spend all day talking about if we live in a simulation (without learning physics) and what intelligence is (without studying neuroscience or psychology) but when it comes to what's acceptable to do at work the answer is always "if I don't do it somebody else will, at least I'll have a job". A phrase that surely everyone hears in an ethics 101 class...
Edit:
Oops, missed pazimzadeh's comment. I'll leave mine because I say more
And the world seen through media is heavily abstracted. And I think that makes people psychologically treat war like a game rather than something actually happening. We trick ourselves into believing it isn't real.
I wonder how much this changes based on country. The closest thing to a war happening within US borders was the attack on Pearl Harbor (I think). The US hasn't had conscription for 50 years. So there isn't much of a clearly visible and direct cost to war for many many Americans. I'm not arguing there isn't a cost, by the way, just that most can basically just not watch the news and have no idea war is happening.
Many prominent tech and science leaders have been disparaging philosophy for decades now. Not surprising that in the absence of any serious ethical thought, “make money = good” is the default position.
No, that isn’t what my comment suggests at all, on any level.
I don’t think you can have intelligent ethical opinions if you disparage and ignore the field that studies ethics (philosophy.)
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
I think there are definitely many positions with which I disagree, but are nonetheless well-thought through and coherent.
But it seems pretty clear that the people making these decisions haven’t done the work of thinking it through, and are instead just trying to maximize money. That’s my claim, at least.
> No, that isn’t what my comment suggests at all, on any level.
I don’t think you can have intelligent ethical opinions if you disparage and ignore the field that studies ethics (philosophy.)
You're not suggesting that, but then put up your own requirements for someone's ethics to be "valid". So in the end you are filtering others ethical choices by your own requirements.
And your logic seems to work backwards: someone does something you disagree with based on your personal ethical view -> assume they aren't well thought out
My requirements for someone's ethical opinions to be "valid" are that they don't criticize the field of ethics as useless. I guess that is a "requirement" I have, but it's a pretty nitpicking, useless distinction to make.
If someone criticizes the French language, but doesn't speak a word of French, sorry, but I don't have much respect for their opinion on French.
And no, I don't "assume they aren't well thought out," because many of these people have explicitly said philosophy is a waste of time.
I'm just having an intellectual argument with you, so thanks for sharing your thoughts.
In a non-theological world, the source of ethics can be anything - parents, community, study of ethhics. None of them is more valid than another - because requiring "a respect for the field of philosophy" is a ethical position in and of itself.
One of my best friends is a philosophy grad, and another is a very intelligent financier. What we've come to realize is that speaking and writing and making arguments is fruitless. You either have had the embodied experiences to recognize a statement is directionally correct -- to various magnitudes -- or you don't.
No amount of words will change that.
It is my experience -- after seeing the quality of thinking from those philosophically trained (I am not) -- that learning philosophy is learning how to think, and by extension figuring out for oneself what is capital g Good.
Morals and ethics are different and you conflate them. That is the crux of your confusion. Someone can understand morality inherently without ever thinking about it; but ethics requires actual intentional thought over years and years of reflecting on lived experience. What is good for you and your small circle can be grasped intuitively, but to grasp what is good "at scale" must be reasoned about. Without having seriously grappled with this, one is liable to have simplistic views, and in many cases hold views that have already been trodden through and whose "holes" have been exposed and new routes taken in unveiling ethics.
Without seriously having interfaced with it, it's like talking to someone about the exercise science when all they know is do steroids, lift weight, and eat. Sure, that works, but it lacks nuance and almost no thought has gone into it.
Anyway, this is tiring. Philosophical discussions are not something to do with strangers. It requires intimacy and is a deeply personal conversation one should have with those close to them and explore together.
> Someone can understand morality inherently without ever thinking about it;
How so? This would infer some universal set of morality, which doesn't exist.
> Anyway, this is tiring. Philosophical discussions are not something to do with strangers.
I think it's tiring because you view ethics and morality as a box that thinking has to happen in. But it's not. Ethics and morality can be anything (as we've seen through human history).
Excellent point. Philosophy (really anything not math-related) is seen as a waste of time by most people I know in tech. You end up getting a bunch of smart but unethical or misguided people. Engineering types end up being used as pawns in wider political games. Look at all the terrorists who are engineers, for example:
You still take ethics. The only difference is political views. It’s very easy to be consistent from an ethical perspective if you are convinced of a government’s particular powers.
The government has a monopoly on violence. Whether you want to enhance it or not all comes down to your political alignment, not ethics.
To be fair, it wasn't like lockheed and raytheon and all the rest of the modern human killing machine companies have ever been hurting for engineering talent. Likewise for oil and gas.
Fallen far, or maybe we are just more aware now, but anyway, I don't think that a lecture in ethics at university will fix things. That's:
(A) way too late, and
(B) without a strong character to begin with, this lecture will simply become a "necessary chore" for students, and basically go in one ear, and out the other ear. (Does that saying/phrase translate to English?)
By the time people start their undergrad, if they are not already at least trying to act ethically, that ship has sailed for most. Their upbringing and education did not manage to drill that into them before. I see it as more of an early childhood and parenting topic. If the parents are not leading by example and teaching their children ethics, then the children are often just going with the flow, not swimming against the current to uphold ideals. Why would they, if the other way is easier. I think it is rare, that people adopt ethics that they have not grown up with / raised according to.
So I would advocate ethics as a mandatory subject at school, if not primary school already.
I'm a decade older so maybe I missed the memo but I think you'll have a hard time naming tech companies that actually refused to work with the military, which were large enough and important enough to be in danger of selling something to the military (i.e. not Be Inc. or Beenz.com)
Clearly, all of the traditional big leagues were lined up to take the Army's money. IBM, Control Data, Cray, SGI, and HP all viewed weapons research as a major line of business. DEC was the default minicomputer of the DoD and Sun created features to court the intelligence community including the DoD "Trusted Workstation". Sperry Rand defined "military industrial complex".
Well, they made a big deal about saying that while they sold their software to the Defense Department, it wasn't actually being used to kill people. Except for well-known military contractors (e.g., Raytheon), who have sold plenty of software specifically to kill people.
I guess there's a reason we saw plenty of articles about software used somewhat defensively -- such as distinguishing whether a particular "bang" was a gunshot, and where it likely came from -- instead of offensively -- such as improvements to targeting software.
For almost all of history, including recent history, tech and military went together. Whether compound bows, or spears or metallurgy.
Euler used his math to develop artillery tables for the Prussian army.
von Neumann helped develop the atom bomb.
The military played a huge role in creating Silicon Valley.
However, to people who grew up in the mid to late 90s, it is easy to miss that that period was a major aberration. You had serious people talking about the end of history. You had John Perry Barlow's utterly naive Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace which looks more and more naive every year.
When people (myself included FWIW) warn about the dangers of American imperialism, it's because:
1. As President Eisenhower said in his farewell address in 1961 [1], every dollar spent on the military-industrial complex is a dollar not spent on schools or houses or hospitals or bridges;
2. Every American company with sufficient size eventually becomes a defense contractor. That's really what's happened with the tech companies. They're moving in lockstep with the administration on both domestic and foreign policy;
3. The so-called "imperial boomerang" [2]. Every tactic, weapon and strategy used against colonial subjects are eventually used against the imperial core eg [3]. Do you think it's an accident that US police forces have become increasingly militarized?
The example I like to give is China's high speed rail. China started building HSR only 20 years ago and now has over 32,000 miles of HSR tracks taking ~4M passengers per day. The estimated cost for the entire network is ~$900B. That's less than the US spends on the military every year.
I really what Steve Jobs would've done were he still alive. Tim Apple has bent the knee and kissed the ring. Would Steve Jobs have done the same? I'm not so sure. He may well have been ousted (again) because of it.
Then again, I think Steve Jobs was the only Silicon Valley billlionaire not in a transhumanist polycule with a more than even chance of being in the files.
> I really what Steve Jobs would've done were he still alive. Tim Apple has bent the knee and kissed the ring. Would Steve Jobs have done the same? I'm not so sure. He may well have been ousted (again) because of it.
Given that Steve Jobs was best friends with Larry Ellison, I’d say he wouldn’t have bent the knee because he would’ve been standing hand in hand with Trump, just like Larry.
>1. As President Eisenhower said in his farewell address in 1961 [1], every dollar spent on the military-industrial complex is a dollar not spent on schools or houses or hospitals or bridges;
This humanist view unfortunately doesn’t hold anymore in the modern world. Boomers will be happy as long as not a single dollar is spent on housing, so that their own homes can appreciate in value. Republicans would rather burn money than spend it on houses, hospitals, or bridges that might benefit immigrants or “other people” more than themselves.
I used an American political party only as a reference, but the same phenomenon can be seen in many countries around the world. Society has become incredibly cynical and has regressed a lot in terms of humanity.
>"Boomers will be happy as long as not a single dollar is spent on housing"
Not sure what boomers you are talking about. I for one am disgusted at what is happening with the things in general and with the housing in particular. I do not want my house to appreciate Ad infinitum. I do not want to have ever growing class of have-not's so that few jerks can own the governments and half of the world.
Just so we're on the same page, the GP was reeferring to "baby boomers", as in people born 1945-1965. Maybe you know that and that's when you were born. I don't know. But "boomer" has taken on a slang meaning the latest few years for someone who's simply not tech-savvy or is otherwise out-of-touch.
Generational politics has definite limits and isn't absolute but it's also true that the Baby Boomer generation as a whole enjoyed the great opportunities and wealth generation opportunities in history. They fled to the suburbs, subsidized by the government every step of the way, and then basically pulled up the ladder behind them. They also refuse to quit.
And then when crime receded (and there are multiple theories for why this happened), they moved back into the city, bought up all the real estate and then blocked building affordable housing there too.
I personally have a theory that the parting gift of the Baby Boomer generation will be to get rid of Social Security and Medicare since they don't need it anymore.
> I personally have a theory that the parting gift of the Baby Boomer generation will be to get rid of Social Security and Medicare since they don't need it anymore.
They do need social security and Medicare. Studies show even with social security and Medicare half or more might struggle in retirement due to insufficient savings.
Thank you for mentioning the term 'imperial boomerang'. You really saw it in the militarization of the police after the Iraq War. Gone are the donut munchers.
But tell me, what would you like your country to do when conflicts arise due to want of natural resources? Would you want your country to just give up that resource your people depend on, like may be 50/50?
Do you believe it will always be possible to settle on a solution in a peaceful way that works for everyone?
Literally yes. If you justify harming others out of nowhere by ‘sabotaging your own existence’ then yes.
‘Sabotaging your own existence’ is a magic sentence that can justify everything. Israel can kill children more than any other nation in the world, and justify it by ‘not sabotaging their own existence’
Anyone can do anything with this perspective. This is the exact point gere. Pull yourself back, if you are about to ‘not sabotage your own existence’ by simply killing innocent civilians because you believe a computer algorithm told you in about 15 years they or their children might do something harmful.
Not really. Not unless one is thinking in absolutes, at which point one is by definition an extremist.
The rational dialogue that emerges is the proper size of a military for defensive—but not continuous offensive—purposes. I’d guess, for America, that is half its current size at most. (The wrong answers are zero and $1.4tn.)
Sure, any one can say anything. But I am not referring to that. I am talking about a case where it is objectively true.
But I think that is a question that anyone would rather not consider.
The issue is that if you don't consider that question, and jump into discussion or actions, in general just have an "outrage", then it would be very hard to take you seriously.
Imagine you are stranded in your home with all your loved ones, and you get a call from your "warmonger" president and the matter is urgent; he says "We have received intel regarding a enemy plan to bomb your house in 30 mins. This report is only x% reliable, but we have the exact location of the enemy and we have birds in air that can hit them in 5 mins. This might escalate into a larger conflict, Do you want us to proceed? "
What would your response be? What is the value of `x` at which you will approve of the pre-emptive attack?
>What does objectivity have to do with the value of x?
It does not have anything to do with objectivity. I thought it to be futile to discuss that since, as you implied, predicting future can't be 100% objective, and thus decisions to avert a bad future outcome always need to be based on subjective decisions.
So this is another question where I want to ask you how you would make a subjective call.
What is your percentage to say no lets do not take actions. Because again; with this perspective every single action is legitimate. There is a chance for everything. If there is a weapon that can kill every human on the planet, every country will race to invent it because every country will try to invent it. Every action is valid. Every weapon development is okey, because if you dont, others will. You can kill everyone, because everyone might eventually try to kill you, there is always a chance.
We both know that it is not true. Because by this logic, you wouldn't fire a weapon at someone who is about to stab your wife or child. Because there is a small chance that they will die of a heart attack before they can do it. So it is some value that is < 100%, but apparently that is not good enough for you.
You did not accept my answer and did not answer to mine as well.
On top of that, while you are pulling some hypothetical scenarios, the reality is exactly as I described. Governments, especially us gov, kept invading, bombing and killing people based on some subjective percentages and this is still ongoing.
Although you did not like my ‘prefer to die instead of kill’ idea, you still did not solve ‘you can kill everyone since there is a chance anyone can kill you’ problem. And reality is closer to latter, unfortunately.
Like we have solar now. People talk about how it saves environment. But I think another similar win would be reduction in dependency on oil, and countries won't have to go to war over oil. But it takes time...
But it seems what technology gives, technology takes away. Because new technologies comes with its own resource requirements. And the cycle looks like it will go on...
> Have you ever gone through a whole a week without eating anything? Have you seen your kids go through that
Have you? And did you murder your neighbor to steal their food? Did you believe the best course of action was to fight your neighbors?
Your ridiculous analogy doesn't even apply to the US, one of the wealthiest countries in the world. In your imagined scenario, are they the poor starving family who must kill and steal to survive?
Dude. Think hard before getting backed into absurd metaphors.
I haven't, and that is why I am not making higher-than-you, virtuous claims about how I would act in that situation. Maybe you should do the same.
>Your ridiculous analogy doesn't even apply to the US, one of the wealthiest countries in the world
And where did that wealth come from? Sure, you have smart people, but it also require a functioning economy to mobilize and convert all those talent into wealth. If a external entity can choke your economy and if your government just stand-by, virtue-signaling to people such as yourselves, your wealth will disappear in no time. BOOM! Back to zero...
> I haven't, and that is why I am not making higher-than-you [...]
Then maybe stop making up hypotheticals that don't apply to me, you, or any of the nations involved? What are you hoping to achieve here? "Let's assume we live in a Mad Max world, would you steal all the women and water"?
> And where did that wealth come from? Sure, you have smart people, but it also require a functioning economy to mobilize and convert all those talent into wealth
So you think the US doesn't have a functioning economy or smart people, and therefore must resort to war to get their resources?
> BOOM! Back to zero...
So, in your bizarre logic, it's best to resort to theft and murder?
I am sympathetic to the argument that I’d rather elected officials that have a path to be removed have the control of use more so than unelected executives.
> they have to couch it in language clarifying that they would love to support war, actually,
Yes they do because they are trying to sell to the Department of War.
No one made Anthropic try to be a military contractor. It’s pretty much the definition of being a military contractor that your product helps to kill people.
If you graduated in 2007, your classmates were born around 1985. Their parents were mostly born in the mid 50s to the mid 60s and came to political consciousness either during the Vietnam War or immediately thereafter. No war since has been even close to as unpopular or frankly as salient. It’s the passing out of cultural relevance of that war that you are noticing.
> No war since has been even close to as unpopular or frankly as salient.
Iraq.
Spoiler alert, a bunch of the current ones are going to be seen similarly too.
Also keep in mind when making comparisons that the Vietnam war was not unpopular with Americans at the beginning, and many people justified it all throughout, using language that will be similar to observers of later wars.
Correct that there was no Iraq generation because there was no draft and numbers were way smaller. Vietnam had over half a million troops at the height of that war. Iraq had under 170k.
But the war was still deeply unpopular. There is a reason America did the extraordinary - to that point - and elect its first black president.
The economic toll will be greater with these wars than Vietnam.
Sure, but it's not reasonable to call it as unpopular domestically as the Vietnam War, which had more than 12 times the casualties, spread over a group that on the whole was unwilling to fight and had to be drafted into the conflict, thereby spreading the pain of lost loved ones throughout society rather than concentrating it heavily into the poorer and less politically powerful social and economic classes. As unpopular as the Iraq war was, the American people's distaste didn't really do much to end it.
That’s reasonable. In the context of the larger discussion here a post up thread’s implication that a graduate in 2007 would be anti-war because of Vietnam is kind of dubious. Public opinion of the war shifted quite a lot in the four years after “Mission Accomplished” and Freedom Fries.
I think this person might just be seeing Vietnam in a retrospective lens and has not seen the pro vietnam war propaganda from the 1960s which was immensely popular.
I wasn't alive either but I've seen it after the fact. Also the kind of people who thought the Kent State massacre was the right thing to do. The political radicals of that era "won" many culture wars but they were a minority, and the influential, pro-war, pro-establishment people sounded exactly like the ones who were in favor of the Iraq War and who think what's going on in Iran right now makes sense.
There is a reason, for example, that John Fogerty of CCR [of the song "Fortunate Son"] wrote the mid 2000s song "It's like Deja Vu All Over Again" to describe the Iraq war. It's because the war propaganda was all the same, just with a rotating cast.
The Overton window has not shifted, at least not among rank-and-file tech workers. There was very loud and vocal internal opposition to building and selling weapons[0]. They all lost the argument in the boardrooms because the US government writes very big checks. But I am told they are very much still around.
CEOs are bound to sociopathically amoral behavior - not by the law, but by the Pareto-optimal behavior of the job market for executives. The law obligates you to act in the interests of the shareholders, but it does not mandate[1] that Line Go Up. That is a function of a specific brand of shareholder that fires their CEOs every 18 months until the line goes up.
In 2007, Big Tech had plenty of the consumer market to conquer, so they could afford to pretend to be opposed to selling to the military. But the game they were playing was always going to end with them selling to the military. Once they were entrenched they could ignore the no-longer-useful-to-us-right-now dissenters, change their politics on a dime, and go after the "real money".
[0] Several of the sibling comments are mentioning hypothetical scenarios involving dual-use technologies or obfuscated purposes. Those are also relevant, but not the whole story.
[1] There are plenty of arguments a CEO could use to defend against a shareholder lawsuit that they did not take a particularly short-sighted action. Notably, that most line-go-up actions tend to be bad long-term decisions. You're allowed to sell low-risk investments.
Complaining loudly about working with the government to build weapons and then continuing to build them isn't the same as people refusing to work for companies that handle weapons contracts. The window has indeed shifted, with tech workers now merely virtue signaling on social media.
Yeah, and they still happen even today (there were some recent ones with ICE and Israel), but the companies themselves have still worked in war businesses.
It's easy to say "I will never let the Department of Defense use my search engine for evil!" Or "the more money they spend on me, the less they have for weapons!" ( https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Theo_de_Raadt ) when you aren't really expecting money. But when somebody shows up with a check, it becomes much harder to stick to your principles. Especially after watching Palantir (and "don't be evil" Google) rake in plenty of dough.
> When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds.
I don't think it was very common really.
I think for the most part it was tech companies whose systems were not being used for war who like to boast that they refused to let their systems be used for war. Or that they creatively interpreted "for war" that since they were not actually manufacturing explosives, they could claim it was not for war.
Attitude towards war depends on context. In 2007 "war" meant "Iraq" which was extremely unpopular, pointless, and had an imperialist flavor. Today "war" means Gaza, Iran, and Venezuela, but it also means Ukraine and Chinese aggression, possibly ramping up to an invasion of Taiwan. I suspect Amodei and many Anthropic employees are thinking of the latter.
> Chinese aggression, possibly ramping up to an invasion of Taiwan.
It's amusing amidst the US bombing Iran, incarceration the president of Venezuela and his wife after slaughtering everyone who was in the room with him, seizing oil tankers off Cuba, continuing the siege of Gaza and on and on to start getting sanctimonious about China.
Taiwan is Kinmen island in Xiamen harbor, so a mainland invasion of Taiwan would be mainland China "invading" an island in its harbor.
Also mainland China does not recognize Taiwan and mainland China to be separate countries. The US does not recognize Taiwan and mainland China to be separate countries. Taiwan does not consider Taiwan and mainland China to be separate countries. I'm not sure what the invasion would be, a country invading itself? It would be like if the US president sent armed agents to Minnesota who started killing people willy nilly - oh yaa, that just happened.
The most satisfying thing is if mainland China did choose to reassert it's rightful authority in Taiwan against the colonial powers, there's absolutely nothing those western powers can do about it. Just like Russia's assertion over the West tring to nove it's NATO armies to its western borders in the Ukraine. It's amusing to see the US flailing about, hitting a Venezuelan here, a Cuban there to try to look tough. I guess Nicaragua is next on the list. The changes coming in the 21st century are welcome. A bozo like Trump as president is a sign of a fading West.
Actually dinosaurs existed in China before there were people. And their descendents, the birds, are still around. We should all consider it our moral duty to continue what was begun in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and overthrow the CCP and replace them with the true historical rulers, the chicken.
By this logic, America not recognising by the sovereignty of Venezuela, Iran and Cuba—and Israel of Palestine, as well as vice versa—makes everyone an a-okay actor!
> there's absolutely nothing those western powers can do about it. Just like Russia's assertion over the West tring to nove it's NATO armies to its western borders in the Ukraine
Russia is a spent power and geopolitical afterthought because of Ukraine. Its borders with NATO have increased massively, all while reducing its security, economy and demography.
Even Xi couldn’t fuck over China as thoroughly as Putin has Russia. But Xi going on a vanity crusade into Taiwan would essentially write off China’s ascendancy as a military and economic superpower this generation.
> if mainland China did choose to reassert it's rightful authority in Taiwan against the colonial powers
An aging dictator invading a democracy. At least Deng chose a quarry he could crush [1].
Palestine is only a state due to international recognition. It meets no definition of a state, it controls no land, has no currency, government, military, etc. It meets no criteria for statehood yet is recognized by most of the world as a state. Taiwan (and e.g. Somaliland) meet all the criteria for statehood and yet are not recognized as states. Venezuela, Iran and Cuba meet the criteria for statehood and ofcourse are actually recognized universally as states. State (pun intended) of the world.
I would like to believe there's no chance Xi would invade Taiwan but I also didn't think Putin would invade Ukraine. Those leaders are full of themselves. If we learnt much over the last few years is that anything can happen. China has both declared the intention and built the capabilities to invade Taiwan. As the saying goes if a loaded rifle is introduced in the first act of a play, it must be fired by the final act.
> Taiwan does not consider Taiwan and mainland China to be separate countries.
This is false. Both the government of Taiwan, and the people here, obviously consider the two countries separate, and neither have made any overtures challenging the sovereignty of the CPC in nearly fifty years. Not to mention the fact that the last government to do so has been overthrown in the 90s (the overthrow of the KMT settler colonial dictatorship).
You will now vaguely refer to the ROC constitution, but I'll preempt that by saying the constitution makes no claims to PRC territory, full stop. And the constitutional reforms in the 90s explicitly recognize PRC sovereignty over its territory - because Taiwanese people aren't the KMT and want nothing to do with the KMT's now 8 decade old fight.
> I'm not sure what the invasion would be, a country invading itself?
I know exactly what it would be: tens of thousands of PLA dead at the order of Xi in service of his old man's ego, and economic disaster for both countries, followed up by the most riotously uncontrolled occupied territory in the PRC. Taiwanese people in living memory bled to overthrow a military dictatorship, you think they won't fight to do so again?
There's a distinction between countries and governments. Both sides officially consider themselves to be China, the country, but under different, competing governments. They're the product of a civil war inside China, after all.
The current ruling party of Taiwan would like to change that, but they haven't done so for the obvious reason that the PRC would not accept it (and most Taiwanese people prefer to just leave things as they are).
> Both sides officially consider themselves to be China
There is no "China, the country." "China" just means, essentially, "Empire." It's like a country claiming to be Europe, or maybe better, The Roman Empire. Many States may try to make claims for the title to support their legitimacy and heavenly mandate to rule, but that doesn't make it true.
> They're the product of a civil war inside China, after all.
Only one side of that conflict still exists. The other was overthrown by the people of Taiwan in the 90s. Descendants of those overthrown maintain government positions under that party name, but it's essentially a different government, given that it's a multi party democracy now, not a single party military dictatorship.
> The current ruling party of Taiwan would like to change that, but they haven't done so for the obvious reason that the PRC would not accept it (and most Taiwanese people prefer to just leave things as they are).
This is mostly true, with caveats: Most people in Taiwan prefer independence, but don't want to declare it to trigger a war, so therefore they only prefer status quo because it involves independence without war. If they could get it, most Taiwanese would prefer declared independence with no threat of war, but pragmatism rules out.
I'm also not sure I agree the DPP is necessarily pro-overt independence, just the current president tends to use more aggressive language than normal.
There was a civil war inside China, with the rulers of both competing sides claiming the entire country as their own for decades after the shooting ended. Inside Taiwanese politics, there has been a shift relatively recently (in the last 20 years), but it would be a major shift if that were actually implemented as official policy.
> Many States may try to make claims for the title to support their legitimacy and heavenly mandate to rule, but that doesn't make it true.
We live in a post-WWII world of national sovereignty and inviolable borders (or at least we did until very recently). That's what China rests on for its claims, legally speaking.
"France" is a great example, as is "Italy." What we perceive of when we hear those words is a territory and government that are perfectly overlain. In reality, what one might consider France or Italy in reality contains other sovereign states! San Marino, The Vatican, Monaco, Andorra.
Personally I think it's important for modern people to reject this feudal era idea that a government can claim a mandate to rule over certain territories just because of the territory of previous governments, or because of the distributions of certain ethnicities, religions, or languages. I think it's important for people to maintain an identity separate from any given government, to defang the ability of governments to leverage racialized nationalism to protect the state's continuity at all costs, even to the detriment to the people living in its territory.
By the way, it remains false that Taiwan makes any claims to PRC territory. Imagine how silly you could make me look if you could quote exactly where in the Taiwanese constitution it does! I invite you to try.
> Imagine how silly you could make me look if you could quote exactly where in the Taiwanese constitution it does! I invite you to try.
Okay, since you asked for it. Article 4 of the constitution of the Republic of China:
"The territory of the Republic of China within its existing national
boundaries shall not be altered except by a resolution of the
National Assembly."
This was passed in 1947, when the Republic of China very explicitly claimed all of China (plus Mongolia). The constitution sets that claim in stone, and says that it can only be changed by an act of the legislature. There's never been such an act.
Taiwan formally recognizes mainland China as the "Mainland Area," and legally considers it part of the ROC but under different rules than the "Free Area." It's a legal mess that arises out of formally claiming a territory that they don't control (and now no longer want to regain control over).
I didn't realize it was the same person I had made this comment to twice, so I will copy and paste my answer here:
> > The key phrase is "existing boundaries." The constitution was passed in 1947, when the "existing boundaries" of the ROC were very clear: all of China, plus Mongolia.
Nope, they were never formally defined, not even in legislation.
This flexibility was explicitly acknowledged in the constitutional reforms, when a clear delineation was made between "territory the ROC controls, and mainland territory (which the ROC does not claim)". The constitutional court also addressed the question directly: https://cons.judicial.gov.tw/en/docdata.aspx?fid=100&id=3105... TLDR "the constitution does not define the actual territory."
Thus, the constitution does not represent the ROC claiming PRC territory. Lacking any other Taiwanese claim to the territory (legislation, etc), it's therefore a fact that Taiwan makes no claims whatsoever to PRC territory.
> and legally considers it part of the ROC but under different rules than the "Free Area."
There is no evidence to back this claim.
> It's a legal mess that arises out of formally claiming a territory that they don't control
There is no evidence that Taiwan makes a formal claim to territory it doesn't have sovereignty over (aka, PRC territory).
They were formally defined by the term "existing boundaries," which was clear in 1947. It most definitely did not mean the island of Taiwan, a tiny part of the Republic of China at the time.
> TLDR "the constitution does not define the actual territory."
That's not the TLDR of the ruling, and nothing like that appears in the ruling. The TLDR of the ruling is that the court does not have the authority to rule on what the territory of the ROC is.
> Thus, the constitution does not represent the ROC claiming PRC territory.
The constitution clearly defines the existing territory as the borders of the ROC at the time of the passage of the constitution, in 1947. That was explicitly maintained by the ROC government for decades after it lost the civil war. The current ruling party doesn't agree with it, but hasn't changed the constitution or passed any act that eliminates the claim.
>> and legally considers it part of the ROC but under different rules than the "Free Area."
> There is no evidence to back this claim
You're disputing that the ROC formally defines a "Mainland Area," as opposed to recognizing the mainland as belonging to a separate country? This is not even something you can reasonably dispute. They do use that legal fiction.
China looks like the good guy now, but if Xi decided to “reassert control” over Taiwan, it would quickly become an international pariah and everyone would forget about Trump immediately, the country would immediately be isolated from everyone other than their closest (geographically speaking) allies. Is China ready to do that? Not today, maybe in a decade or two (when they’ve replaced the USA as the top economic/military power, there won’t be severe consequences). Xi is smart enough to wait, taking Taiwan now wins them nothing and loses them everything.
> We'd just cut off all of our goods manufacturing and leave the shelves empty? I don't think it's likely.
All bets are off if China attacks Taiwan now, I think, it would be hard but there would be a response like that. In a decade or two, probably not, but more due to China's dominance in the world by that point rather than just their ability to make things clout.
Xi isn't dumb, he isn't going to stir the pot right now, he doesn't have to, China doesn't have much to gain from it. China has nothing but patience.
Iraq was much more popular in 2003 [1] than the current war in Iran is [2].
[1] "In the months leading up to the war, majorities of between 55% and 68% said they favored taking military action to end Hussein’s rule in Iraq. No more than about a third opposed military action."
[2] "Some 27% of respondents said they approved of the strikes, which were conducted alongside Israeli attacks on Iran, while 43% disapproved and 29% were not sure"
> It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue.
> When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war,
In 2007 the US was the sole world hegemon. It could afford to let the smartest people work on ad delivery systems.
In 2026, in certain fields, China has a stronger economy and military. Russia is taking over Europe. India and Brazil are going their own way. China is economically colonizing Africa.
The US can't afford to let it's enemies develop strong AI weapons first because of the naive thinking that Russia/China/others will also have naive thinkers that will demand the same.
---
People were just as naive with respect to Ukraine. They were saying that mines and depleted uranium shells are evil. But when Russia attacked, many changed their minds because they realized you can't kill Russians with grandstanding on noble principle. You kill them with mines and depleted uranium shells.
Hopefully people here will change their minds before a hot war. As the saying goes, America always picks the right solution after trying all the wrong ones.
> Dean Ball: What Secretary Pete Hegseth announced is a desire to kill Anthropic. It is true that the government has abridged private-property rights before. But it is radical and different to say, brazenly: If you don’t do business on our terms, we will kill you; we will kill your company. I can’t imagine sending a worse signal to the business community. It cuts right at heart at everything that makes us different from China, which roots in this idea that the government can’t just kill you if you say you don’t want to do business with it, literally or figuratively. Though in this case, I’m speaking figuratively.
And probably some of the same companies where you could get fired for publicly expressing some mildly controversial sociological theories like James Damore did are also companies that would not hesitate to work with the CIA or the Pentagon on mass surveillance or weapons systems.
2007 was 19 years ago. If you step back another 19 years, you'll find that the major tech companies of the era had huge defense contracts: IBM, HP, Oracle, SGI, Texas Instruments, etc. Not only that, the development of many technologies we take for granted today -- like integrated circuits, the Internet, even Postgres -- were directly funded by the DoD. Much of the growth of Silicon Valley in the early days was a direct consequence of working with the military.
Most people here have no cultural relationship to that era of 38 years back. You may as well talk about the bubonic plague that ravaged San Francisco in the early 1900's and how it changed the course of the city that eventually led to where it is today.
It's certainly entertaining to read about ancient industry history, with people on DARPA grants objecting to military interest in the stuff the military was paying them to do.
In 2000 I worked for a company that was building a mobile telephony and data product. The partner company asked us to help them implement the lawful intercept function, as is required by law, which we did, however they were asking for 5+% LI traffic when the common practice was 2-ish%. Our hardware was exceptional, we could trivially have done 100% at line rate with zero impact. The engineers all stepped aside, and finally: "Fuck those guys. They get their 2%."
It's one of the better ethical moments I've had in my career of working for _mostly_ very ethical companies (so obviously not any social media or crypto).
> I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.
> I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.
> my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war
Holy mother of bubbles. No, for several decades it was a common thing for the L3 Harris, Lockheed Martin, etc to scoop up half the geeks from most graduating classes.
Yes, the equivocal wording means nothing. It's clear that Anthropic has no moral qualms about participating in war crimes, since that's been America's MO since forever. America has provided free weapons to Israel to continue their slaughter in Gaza and has now joint forces with the same to assassinate leaders under the auspices of peace talks, and kill schoolchildren and other civilians as part of a terror campaign.
You have to recognize that boomers, with all their faults, took military action seriously. And Silicon Valley looked up to the likes of John Perry Barlow and 60s counterculture.
How well do horses fare against tanks - anyone know? Tanks are really big and bulky and I'm sure (well-trained) horses could literally run circles around them, which wouldn't do any good because how would you get through the armor.
A cavalry charge was tried once in the opening days of WW1. A machine gun took care of it. Tanks have machine guns.
P.S. Horses where then relegated to hauling equipment around, not combat. This persisted even into WW2. The Germans used horses extensively for transport. You don't see it much in the documentary films, as the cameramen were instructed to not show the horse drawn stuff. They wanted to present the image that the Wehrmacht was mechanized.
Has it though? I'd say it's morphed, not changed. This is still, underneath it all, Hanseatic League and East India Company domination style colonialism, but adapted to and shaped by the digital age.
The US has pretty much all throughout its history had its military-industrial complex and warfare as an economic motor too, and in view of this, it's inevitable that software gets integrated.
Israel, the most recent settler-colonial state (of course some people try to claim it's not using various mental gymnastics, but I'm not fooled), was the experiment and has become a model for how to intermingle the industrial-military complex with society to the degree they two become indistinguishable, and with backing of the West it's been a very profitable and, I hate to say it, successful model.
Here's[1] a review of a book about the subject, talking about the state incubating start-ups and spawning a tech sector for the sole purpose of warmongering.
Be careful with this "they are all the same" logic. As an empire, I would rather have the WWII to 2016 USA than the current one and the current one to Russia.
It’s like cheating on a spouse, it’s not much of a claim to say “id never cheat” when there are zero opportunities to do so.
Same with the claims from companies like Google - “dont be evil”. Easy to say when there is nothing on the line.
But when the choice is between your claimed morals and the future success of your company, those morals disappear in a hurry. But they were never strongly held in the first place.
There's an old German short film called Nicht löschbares Feuer (Inextinguishable Fire, 1969)[1] that I'm fond of. It was a protest film against Napalm and how some companies wouldn't really let their employees know what they were actually working on.
"I am a worker and I work in a vacuum cleaner factory. My wife could use a vacuum cleaner. That's why everyday I pick up a piece. At home I try to assemble the vacuum cleaner. But however I try, it always becomes a sub-machine gun.
...
This vacuum cleaner can become a useful weapon. This sub-machine gun can become a useful household appliance.
What we produce it depends on the workers, students, and engineers."
This question has been boiling in my brain for quite a long time.
Consider a hypothetical scenario where one spy chinese or russian programmer working in Google or Meta might have siphoned off (copied and uploaded) all the important code (Monorepo) to the Mothership and all of us are now sitting ducks.
I am sure, this question might have crossed your minds. I have no idea. if blueprints for the TPU chip design could get leaked, imagine what might have already happened?
Minor point but this doesn't only have to be russian/chinese spies but rather this can be anybody including say the UK/Israel or even countries which can be considered "allies"
I'd also be surprised if this code isn't already available with the US forces too and sometimes the enemy can be from within too.
DOW Chemical was producing Agent Orange, but was getting a ton of public pushback - so bad it decided to stop production, forcing the Pentagon to look for an alternative supplier.
That supplier? A German privately owned pharmaco called Boehringer-Ingelheim. It's Chairman at the time? Richard von Weizsäcker, future President of Germany.
The production site was in Hamburg, is contaminated for the next thousand years. Boehringer is legally forced to operate pumps to prevent the dioxins in that site from reaching the water table. If those did, it would wipe out the full population.
This is really, really , really bad revisionist history boarding on fanfiction - The U.S. military directly built the entire foundation of the modern tech industry. There's a reason that the Internet started out as ARPANET (ARPA [now DARPA] being a DoD agency).
Ever since I was young I was fairly divided on the subject. I've dealt with some highschool students affected by the downed aircraft MH17 and that lead to lots of grief among students. It usually lead to strong anti-war sentiments but some also felt a need to "do" something with it.
If no one works on defence systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized, perhaps not this week but in 5 years. Therefore I can reconcile the idea of working for defence related r&d. I also know that these sentiments are used by unscrupulous individuals to gain influence, but I don't feel like we should let that cause a divide between people with a strong moral compass and those without, since we'd be worse off if there was no one in a position of power to make moral decisions. That requires people to judge work based on it's content instead of the domain. It also requires workforce to have enough collective pressure to stall immoral defence (or rather attack) systems.
Automated decisionmaking tools throw a wrench into this because it brings us steps closer to mass deployment of questionable and potentially unhinged munitions. If laws mandated human-in-the-loop systems it would be a better outcome.
No one should apologize for feeling conflicted while giving an issue considerable thought. Constantly reassessing your position based on the changing nature of the world should be encouraged to be the default approach.("Constantly" within reason of course).
I can imagine some Americans making a decision based on the threat of other authortarian states and being left completely bewildered when they have to grapple with the notion that their government may be the bigger threat to their own security.
> If no one works on defense systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized
The reality is that the US government has not historically been engaged in defense. They have been engaged in offense. If you live in the united states and work on "defense," you are working on offense. If even if you are designing something like missile interceptors, they have historically been used primarily to protect US assets in wars that the US started.
That's a psychotic thing to say about starting new wars and aiding genocides. The only thing that's being defended are the profits of western oligarchs.
> If no one works on defence systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized, perhaps not this week but in 5 years
All the things we have are jeopardized because those systems are actually attack systems and were just used to start a war. We will be lucky if it wont grow into WWIII.
And I just read an article about how those defense systems are used to bomb hospitals with double tap tactic - meaning you bomb rescuers when they come. Literally the first day of that no-defense war, they were used to bomb a school. And before that, they were used to execute fishermen and maybe smugglers with no judicial review. Just to make someone feel manly.
> If no one works on defence systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized, perhaps not this week but in 5 years. Therefore I can reconcile the idea of working for defence related r&d.
I am not saying this line of thinking is completely absurd. But I think every individual considering this should reflect a lot. (1) Is your country using its ""defense"" systems wisely? (2) Won't the technology be replicated by adversaries anyways? (3) etc..
Overall, the number of people and resources spent on Weapons R&D is probably significantly more than people working on things like diplomacy, ethics, or activism for international human rights (assuming human rights violations are the only legitimate reason for war).
It's significantly safer for individual nations and humanity as a whole if we're not all armed to the teeth constantly on the brink of large conflict, and instead are more or less ethically aligned, all respect basic human rights, and respect other nations.
I don't think the world has changed. There's just a madman in the white house. Look at the "Presidents" tweet for god sake... how is this normal?!
"THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS! "
"The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution. Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.
Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!"
The project management book we used in the university noted that if a person refused to work on weapons/military systems and similar, there's no other choice than to respect that, and even asking for its reasons would be borderline unacceptable (depending on your closeness with said person).
Now the only reason models trained on any and every public data can't be attached to autonomous weapons is that we didn't fed enough data to these systems to carry this tasks reliably yet.
You said the overton window is moved, yet there's no window to discuss about in today's world. As a human being you either get exploited or get exploded. In either case human is the product. We just serve machines at this point.
What we now call Silicon Valley was created by the Navy in the late 19th century because they needed advanced radio technology to coordinate Pacific patrols. From then to about five years before the time you’re talking about, schools and tech companies worked closely with the military.
On the timescale of the industry as a whole, working with the military has been the norm and we are seeing a reversion to mean after about two decades of aberrant divergence.
These are kind of unrelated issues. You’re right that it used to be companies just didn’t want to be involved in war at all, & generally speaking that isn’t going to cause issues.
The core of the issue here is having a private company which is trying to dictate terms of use to the military, which is not really something that has been done before afaik
Originally this contract was signed with these terms included, and it wasn’t until Anthropic started investigating how its tech was used by Palantir in the Maduro operation that this became an issue.
On a surface level it seems like Anthropic is doing the right thing here but this is really at the root of this & the outcome of the case (and whether or not Anthropic is a legitimate supply chain risk) depends entirely on the details of those conversations they had with Palantir.
I quit a job 8 years ago because I learned my code had been deployed inside missiles. Many of my colleagues had similar red lines. I doubt many would now.
Maybe not war, per se, but still relevant to this topic, around this time, there was a famous AT&T whistle blower (Mark Klein) who described the company's role in domestic surveillance by the NSA.
Maybe companies are more open about it today, but it is hard to make such a wide assertion.
As much as I agree with a lot of these principles, in principle, the crux of the fight is Anthropic feeling and behaving like they're entitled to be involved in things far beyond anything they're legally allowed to be, and the military leadership telling them, rightly, to take a hike and not let the door hit them on the way out.
Effective Altruism is a deeply silly, flawed, unserious, superficial way of engaging with the world if this, FTX, and shrimp welfare are the outcome of people putting it in action.
What Anthropic wants is to be able to go back and pontificate and sue a government if they determine that their terms of service have been violated. In order to enforce that, they wanted oversight, access, and to intervene if they felt it was being put to a purpose they disagreed with, namely surveillance or autonomous weapons/killing, etc.
As an AI platform, they can decide if they want the military to be able to use the software. I'm 1000% on board with this. They don't get to sit an Anthropic employee down and say "ok, now you watch these soldiers and make sure they follow the rules, and if they do anything wrong, you hit the big red button that shuts them down."
They don't get to program a Claude oversight agent to do that, either. That messes with realtime operations.
They don't get to go back and sue "ackshually, we looked at these logs and determined that you violated rule 102.3a in the contract, because one of the terrorists was participating from an IP address determined to reside in the continental US" or whatever.
Anthropic doesn't get to hold the US military accountable. It doesn't get to do oversight. It doesn't get to constrain its scope of operation, through legal threat or active intervention or contracts or otherwise.
Chain of command and rule of law constrain the US military. Congressional oversight and rule of law hold it accountable. A private contractor, no matter how noble or principled, doesn't get extra privileges.
Anthropic playing political games, advocating for unelected and unaccountable power to be granted a private corporation, is what got them designated a supply chain risk, and I can see the argument for it. Depending on how much effort they put in to hassling the government and pushing for their side, it remains to be seen whether the designation sticks.
And in principle, I also see the utility of being extremely heavy handed when slapping down a private company trying to make a power grab like that. Either through ignorance or incredible arrogance and entitlement, a private company and industry needs to learn their place in the grand scheme of things. Anthropic isn't special, their place is right alongside all the rest of we the people; they don't get extra privileges because they feel strongly that they're particularly right or righteous.
OpenAI effectively said "yeah, rule of law, thumbs up, sounds good." and took the $200B on the table.
Anthropic was pushing for extra private oversight and accountability, and it doesn't matter if it was surveillance, autonomous weapons, or not eating babies - the particular rule doesn't matter, the precedent being set of private corporations getting a say, at all, beyond legal limits, is the point. No company gets to tell the US military what to do or what not do, or hold them accountable post-hoc, or constrain available options, because if they absolutely need to break a technicality for a good reason, when national security and defense is under consideration, a private company's rules and terms of service is the very last thing in the world that should be important to that discussion.
I'm a Snowden fan and absolutely want the global surveillance apparatus to vanish, and don't want an AI singleton dystopia, and I'm probably waaayyy more liberal and liberty minded than is reasonable, but even I can understand where this line in the sand is, and why it's there. I'd be shocked if Dario lasts the year as CEO, it's clear he's ill equipped for real world, adult decisions.
VCs have mined all the low hanging fruit of the internet. Exactly how many attention grabbing advertising companies, crypto scammers and gambling sites can the world stand. Enshittification is forcing them to seek new horizons.
Around 10 years ago, in college, in Calculus class I had a very ambitious classmate, wanted to go to DARPA and work on Robotics. I asked if he was thinking it through solely from technical perspective or considering ethics side as well. Clearly, he didn't understand the question and I directly inquired - what if the code you write or autonomous machine you contribute to used for killing? His response - that's not my problem.
After spending couple of years studying in the US, I came to conclusion that executives and board members in industry doesn't care about society or humans, even universities don't push students towards critical thinking and ethics, and all has turned into a vocational training, turning humans into crafting tools.
The same time, at Harvard, I attended VR innovation week and the last panel discussion of the day was Ethics and Law, which was discussed by Law Professor, a journalist and a moderator and was attended a handful of people. I inquired why founders, CEOs or developers weren't in part of the discussion or in attendance? Moderator responded that they couldn't find them qualified enough to take part in the discussion. The discussion basically was - how product companies build affects the society? Laws aren't founders problem, that's what lawyers are for, and ethics - who cares, right?
This frenzy, this rat race towards next billion dollar company at any cost, has tore down the fabric of the society to the individual thinking level; or more like not thinking, just wanting and needing.
>” I inquired why founders, CEOs or developers weren't in part of the discussion or in attendance? Moderator responded that they couldn't find them qualified enough to take part in the discussion.”
This seems more like credentialist arrogance than a well-reasoned judgment.
See in your case with the military you can directly say, hey my code will be used to bomb other people possibly. But in today's times it isn't (I am sure even then) so cut and dry. I worked in AdTech industry (like 60% of the bay area techies). So the ad tech I write gets shown to millions/billions. What about ads influencing elections and then politicians waging wars? Anti-vax ads which influence people and then kill them. Scam ads. Insurance ads and then people not getting cancer meds from the same insurance. Am I responsible for those deaths? I would say Yes.
But what is the option? I feel each of us wants to draw a line based off of our morality but the circumstances don't allow us to stick to it (still gotta pay rent)
We are all on a Titanic the way I see it. It's just the DARPA guy is gonna sink first. Rest of us are just pretending to be Jack trying to be the last ones to go.
Well you cannot be responsible for adults' discernment or their critical thinking. If those same ads are being shown to children that would be different.
I don't see this as a binary thing. Legally we tend to draw a clear line between child and adult for pragmatic purposes, but I don't think my responsibility of intent disappears just because someone hits a magical number. I have steered clear of various gambling / "gaming" jobs which have had silly high salaries as a result; I don't in any way want to participate in things which are meant to play the weak points of the human psyche like a harp, for profit.
And it's a fallacy to assume that critical thinking is something that you're born with. In addition to the media landscape being completely ingrained into society. I can't really escape recommender engines anymore when consuming media.
If your exposure to media is curated since you were born, how are you going to tell if you're being deceived? It's pretty much the allegory of the cave.
There are forms of advertisment that are not so bad and there is a need for kill devices since there are lots of other existing kill devices. But this ad technology and this actual war ministry who take pride in revoking all "woke shit" like "rules of engagement" - I would not work for. There is other work, even if it pays less, but money ain't everything.
Oh if you are looking for dirt, you can find dirt allmost anywhere, but im gemeral I do see a difference in making a website for a kindergarten, vs applying the most efficient tech to track and target children with manipulative ads.
> But what is the option? I feel each of us wants to draw a line based off of our morality but the circumstances don't allow us to stick to it (still gotta pay rent)
I was with you up to this point, but when you say "life is to hard to stay moral" I am thinking about how buying the wrong shampoo contributes to micro plastic in the ocean, or how buying a fitting jeans that is not exploiting labor is an extremely time intensive endeavor, or how avocados may be vegan but often produced unsustainable. Basically I thought you were making this point from The Good Place https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lci6P1-jMV8 .
But when you are working in IT, an industry that is generally still very well of, avoiding an employer that is actively making the world a worse place, is a low bar to cross. It's just one decision every few years, which also is comparatively easy to research (you are probably doing it as your normal preparation for the job interview anyway) and the impact of that decision is enormous in comparison to most other decisions you make, so it's well worth it to ponder a bit.
Given the atomization and layering of work, this has become much harder to truly judge. Ten years ago I was excited to join a customer feedback platform - what could be better than helping companies understand their customers and provide better services and products? You can probably see where this is going, but inevitably the tools were just used to better tweak product profitability and eliminate end customer surplus, to the customer company’s benefit. And they were used by the likes of draft kings et al along with the Starbucks and Nikes of the world. I hear people claim that, in capitalism, no one hands are clean, and I am inclined to agree.
The option is to quit your job and go get a different one. It amazes me that people choose to work at Meta etc. I mean, it’s good for them, but they are choosing a bit more money whilst harming the rest of society. That’s a really bold move, to say that you just don’t care about other people.
Agreed. You can quit. That is always an option. "Gotta pay the bills" is definitely valid for some small subset of the us population but that certainly doesn't apply to software engineers in a hub like the bay or seattle. These people delude themselves into thinking they "must" have their ridiculous Meta pay to pay for their $2.5M house and their current lifestyle. Golden handcuffs and turn the blind eye to what they are doing.
> So the ad tech I write gets shown to millions/billions. What about ads influencing elections and then politicians waging wars? Anti-vax ads which influence people and then kill them. Scam ads. Insurance ads and then people not getting cancer meds from the same insurance.
Don't forget ICE and other government agencies using the bidstream data to track the location and behavior of immigrants, dissidents, etc, so they can be tracked down and arrested and sent to the gulag.
> "The fact is that a mere training in one or more of the exact sciences, even combined with very high gifts, is no guarantee of a humane or sceptical outlook."
> what if the code you write or autonomous machine you contribute to used for killing?
This line of thinking, that creating machines that kill is unethical, will destroy the West. If the US wasn't so good at producing killing machines in WW2, you wouldn't be here to complain about DARPA ethics.
Instead of having engineers develop the most advanced machines for killing (i.e. protecting the West) such people go into producing the most addictive content delivery systems, destroying the brains of minors.
We’re the bad guys. We were only the “good guys” for like 4 years in the 1940s and we still did internment camps. Everyone is costing off that 80 year old aura to justify a death machine.
Which is why on a human level I have zero respect for many CEOs. The world would be a better place without them and they are actively working on making it worse. In fact I believe the rest of the tribe should punish them for this anti-social behavior to disincentivize it in the future.
The one industry that people dislike that I haven’t been in is war. I hope to be in weapons one day. The ethics are pretty straightforward to me: kill as few as possible to protect your interests; and that may be many people; but it is not really that many people.
Anyway, I won’t guess at your friend’s motivation but if you gave me the ability to make America’s industry better at prosecuting war you’d better believe I’d do it with great enthusiasm.
Besides I’ve been around long enough to know that when the rubber hits the road the ethical people will find their way rapidly to the Paradox of Tolerance and suddenly find that violence is highly desirable. I find this kind of high variance behaviour is undesirable and leads to unhappiness all around.
Nothing has destroyed my faith in humanity more than the frantic race to the bottom of the AI insanity the last couple years. You can feel the frenzied greed in the air, masses of investors piling over each other to get a piece of the golden pie at any cost. It’s fucking disgusting.
Oh? Name them, with receipts for actions taken, not vague gestures towards morality.
The actual logical end point of most of the 'for the good of humanity' folks in the bay area is:
'Only I can be trusted with the money, power, and weapons that I believe will break the world, but I promise it is for the best. No system or power should hold me to account in the event I am wrong or change my mind. Trust me.'
There is no such thing as “qualified”. The engineers actually doing the work definitely get a seat at the table, otherwise it’s an academic circle jerk detached from reality.
What if a new weapons technology was developed by an adversary but not developed by your country. Then it was used to attack and perhaps conquer your country? Or cause an unduly higher number of casualties due to disparity of force?
"We both want a docile American public who go along with our desires so we can achieve goals that may be contrary to the interests of the American public."
The Department of Defense was named as such after the detonations of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
We - as a humanity - collectively recognized the weight of our creation, and decided to walk back
Discussing “AI alignment” in the same breadth as aligning with a “Department of War” (in any country) is simply not an intellectually sound position
None of the countries we’ve attacked this year pose an existential threat to humanity. In contrast, striking first and pulling Europe, Russia, and China into a hot war beginning in the Middle East surely poses a greater collective threat than bioweapons, sentient AI, or the other typical “AI alignment” concerns
Why aren’t there more dissidents among the researcher ranks?
> Why aren’t there more dissidents among the researcher ranks?
Because they’ve likely all lost faith in humanity watching Trump get reelected and now just want to get rich and hope to insulate their families from the reality we’re all living in.
Not disagreeing with you but “I lost all faith in humanity so I might as well run the gas chambers” is the delusion of a psychopath and completely inexcusable.
Among those who would resist, half would've done so outwardly by now and been fired, the other half would be hiding their activity. In both cases we wouldn't be hearing about them now.
The bomb was built with decision to delay shipment until the 13th to see if Japan surrendered. On the 13th no word had come, but the shipment was further delayed to wait for word anyways. On the 14th word of Japan's decision to surrender was announced. https://www.marshallfoundation.org/articles-and-features/gen...
Had the bomb already been shipped, nothing about these delays suggests it would have instead been dropped before surrender instead of just delayed there. In reality, the pause sources from when Truman intervened immediately after Nagasaki (which was bombed on the 9th, Hiroshima previously on the 6th) by the 10th in hopes of unconditional surrender instead.
Had Japan not surrendered for some reason (they had more going south at the time than just the nukes) the US may well have dropped a 3rd bomb over another approach. That said, I'll give due credit to Truman that the activity was paused on hopes of surrender first rather than waiting for the next one to arrive.
Technology and national defense are 100% part of the same conversation.
I'm not saying the government can't overreach or over control, but if I or you or any of us were in charge of the defense of a country then we'd want to make sure technology from our country at the very least wasn't used to hurt us and if possible used to help us.
That's what alignment means and it's totally reasonable.
Nazi Germany and Hitler didn't pose an existential threat to Europe until they did pose a threat.
And even then you had politicians like Chamberlain in the UK who wanted to make peace because the UK wasn't directly threatened (this is after much of Europe was under siege).
Would love to enumerate those commonalities. Run by a psychopath? Commitment to violent lethality? Burning billions of dollars for uncertain goals? (ok there's one)
As someone looking at this from outside the US, the whole sequence of events is frankly terrifying.
I fear that frontier AI is going to be nationalised for military purposes, not just in the US but across the globe.
At the same time, I really don’t know what Anthropic were expecting when they described their technology as potentially more dangerous than an atom bomb while agreeing to integrate purpose-built models with Palantir to be deployed in high-security networks for classified military tasks.
Good cop/bad cop has proven very effective at manufacturing consent. The two political parties of capital interests have it down to a science. This is just the AI iteration playing out.
Well I will say that if there's a word that describes what the Department has been up to in Venezuela and Iran, "Defense" does seem to be the least Orwellian option.
I was actually very impressed with their post. It’s a work of art for how carefully it was worded.
My takeaway is that they are bending a knee to smooth things over. It’s business and it’s human behavior. They are actually furious and would love to tell Trump to crawl up his own ass, but that doesn’t help anyone in the long run. It’s in everyone’s best interest to get back to work and hope for the best tomorrow. It’s the adult thing to do. However, it's exactly why humanity is the shitshow it is right now. One side is trying to keep the world going by adulting while the other side keeps acting like complete fucking idiots.
> Our most important priority right now is making sure that our warfighters and national security experts are not deprived of important tools in the middle of major combat operations.
> we had been having productive conversations with the Department of War over the last several days, both about ways we could serve the Department that adhere to our two narrow exceptions, and ways for us to ensure a smooth transition if that is not possible.
Why are people leaving openAI when this is Anthropic's stance?
Are their two narrow requirements enough to draw the ethical boundary people are comfortable with?
Frankly it’s a shitshow all around.
The truth is that nobody gives a fuck about this. They have no moral qualms, just practical.
And these are the people that should bring us the future.
Man what a depressing scenario.
I am not greatly relieved by this post of Anthropic's. That said, they seem to have lines and are willing to stand by them; I don't see where OpenAI has done that. So, for now and from my point of view, the point goes to Anthropic.
Moving my subscription is not terribly consequential, but since the products are so similar and easy to substitute with one another for my uses, it seems best to participate in what in aggregate is a signal that is being noticed and commented on and interpreted to mean that a significant number of people who buy AI access do care about this.
There are so many inference providers not working for Department of War. Even Alibaba and sure China has lots of issues but they are not bombing anyone now if that's your first priority. Or else, smaller US / European / Asian companies with pure civilian focus. SOTA open weights models they serve are perfectly suitable for coding and chat. I run a local Qwen3.5-122B-A10B-NVFP4 instance and it writes entire Android apps from scratch and that's a midsized model.
Can you give a list of high quality alternatives? Morally speaking i would put China on par with the US if not worse (due to their ongoing Uyghur genocide). I will check out Qwen3 but would be interested in others.
Sorry for the off-topic but what hardware are you running Qwen3.5-122B-A10B-NVFP4 on? Is it physically local or just self-administered? Thanks in advance.
What’s a “warfighter?” Do they come from the “Gulf of America?” We used to call them servicemen or service members. Emphasizing they served the people. I guess that’s too effeminate for our roided up and ironically hyper-insecure Secretary of Defense.
A new term was needed some decades ago. "man" titles have not been politically correct for a while, "member" sounds awkward and bureaucratic. In some other languages, "soldier" can be used for all military personnel, while English ended up with a more narrow meaning.
"Awkward and bureacratic" is literally the point of naming conventions commonly adopted by democracies. Titles like "president" or "prime minister", departments like "Department of Defense", referring to government employees as "civil servants", etc. are all intentional measures meant to strip away the prestige and egotism associated with positions of authority in an effort to avoid it going to people's heads, and to remind them that they are meant to serve the good of the public that pays for their existence rather than ruling over them.
"Service member" is awkward, because it has too many syllables. People won't use it when shorter alternatives are available. And it's bureaucratic because it's unspecific. It doesn't tell anything the service those people are members of, and it doesn't tell what kind of work they do.
You're right about the age of the term but it's nothing to do with combat, but rather just a nice sounding umbrella term that makes talking about joint forces easier because every military service has their own special name for their personnel (soldiers, sailors, Marines, etc..).
The POGiest of POGs are "warfighters" and individual organizations within the DoD proudly advertise how they serve runny eggs and chicken to warfighters every day or issue their uniforms/equipment with incredible lethargy or maintain their personnel records in 20+ different systems duct taped together.
"Service member" does get used a lot still. Usually abbreviated to "SM".
Source: Personal experience in both combat arms and non combat arms roles.
Not really a new term: “warfighter” always has made me cringe but it’s been commonplace in defense contractor pitches to DoD for many years. Basically, if you hear it being used you’re likely in the presence of someone who does (or did) DoD work. Totally unsurprising to see it here given this is a DoD contracting argument that we’re all watching from the sidelines.
The term war fighter is distinct from service member. War fighter means mission critical and typically in a theater, while a service member might be someone sitting behind a desk in a less critical role. Similar to having mission critical production systems and supporting production systems.
When you perform your business impact analysis, these will bubble up in different ways, requiring some differences to the playbooks.
There isn’t really a distinction day to day on this in practice. It covers everybody - just easier to say than all the official titles and typically for morale helps to carry the name all the way to the back office to connect to what’s happening at the pointy end.
Because there aren't any actual good guys in this story. There is one group that is taking short term gains, and another group that feels rejecting this will lead to long term gains. Neither one of them gives any shits about the use of their technology in to kill people. They just are interested in their companies turning a profit.
Both of these companies have heavy PR teams that they use to convince you that they do, in fact, care about these issues. But that is PR and generally to be considered bullshit. They care about nothing other than their bottom lines.
This has been a wonderous PR move by Anthropic. It gets to make money off the US war machine while somehow being able to portray themselves as the "good guys" in the story leading to that whole #cancelOpenAI trend. If you're dumb enough to believe that Anthropic is really the "good guy" in this story, I have some meme coin to sell you.
Trump also says it's war. Different parts of US government leadership are arguing opposite tacks. That said, it's clearly intended to create an existential threat to Iran, so it's plainly obvious that the USA started an actual war.
I will bet that before the election, you were one of the many shouting that voting for Kamala would mean war with Iran.
It's pretty wild to observe you all getting firmware updates in real time. At least it proves, once and for all, that any attempt at reasoning is futile.
That may be true but changing the department's name can only be done with an act of congress, which has not been done yet. Thus, the name is still officially and legally Dept of Defense.
Just because a name is more accurate doesn't mean that it's its new name. Otherwise we wouldn't be the United States of America (we are literally not united bc Hawaii and Alaska are not contiguous, and we are figuratively not united because... Well, you know)
As a recap, my reply to your reply was that DoD is the actual newspeak, and your reply to that evolution of the discussion is that you were not discussing newspeak.
In trying to understand if I'm missing something, I looked up what newspeak means. I (as well as probably a few other commenters based on the contents of their comments) was under the assumption it meant "new speak" meaning it's something new.
In case anyone else reading this was not aware of this, this is what I discovered.
It's a term from George Orwell's 1984, describing a language used to make thoughts unthinkable by removing words from the language. It has nothing to do with "age of the term."
Hence, Dept of Defense is indeed newspeak. Dept of War, while being a new name for the dept, is too literal to be newspeak.
Thanks for the opportunity for me to learn something!
Department of Defense has historically been a prime example of newspeak.
I think Department of War is also newspeak. Or at least, they didn't change the name just to get the name in line with the amount of war the department does.
They changed it because they wanted to do more even more war. The amount of war the department does under the name "Defense" has been status quo for a long time, and my take is they wanted us to think of them differently so they could do even more war, which they have since been doing.
The person you're responding to probably hasn't read the book and is just parroting the word. That's kinda where we're at right now in society. I see the comments by malfist and abustamam are similar. No idea what newspeak means, just parroting and saying "that's not its name".
The problem will get worse as we have a generation raised by LLMs.
After hearing Palmer Luckey's argument for the name change[0], I tend to think it's good change.
Some of his arguments:
It used to be called the department of war, and it had a better track record with regard to foreign conflict, under that name then it did under the DoD name.
Department of war is a more honest name, department of defense is a somewhat newspeak term, although "Department of Peace" would be worse.
It's harder to seek funding for "war", then it is to seek funding for "defense".
If you ask someone, "Do you want to spend money on education or war?", you will get a different answer asking, "Do you want to spend money on education or defense?".
The problem with this argument is that the _original_ Department of War is now called the Department of the Army, which existed alongside the Department of the Navy. Besides, it’s a moot point unless Congress actually changes the name.
Regarding Luckey's other statements, I can almost assure you that the administration did not think as much about it as Luckey has. Insecure Pete just thought the title "Secretary of Defense" was too wussy so he wanted to be Secretary of War.
Also, I think people mainly have issue with the fact that Trump is just randomly and unilaterally renaming random stuff and demolishing buildings without congressional approval. If he had gone through the correct alleys then maybe people could ignore it. Maybe. We'd probably still have qualms about it, but at least we'd know that our representatives had a say.
It’s a good change in that it discourages unwarranted funding. Bad for the DoD’s budget, good for the country.
It’s analogous to why `React.__SECRET_INTERNALS_DO_NOT_USE_OR_YOU_WILL_BE_FIRED` is a pretty good name.
(But even if it's a decent name in isolation, it isn't actually the name of the department, and using it is a tacit submission to the power of the executive over congress. So… bad overall.)
Good point. Yeah it's an accurate description of the department; I'd want to rename a bunch of other departments to be more accurate too, since apparently names are arbitrary now!
> It used to be called the department of war, and it had a better track record with regard to foreign conflict, under that name then it did under the DoD name.
Oh good, I've always had respect for soldiers, but never the govt. I'm glad to hear that soldiers are not buying into this name BS.
Edit: not sure if you're talking about the term warfighters or dept of war. Either way, warfighters just sounds silly, regardless of how long its been in use, and dept of war also sounds silly. It's like what my 5 year old nephew would call his fictitious military agency.
Warfighter - it’s basically “oh we got a badass over here.” People who take things and themselves too seriously and chest pound about their service too much.
It’s exactly the kind of language people like Hegseth love.
No, they didn't. The name of the department at issue is “the Department of Defense” and of its head the “Secretary of Defense” — these are set in statute (the latter for slightly longer time than the former) and the relevant statutes has not been changed, since the office of the Secretary of Defense was created in 1947 and the Department of Defense was created in 1949. The executive branch has just decided to use a nickname for a government department (which is the historical name for a prior department which was split to form two of what are now the three main direct subordinate elements within that department.)
I went to a military high school up until 2011 and never remember hearing it. My dad and grandpa were military for 20 years each and I've never heard either say it. It definitely hasn't been used broadly in the US for very long (maybe in very specific circles). Even my friends who work as engineers for defense contractors now have never called people "war fighters" around me.
Idk, it might've been used on stuff in the past. My point was that it wasn't a thing that normal people (even normal people in the military) would say. The person I'm responding to described it as "common use" for the last couple decades and that just doesn't match up with my experience at all.
Well, I’m in the US and have been following politics closely for the entire time window you mention, and this year marks the first time I’ve heard it. It is very jarring and a notable rhetorical shift from the concept of “service”.
Everytime I hear 'Department of War', it just saddens me. Warfighter is the same.
"When the way prevails in the empire, fleet-footed horses are relegated to
ploughing the fields; when the way does not prevail in the empire, war-horses
breed on the border." Tao Te Ching chapter 46.
Long time ago I worked for a company that I learned was selling it's software to help target people during the Iraq war. I quit because I cannot support building software that kills people.
This is a message to people working for that line of business at Anthropic. You don't have to do it, you can quit. If you are helping this insane administration to conduct war on Iran quit. You don't need to have that kind of blood on your hands.
I saw a someone's hypothesis that a generative model was used to help classify buildings to decide what to bomb and that the Girls school was misclassified. If this was an Anthropic model, I can imagine what it feels like being a worker there in that line of business.
I've also quit a job where the products I was working were meant to be deployed to CBP to hunt down immigrants. It's a nice gesture, but it won't stop these companies. They just hired someone else without an ethical backbone, and continued the project like nothing happened.
Tech leadership is rotten to the core, and that can't be fixed by individuals making a stand.
Yes, a point of view without an ethical backbone, at least in the context of American society. I suppose they could be a Chinese or Russian national considering it ethical to harm the United States, but I don't see a point of drawing that distinction.
Being blanket against CBP is a position without an ethical backbone. It’s just a childish burying head in the sand. Every semi stable country enforces its immigration laws and checks passports of visitors. Claiming the US doing so is somehow unethical is completely misaligned with a sustainable welfare and government services system.
The problem is not the roles, but how those roles are carried out and the complete lack of accountability. It's difficult for citizens to believe that government agencies are noble endeavors when we see ever-creeping anti-Constitutional scope, and rampant unpunished criminality among their members. It would be fantastic if this weren't the case, of course. Unfortunately the only check mechanic we the People seem to have is to consider them hostile entities best avoided until they're drastically reformed.
I don't see masked thugs harassing citizens in other countries. Maybe the problem isn't that immigration is enforced, its how they are doing it? Both Obama and Biden deported more people than Trump.
I've quit jobs and been laid off from jobs and I will admit that when I do, I always kind of hope that the company goes bankrupt the day after I leave because I was so important. Companies I've quit or been laid off have gone bankrupt, but it took years and sadly I don't think there's any way for me to draw a logical connective of "no tombert -> company fails".
I've never quit a company on purely ethical grounds, but I have turned down interviews and offers because of them. They're probably not going to go bankrupt just by not hiring me, but I like to think that making it incrementally harder to find talent slows down their progress of doing evil things, if only a little.
That's probably still a delusion of grandeur on my end, but we all should have an ethical line that we won't cross; most of us end up working for monsters and/or assholes, especially at BigCos, so your options generally boil down to "work for an asshole who's doing evil that you can live with" or "go live in a Unabomber shed". I guess it's important to make sure that "the evil thing you can live with here" isn't just any act of evil.
At a technical level, I don't believe they're specifically working on targeting anyone. They're providing a general-purpose API that Palantir is presumably using to build the target-finding software.
I imagine that's why the implementation got so far along before this blew up. Someone at Anthropic talked with someone at Palantir and they had a "you did what? Did you read the contract terms" moment, and that was after it went into production.
Normally I'd agree with this sentiment, but I'm having a hard time feeling bad we took out the Ayatollah. You know, what with him killing tens of thousands of Iranians who demanded reform. I didn't care one bit for him doing that.
I too quit a job that made a significant pivot to weapons R&D. It was a hard move, and honestly I still haven't recovered from it. I don't regret the decision in the slightest though.
One aspect that sticks with me was the sheer excitement of a lot of people in the room, engineers excited to be working on new problems. I believe many didn't consider the consequences of their labor.
As a worker it can take time for it to sink in that the products you are actively working on are being used for immoral/unethical purposes. I've also noticed a perceived weakness when expressing these types of views to colleagues, responses either masked by apathy or just direct justified destruction of lives along patriotic or ideological lines.
Its worth bringing up these stories whenever appropriate I believe, people sometimes _need_ a jolt even if the probability of success are low.
To state the obvious, I think when corruption and power in government go unchecked, companies eventually end up facing situations like this. It’s almost like making a deal with the devil.
At the beginning, they’re usually doing it for the money — and maybe some level of patriotism. Eventually they find themselves involved in things so ugly that they can’t really stomach it anymore. At the same time, they can’t easily back out either.
Then a new CEO comes in and thinks the previous guy was too soft, "He couldn’t handle it, but I can."
Mike Masnick's commentary at [1]. (Yes, I'm aware that he used "hostage note" to refer to a note written by a hostage rather than a note written by a hostage-taker.) Key excerpt:
> Under any previous administration—Democrat or Republican—a company telling the Defense Department “we’d prefer our AI not make autonomous kill decisions without human oversight” would have been a mostly unremarkable negotiating position. It might have been a deal breaker for that particular contract. The two sides might have parted ways. What would not have happened is the Secretary of Defense going on social media to accuse the company of “betrayal” and “duplicity,” the President directing all federal agencies to stop using the company’s products, and the company’s CEO subsequently having to write a public groveling statement apologizing for having accurately described the situation while pledging free labor to the government that attacked him.
It'll be very interesting to see how this case gets resolved - in court and in the court of public opinion. I believe it's incredibly important and I hope they prevail.
I would say to you who would equivocate and dither about lending your skills to a morally and ethically compromised war machine in exchange for a fat paycheck, the same thing that I teach my children:
"Everything and I mean everything can be taken from you except your integrity, only you can give that up"
I used to work in defense, and this is not true either. People work in defense because it is effectively a job where you can never lose your job except for absolute gross misconduct, have a hard-cap of 40 hours a week / 80 hours a pay cycle (commonly leads to people working "9/80 schedules" and taking every other friday off), and generally speaking you have a lot of chances to move around org charts when programs change. A "cushy" job with very low chance of being fired with a stable paycheck is valuable to a lot of people.
There are also missions people find valuable, like SBIRS ground, where theoretically real lives are being protected. I know a lot of people who enjoy finding meaning in their work, and there are many programs that bring that level of satisfaction (again, look at things like SBIRS ground).
> But if we don’t trust that process and we’re like, ‘Well, the laws are behind the tech, so I’m going to make a decision that impacts 3 million people in the department and then 350 million people in the country’, you don’t get to do that, if you believe in the system. And if you don’t believe in the system, as imperfect as it is, what do you believe in? You’re taking upon yourself to, kind of, be God. And that’s not something that I want, even though I’m a small government free market person. The government has to have a monopoly on violence to protect the country.
What a weird (and false) dichotomy. If I don't want the government to use AI for fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance, I'm taking upon myself to be God?! Also, "monopoly on violence" never meant unregulated violence.
I think this is one of the weaknesses of rationalism and effective altruism, is that it tries to make a clean break from the common law legal reasoning that the government, and thus corporations, operate on. While I find rationalism to be a useful lens, the fact is that the common law legal framework is totally dominant, and so these deontological arguments made rationally collapse very quickly when translated to the dominant framework.
To be fair, common law and the current system are totally fucking dumb. Everyone that has come up with it and perpetuates it should be ashamed of themselves.
As much as Trump and Hegseth would like it to be called the Department of War, it still takes an act of Congress to change the name of the Department of Defense. No reason to call it by anything else until that happens.
Departament of defense sounds like a newspeak for a country that was not in any danger of being invaded for a century or more and all the wars abroad it participated in, it entered pretty much by choice. Department of war is way more accurate.
This is such a foot stomping childish thing to get caught up on. It does not at all matter what a dept is called. Try to get over the extremely superficial.
Not everything has to be a conspiracy or some 4D chess business move. Dario is a morally motivated person and regretted the tone that was being conveyed in that memo, so he apologized.
Yeah, that's completely unbelievable. You don't just accidentally call Trump a "dictator" or go on an extended tirade about Sam Altman. Clearly, he was speaking how he truly felt and how he's doing damage control.
Its incredibly simple - they want to get off the supply chain risk list.
Its very evident in his statement, he's trying very hard to clarify what that list means for corporations and downstream business with large commercial and strategic companies.
Imagine if Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc decided that they don't want to ANY sort of minuscule risk (real or perceived) to their massive public sector business lines (via all their DoD DoJ NHS and other 3 letter agencies, state agencies, city and local municipals etc) - and decide to cancel their enterprise Anthropic licenses - which is a VERY possible scenario.
And these are the big players, theres a whole slew of medium and small players all with existing government contracts that need to tread carefully.
One of the things that Altman does great is that when he writes he writes as though it will be read by the public every time. It’s why he is able to constantly post his own internal memos/posts on twitter. It’s great too because it makes him look “transparent”.
We deserve to know if Claude was involved with targeting the girls’ school that was bombed in the first hours of the attack on Iran. 50-100+ girls are reported to have been killed.
Claude is integrated into Palantir’s Project Maven targeting system. The Pentagon has touted how many more targets they were able to attack with this system (1,000’s).
NY Times: Analysis Suggests School Was Hit Amid U.S. Strikes on Iranian Naval Base
Reuters now reporting "U.S. military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school that killed scores of children"
At this moment, I think we should have politics in left, right and center of our workplaces and life discussions everywhere. If you are not explicit with your stance then you are going to dragged along without your choice.
Politics has nothing to do with this. Simply put, spying on citizens or letting machines autonomously kill people is immoral, bad, and a crime against humanity.
What a world we live in now where private companies are apologising for the "tone" of their speech while official representatives of the government daily express blatant lies and misrepresentations without the slightest fear of consequence.
It really is incredibly sad that what was one of the most respected countries in the world has descended to this - an utter mockery of a functioning democracy.
The apology was for an earlier leaked post. In that post his tone descends into a diatribe, deserving of apology.
He lashes out, accusing others of lies, spin, gaslighting and peddling. He refers to "Twitter morons", takes a swipe at Trump (who doesn't) and self-delights in the belief that Anthropic are seen as "heroes" while the competition "sketchy".
This feels like the time when 2 people in my friend group broke up, and both they kept writing me essays to explain why they were the ones in the right, sharing incredibly intimate details about who is in the right hoping I would act as some sort of fair mediator and judge.
It's a sad reflection on how low our country has fallen that the one tech company that tries to hold to some value -- nothing outstanding, just something very basic -- not only gets branded a "risk" but has to virtually grovel as Amodei does here.
DoD still has not meaningfully moved to the DoW moniker, to me it represents the most fascist tendency, to make announcements and presume that’s enough to change the truth on the ground. The legal entity one contracts with is DoD. Going along with “DoW” is signal to me that a party has capitulated to the most absurd form of governance.
Pragmatically, it's for the best to use its preferred name instead of legal name when sucking up to the department and Trump to try to get back in good graces.
Everyone knows that the companies have to comply, so a company trying to convince the public that they can choose to not comply, is just telling a lie. I don't understand why Anthropic tries damage control here. Why not just admit that all the data given to them, is also used for war-purposes? We currently see the build-up of a much larger warfare. These things are inter-connected. Even more so when some of it is done for politics (e. g. re-election or simple election "boosters"; reminds me of the old movie Manufacturing Consent or the follow-up "brother" Wag the dog).
What do you mean they have to comply? If something was already in a contract they agreed to, sure. But there is nothing legally forcing private companies to do business with the DoD, short of the government forcibly nationalizing them.
Anthropic: totally cool if you use our tech to kill women and children if you do it the right way, but not totally cool if you use it for certain types of surveillance.
The public: Anthropic are so noble, we should give them ever more praise and money.
Is that the synopsis? (Not really paying attention.)
It has become a moral imperative to not work on this technology that is meant to replace us and the one thing that has separated us from machine and beast.
Slow it down as much as possible to give us more time.
I'm sorry but it does not very much still exist. Otherwise, Congress would be doing something other than praying for the Anointed One and his holy war.
I'm not obeying in advance, but I'm not giving lip service to normality, either.
You are. Congress could stop this right now if they wanted. That they aren’t is of course a problem, but that’s very different than saying the system of checks and balances doesn’t exist. The latter is giving the executive power it doesn’t have.
The executive doesn’t pass laws. Congress created the Department of Defense. Only Congress can rename it. The executive being elected is irrelevant to this point. The Constitution actually matters.
Let me state this very simply: executive agencies have only the power granted to them by Congress. So yes, all actions taken by an executive agencies are bound by the law. Anything else is ultra vires and of no effect.
But a civilian should have the right to participate in defense and not offense without fear of retribution or being humiliated. They are not the only game in town. All the DOW had to do was drop them, pick Openai and support the latter including recommending it to all the nations that listen to the president. That would be good for Openai business.
Despite being arguably the leading frontier AI lab at the moment, Anthropic is punished for not following orders. Pete Hegseth now has the power to determine the economic policy of the US when it comes to AI. The US is becoming a state-planned economy in the worst possible way.
no, but it wasn't common. It's Hegseth's choice of words, just like Department of War isn't the name of the DoD but Hegseth puts it on his office door.
The purpose of the system is what it does. The US keeps destabilizing countries, funding genocides, and indirectly killing millions upon millions. This has been the 'bipartisan' consensus of our 'elite' class since the beginning.
Look at the votes taken today if you need a refresher.
No one wants the middle way of 'capture' that hypothetically exists between peaceful cooperation and wars of domination, so it will not exist. You should consider, in this moment, if you stand for imperial aggression, or against it, as there is no third way.
"As we wrote on Thursday, we are very proud of the work we have done together with the Department, supporting frontline warfighters with applications such as intelligence analysis, modeling and simulation, operational planning, cyber operations, and more."
It's disgusting honestly. There are likely at least 136 directly reported civilian and child deaths linked to the operations where their services were used. And they are very proud.
I wish people still knew how to compromise when it's in their best interest to do so. Heads up for those that live in a fantasy land: They are going to create both autonomous weapons and mass surveillance with AI. It's better to have a seat at the table than to cede to your biggest competitor (of even more questionable moral / ethical character).
Can we stop buying into the stupid "Department of War" naming!? An act of Congress is needed to rename it, so unless that happens (unlikely, given the current leaning toward gebral inaction on the part of Congress), it's still the Department of Defense and we shouldn't buy into this administration's warmongering PR.
The internal memo did read as fairly unhinged and political, which is not the message Dario likes to present. I'm glad he addressed this. It was unprofessional and unhelpful - even if Sam Altman is, in fact, a disgusting lunatic.
The one where he accuses Trump of retaliating against Anthropic after failing to solicit a bribe?
That should be the headline here. We know Trump personally made $4B last year, and we know he's been using the full power of the US gov't to retaliate against people that don't "support" him.
Come 2029, when there's an opportunity for the corruption trials to start, this sort of behavior needs to be front of the public mind, both at the top, and throughout his network of appointees.
I find it frustrating that apparently we just gave up on Trump giving up his tax returns, or putting his businesses into a blind trust. This was a big deal in 2016~2019, but I guess the entire world just decided it wasn't worth it.
Now we have a president who doesn't even hide his bribes, and instead starts multiple cryptocurrencies and has a publicly traded company in order to optimize the bribery. Maybe this is this "Department of Government Efficiency" thing I keep hearing about; it's never been more efficient to bribe public officials.
> I find it frustrating that apparently we just gave up on Trump giving up his tax returns, or putting his businesses into a blind trust. This was a big deal in 2016~2019, but I guess the entire world just decided it wasn't worth it.
When you give a guy who started a coup the keys to the kingdom, instead of a life-long prison sentence, arguing over what his taxes were a decade ago is... Splitting hairs.
You got me wondering, so I checked to see how much Anthropic's bribed Trump so far. According to Dario, Trump has been soliciting bribes, but they refused to pay, and the contract "renegotiation" is retribution:
"Amodei claimed that tensions between his company and the Trump administration stem partly from the firm’s refusal to financially support Trump and its approach to AI regulation and safety issues."
I don't think we won't get AGI if Anthropic were to implode, and frankly, right now, I'd rather have someone say clearly, "They cannot stomach the existence of someone telling them 'No' or adhering to moral principles. Like spoiled children they can't hear the former and are terrified by later because it might expose them to the condemnation they deserve."
This is reflection of corruption in the system that you cannot escape. No one is calling out Trump on his corruption, illegal use of powers and pathetic behavior, killing of people and setting up world war 3. And we call out others. We need to stay strong. If it comes to world war 3, we all lose.
“ Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences.”
What a sentence that inspires trust in Anthropic. DoW is currently bombing a sovereign country in a blatant act of aggression. It has been complicit in the gaza genocide. There should be zero cooperation.
the US military is operating outside of all domestic and international law, and the fucking idiots at anthropic think they get a say? mumbling lackies!
they took money from that particular devil, and are owned now.
- Companies need to please Trump exist
- CEOs can no longer speak on issues which might hurt the go of president
- Freedom of expression is limited to freedom to support Trump
"fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance"
I still don't buy this discussion. How exactly do they want to use an llm for autonomous weapons, given it's not even possible to reliably have a piece of code written without having to review it?
And how is a 1M token window model suppposed to be useful for mass surveillance?
Honest questions, I am sure I am missing some details. Because so far it looks like a very sophisticated marketing strategy.
One thing is playing Pokemon, one thing is decide who to kill. Also: if they are planning to use it on the field, there is going to be a velocity issue. Claude and any other LLM require a non negligible amount of time to ingest the input and spit the output.
You seem to be under a mistaken impression that there is some good faith and competence here. Fascists don't give a shit about accuracy. Collateral damage actually increases the fear of being mistakenly caught up and encourages those at risk to loudly support the Party hoping it will protect them.
Not really. Look at the longstanding "I didn't think the leopards would eat my face" dynamic. The whole movement is rooted in othering an outgroup for which violence against is moral and good. None of its supporters imagine themselves ever being in that outgroup, and if they do end up there by then it's too late.
In the domestic surveillance context, it's not like decisions of an automated system are ever going to be used to arrest anybody the bossman is protecting.
On the battlefield, commanders don't really care about collateral damage to the grunts, generals don't really care about collateral damage to whole units, etc. Look at how Russia is prosecuting its meat grinder against Ukraine. That type of failed state oligarchy appears to be the Trump regime's grand vision for our country.
It's very easy to make up for that with a human in the loop or deterministic secondary checks (enumerated list of protected people or locations). The point is that nothing about the "AI" magic has to be super accurate.
It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue.
When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds.
Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic and not moral grounds. To do so, they have to couch it in language clarifying that they would love to support war, actually, except for these two narrow exceptions. And their careful word choice suggests that they are either navigating or expect to navigate significant blowback for asking for two narrow exceptions.
My, the world has changed.
Military isn't quite as aggressively catering to the people who historically have bullied techies as they used to.
Aside from that - there's a lot more people in tech now. It grew too fast too quick to maintain all the values it had back in the 00's and earlier.
Yes, and even their two exceptions, only one is on moral grounds. They don't want to provide tools for autonomous killing machines because the technology isn't good enough, yet. Once that 'yet' is passed they will be fine supplying that capability. Anthropic is clearly the better company over OpenAI, but that doesn't mean they are good. 'lesser evil' is the correct term here for sure.
The flip side is it's very unlikely that AI won't become that good any time soon, so it'll always remain a means to hold out. Especially since nobody has explicitly defined what "good enough" entails.
Hypothetically if we had a choice between sending in humans to war or sending in fully autonomous drones that make decisions on par with humans, the moral choice might well be the drones - because it doesn't put our service members at risk.
Obviously anyone who has used LLMs know they are not on par with humans. There also needs to be an accountability framework for when software makes the wrong decision. Who gets fired if an LLM hallucinates and kills people? Perhaps Anthropic's stance is to avoid liability if that were to happen.
Isn't this the moral hazard of war as it becomes more of a distance sport? That powerful governments can order the razing of cities and assassinate leaders with ease?
We need to do it because our enemies are doing it, in any case.
It came later than I anticipated, but it did come after all. There is a reason companies like 9mother are working like crazy on various way to mitigate those risks.
I do not think that anyone but the US and Israel have assassinated leaders in the last 30 years. I also question their autonomous drone advancement. Russia and China did not have the means to help Venezuela and they do not have the means to help Iran.
Russia and other states have demonstrably conducted targeted killings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heads_of_state_and_gov...
>"Russia and China did not have the means to help Venezuela"
Of course they have the means. Nothing technical prohibits them from blowing couple of carriers. But the price they would have to pay is way too high.
Did you mean Venezuela or Iran?
Because there are actual technical impediments why neither China nor the Russians could have blown a US carrier in the Caribbean.
>"actual technical impediments"
I do not believe so. Not unsurmountable at least. The consequences are however far from pleasant for each side
I do believe there are major technical impediments; other than a modern attack sub reaching that far undetected I can't think of how they would do it. The US is the only nation that can effectively project power so far away from its borders, almost anywhere in the world.
Furthermore, you mentioned this in response to "helping Venezuela", but even damaging a carrier (something technically very, very difficult for Russia or China) would not have helped Venezuela one bit.
It'd be more technically feasible for them to help Iran than Venezuela, and even that is not particularly feasible now, other than very indirectly.
>"would not have helped Venezuela one bit"
I think it would, meaning that right from that exact minute the US and Russia will be very busy and Venezuela left to it's own devices. Does not mean Venezuela would feel any better of course.
This is entering fantasy land.
There's no effective way of Russia to militarily help Venezuela and strike any US carrier. Same with China. You haven't proposed any because there is no feasible way.
Even if they could, such action would have been followed by the US knocking Venezuela out and taking them out of the equation. A neighboring ally of an actively engaged hostile power wouldn't be "left to its own devices".
We need to [develop military technology] because our enemies do it. I don't mean we have to commit war crimes because others do it.
I think it's the opposite. The human cost of war is part of what keeps the USA from getting into wars more than it already is - no politician wants a second Vietnam.
If war is safe to wage, then it just means we'll do it more and kill more people around the globe.
Safe for whom?
Safe for the aggressors, I mean. If war is easy and cheap for us to wage, we will do more of it, and likely make the world a worse place.
Your post reads as if you would rather those aggressors who threaten America to not be disposed of. How is the world a better place with the aggressors than without?
We're talking about Americans.
What genuine threat did Venezuela or Iran pose to Americans? Corporate interests don't count.
Do you not perceive a threat from a country with nuclear capability that chants "Death to America, Death to Israel" to be a threat to America? Venezuela I don't know about, but Iran was (is) most certainly a threat to America.
Iran has no nuclear weapons and no weapons capable of striking the US
Iran has a strong nuclear weapon development program. Negotiations could not halt it - they stall negotiations and continue development. So if they continue development during negotiations, why shouldn't the US continue her own parallel military route?
As for delivery, Iran does have missiles capable of launching a nuclear weapon at American assets in the Middle East, or American allies. Or even to just float it over on a ship.
Negotiations did halt it. Then Trump went back on the deal.
There's reports Iran agreed to limit themselves to only medical grade centrifuges as recently as last week.
And no, Iran does not have weapons capability to reach the US, period.
They fundamentally did not pose an imminent threat to the United States. A threat to American strategic goals is not an imminent threat to the American people.
Negotiations halted Iran's nuclear program for, as per words of the treaty, "10 to 15 years". That was in 2016. If that treaty were not torn up, then Iran would be allowed to unveil their nuclear weapon in January 16, 2026. Yes, two months ago.
No, they would be allowed to resume working on a nuclear weapon program, if a further treaty was not reached.
Well now you're not making any sense.
Is your claim that the deal was not preventing Iran from developing a nuke? Then why does the existence of the agreement matter either way?
Are you saying Iran would magically produce a nuke the very day the deal expired? Then why don't they have one today?
How does ending the agreement make it harder for Iran to get a nuke? How does "tearing it up" prevent anything that the agreement itself wasn't preventing?
If it's moral to strike at a country with nuclear capability that talks constantly about your country's destruction, then it's no less acceptable for Iran to strike the US than the other way around.
You can't condemn one and condone the other on that basis.
You are 100% correct. That is exactly my point.
Iran has both reason and were developing capability to destroy a significant part of American national security. America absolutely must prevent that at any cost.
You could argue about how the rhetoric between the states got so bad that they each threatened each other's destruction. But the fact is that they got there.
North Korea engages in no less saber-rattling. Why is the US not attacking Kim Jong Un?
I'm not familiar enough with Korean culture to know if suicide-for-ideology is culturally acceptable and expected. In Islamic ideology that is the highest honour.
Ah, so in the end, your reasoning for attacking Iran is racism.
That is very boring, caveman logic.
No, my reasoning is culture. I do not live in the United States, I don't base my worldview on race.
There exists a culture for which it is an honour to kill Jews. Pretending that this culture does not exist is racism. Disregarding the differences in values of other cultures is the most disgusting form of racism - pretending that one's own culture is dominant or universal.
Treating culture as uniformly distributed and absolute is racism. Your racism is blinding you to truths, leading you to illogical conclusions like the idea that it's possible to make an accurate assessment of military threat based on "culture." Hence why I called it caveman logic - you're literally defining your level of fear of another group of humans based on how different you (erroneously) perceive them to be.
You seem quite concerned with the plight of the Palestinians so I'll use that as an example: Jewish people experienced the worst, most widescale crime against humans ever committed, and then a few decades later, a subset of Jewish people turned around and began doing the same (at a smaller, less industrialized scale). This demonstrates the perfect universality and programmability of a human, which includes "human culture."
Any human culture can be molded to justify any existent human action. To pretend otherwise is to engage in ethnocentrism - what you accused me off, the presumption that there's something special about your culture that prevents atrocities happening under it.
The second that makes your argument racist rather than logical (if you refuse to budge on the word "racist," swap in "prejudice" - the fallacies are the same either way) is the homogeneous angle you're applying. This should be an obviously fallacious statement: "Christianity is a violent culture that supports violence against Jewish people, discrimination against gay people, and school shootings." Why is it fallacious, though? I know lots of christians that have done all of the above, proudly tying it back to their religion. You see my point, right? You would, presumably, never walk into a room of white people and assume they all share identical values - do it in America, half probably are tearing their hair out in frustration at the values of the other half. Yet you do it to Islam / Arabs / Muslims, because, frankly, you are racist against Muslim people.
An argument that depends on making a blanket statement about a group of people fails for many reasons: categorization (how do you accurately and scientifically select who falls into this grouping and who doesn't?), resolution (how do you account for outliers within this grouping, and how do you determine who might be an outlier?), absolutism (how do you account for the fact that people change?), and due to above, how could you justify making any decisions based on a prejudiced framing?
Racist arguments are completely dependant on fallacy. With a rigid application of rational reasoning, they fall apart. They're illogical.
Iran with nukes can't hold a candle to the threat posed by the USSR. Your logic would have turned the Cold War into a shooting war.
What about Red Scare interests? Venezuela traded with Cuba.
None of the recently attacked countries posed an imminent threat to the US.
In what kind of deranged world are we living that people are fighting against the notion that waging war on another country should be a costly decision!?
My, the Overton window has indeed shifted far.
Yes, I don't believe we should pre-emptively "dispose of" them, as if we were talking about garbage instead of human beings.
China threatens us, Russia threatens us, should we bombing them? Canada is threatened by us, demark, Spain, mexico, Cuba have all been threatened by us, should they be bombing us?
Your philosophy would see the whole world at war.
The troops were told they're headed for Armageddon this go round
And that is entirely the fault of American voters. The government is doing exactly what they said they would.
The danger is that we won't be sending these fully-autonomous drones to 'war', but anytime a person in power feels like assassinating a leader or taking out a dissident, without having to make a big deal out of it. The reality is that AI will be used, not merely as a weapon, but as an accountability sink.
Pretty soon we'll have depositions where the bots explain they thought they saw a weapon and were in fear for their lives.
Counsel: "How do you explain the nanny cam footage of you planting a weapon?"
Robot: "I have encountered an exception and must power off. Shutting down."
> 'war'
> anytime a person in power feels like assassinating a leader or taking out a dissident
I don't really see much of a difference nowadays
What do you mean, "hallucinates and kills people"? Killing people is the thing the military is using them for; it's not some accidental side effect. It's the "moral choice" the same way a cruise missile is — some person half a world away can lean back in their chair, take a sip of coffee, click a few buttons and end human lives, without ever fully appreciating or caring about what they've done.
The people that actually target and launch these things do think about what they have done. It is the people ordering them to do it that don't. There is a difference, I hope.
I'm sure it was meant as "kills the wrong people."
People are always worried about getting rid of humans in decision-making. Not that humans are perfect, but because we worry that buggy software will be worse.
War is not moral. It may be necessary, but it is never moral. The only best choice is to fight at every turn making war easy. Our adversaries will, or likely already have, gone the autonomous route. We should be doing everything we can to put major blockers on this similar to efforts to block chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The logical end of autonomous targeting and weapons is near instant mass killing decisions. So at a minimum we should think of autonomous weapons in a similar class as those since autonomy is a weapon of mass destruction. But we currently don't think that way and that is the problem.
Eventually, unfortunately, we will build these systems but it is weak to argue that the technology isn't ready right now and that is why we won't build them. No matter when these systems come on line there will be collateral damage so there will be no right time from a technology standpoint. Anthropic is making that weak argument and that is primarily what I am dismissive of. The argument that needs to be made is that we aren't ready as a society for these weapons. The US government hasn't done the work to prove they can handle them. The US people haven't proven we are ready to understand their ramifications. So, in my view, Anthropic shouldn't be arguing the technology isn't ready, no weapon of war is ever clean and your hands will be dirty no matter how well you craft the knife. Instead Anthropic should be arguing that we aren't ready as a society and that is why they aren't going to support them.
This is the right answer. When war becomes inevitable, we are forced to choose between morality and survival. I pass no judgement on those who choose survival.
The problem in modern wars is that those who start them claim that they do this for survival, but the claim is not based on any real action of the adversary or on any evidence that the adversary is dangerous, but on beliefs that the adversary might want to endanger the survival of the attacker some time in an indefinite future, and perhaps might even be able to do that.
Nobody who starts a war today acknowledges that they do this for other reasons than "survival", e.g. for stealing various kinds of resources from the attacked.
It has become difficult to distinguish those who truly fight for survival from those who only claim to do this.
> When war becomes inevitable, we are forced to choose between morality and survival.
The kind of modern wars we're discussing now are often not about survival. Often, the initiator of the war wants dominance rather than survival.
This completely changes the equation. I do pass judgement on those who would wage war to ensure their dominance and access to resources.
Yes, agreed 100%. Some groups see it as their mission to dominate Eastern Europe, or the entire Middle East, or the entire southern Asian continent. The smaller states in the areas are under constant threat.
However in the case of Iran, who openly calls for the destruction of America and is blatantly developing technology that seriously threaten America and other Middle Eastern states, decisive military action to prevent the threat is important. Don't watch the bully themself and wait for him to confront you, when he is telling you the whole time his intention to destroy you.
> Some groups see it as their mission to dominate Eastern Europe, or the entire Middle East, or the entire southern Asian continent.
Agreed that some countries seek to dominate other regions by force or threat, but you and I are not thinking of the same "groups".
> However in the case of Iran, who openly calls for the destruction of America and is blatantly developing technology that seriously threaten America and other Middle Eastern states, decisive military action to prevent the threat is important. Don't watch the bully themself and wait for him to confront you, when he is telling you the whole time his intention to destroy you.
No, Iran poses no real threat to America, and according to Trump last year suffered a 10+ year setback in their nuclear ambitions. Do you think Trump was lying back then, now, or both?
The US is asserting dominance. Even Trump occasionally says so. Iran mostly poses a danger to their own citizens and, arguably, against Israel when conflict flares up in the region, but not to the US.
By the way, the current situation in Iran is heavily influenced by actions by the UK and the US in the region, back in the 50s. So maybe meddling is not the right course of action?
When is war necessary, at the limit?
> Hypothetically if we had a choice between sending in humans to war or sending in fully autonomous drones that make decisions on par with humans, the moral choice might well be the drones - because it doesn't put our service members.
I guess let the record state that I am deeply morally opposed to automated killing of any kind.
I am sick to my stomach when I really try to put myself in the shoes of the indigenous peoples of Africa who were the first victims of highly automatic weapons, “machine guns” or “Gatling guns”. The asymmetry was barbaric. I do hope that there is a hell, simply that those who made the decision to execute en masse those peoples have a place to rot in internal hellfire.
To even think of modernizing that scene of inhumane depravity with AI is despicable. No, I am deeply opposed to automated killing of any kind.
The Gatling Gun was first deployed in the US civil war, not in Africa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatling_gun
The “machine gun” has a more complicated history, and the first practical example may have been Gatling’s, or an earlier example used in Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_gun
Forgive me I got the detail wrong. If your point was to deny that my imagined scenario never happened, read this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_gun
Basically all types of weapons have been used in all sorts of conflicts; the British used aircraft in their mandates, and the Italians used chemical weapons in Ethiopia. That said, I am not aware of any weapon which was developed specifically for use against a less technologically advanced adversary, most novel weapons are developed for use against peer-adversaries.
> That said, I am not aware of any weapon which was developed specifically for use against a less technologically advanced adversary, most novel weapons are developed for use against peer-adversaries.
This is a strange take that I didn’t expect to hear. I suppose that the strongest defensive systems do require the most sophisticated offensive systems to defeat, in theory. But there exists asymmetry there as well ($50k drone destroys $1B radar).
My take on weapons development is that there were plenty of mass killing (or mass punishment) devices developed specifically for use by colonial powers against indigenous peoples. This happened alongside weapons development for weapons intended for, as you put them, peer-adversaries.
Revolts happened, and colonial powers needed effective ways to keep indigenous peoples enslaved.
Doesn’t this just lower the bar on going to war? Putting real lives on the line makes war a costly last resort.
Be grateful that you live in a culture that feels this way, and protect that culture. Not all cultures share this value.
True, but this doesn't in any way undermine the point that making war easier is not a good thing. It should be a costly decision, lest leaders of even those cultures find it too appealing.
In general I agree. 100% agree.
But the AI cat-for-war has left the box for both Iran and the US. Opposing US development of AI for warfare will not suppress US's adversaries from developing the technology.
It's sort of like the opposite of this idea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Fisher_(academic)#Preven...
> Fisher [...] suggested implanting the nuclear launch codes in a volunteer. If the President of the United States wanted to activate nuclear weapons, he would be required to kill the volunteer to retrieve the codes.
>> [...] The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being. [...]
>> When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, "My God, that's terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President's judgment. He might never push the button."
> — Roger Fisher, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 1981[10]
There should be two knives so the volunteer can defend themselves if they don't think starting a war is worth it.
That's so idealistic. We should know by now the reality of power and what kind of people end up in power. Anyone who could climb all the way to the top would kill the volunteer without a second thought, and then go smile on TV.
You're confusing lazy cynicism with realism. Patrick Bateman is a fictional character. The vast, vast majority of people, including even most soldiers, and definitely pretty much all businesspeople, no matter how unscrupulous, do not have the capacity to violently murder a person they know and harbor no ill will towards with their own hands on short notice.
maybe they should make the person with the codes black. I think several cold-war presidents probably wouldn't have a problem with that
The whole damn point behind the idea is to achieve the exact opposite. Make it someone, through whatever criteria, whom the president will have a problem killing, so he'll only do it under the most extreme circumstances.
This is exactly how all other weapons of mass destruction were rationalised.
"If we develop <terrible weapon> we can save so many lives of our soldiers". It always ends up being used to murder civilians.
Literally the justification for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Do you think a continuation of the firebombing campaign and an invasion of the Japanese home islands would have resulted in fewer deaths of civilians (particularly of the 'volunteer fighting corps')?
That's to say nothing of the deaths in a potential US/USSR conflict that goes hot without the Damocles Sword of MAD...
This is a false dichotomy. In the words of the post-war US strategic bombing survey:
"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
While this is all speculation, that was at the very least a defensible point of view held by a bunch of Americans shortly after the war.
Regarding firebombing: Hiroshima alone killed probably more civilians than the entire Tokyo firebombing campaign. A firestorm is a terrible thing, but you can still run from a fire even if your whole city burns down; you can't run from a nuke.
So if you measure collateral damage primarily in civilian deaths, firebombing still looks much better (a hypothetical firebombing campaign would have probably killed <40k civilians in Hiroshima instead of 100k, guesstimating from Tokyo numbers).
Edit: I don't think dropping the nuclear bombs was especially ethically questionable compared to the rest of the war, but I feel it is very important to not whitewash that event as valiant effort to save young American conscripts. Regarding it as a slightly selfish weapon demonstration feels much more accurate to me.
I don't think regarding it as a "demonstration" is accurate either.
Nuclear bombs appear as uniquely horrifying and requiring special justification only in hindsight. Back then, it was just another type of bomb. The thought process behind dropping it was simply "let's hit them as hard as we can until they surrender".
"Back then, it was just another type of bomb."
To some of the military leaders, sure. To the scientists and politicians, it wasn't viewed through such a simplistic lens.
> Nuclear bombs appear as uniquely horrifying and requiring special justification only in hindsight. Back then, it was just another type of bomb.
I disagree slightly with that take. Decisionmakers knew that those singular bombs were gonna glass an entire city each, and previously almost untouched targets were selected to better show and observe the effect.
If you're at a point where you can afford to slash the primary target (Kyoto) because of nostalgic value to your secretary of war then it becomes difficult to rationalize the whole thing as "normal genuine war effort" and makes the thing look somewhat of an optional choice.
But from my point of view much more questionable decisions were made than the atomic bombings, and hindsight is always 20/20.
> previously almost untouched targets were selected to better show and observe the effect.
I read that this was not the primary motivation; rather, those cities were basically on the top of the "list of industrial centers we didn't get around to bombing conventionally yet, but were going to do next".
Did Americans know or believe that the Japanese were planning to surrender when the bombs were dropped, or only after the fact? That’s important because the Japanese didn’t even entertain the idea of surrender in July (Potsdam Declaration).
Because the Japanese were still fighting, the wartime economy was still trying to produce what it could, and the Japanese government was arming and instructing its civilians for fighting.
Post-surrender, it’s easy to say “we were planning to surrender”, especially to save face and pass the buck to the Americans for what the Japanese government brought on their people by continuing to prosecute the war effort.
> Do you think a continuation of the firebombing campaign and an invasion of the Japanese home islands would have resulted in fewer deaths of civilians (particularly of the 'volunteer fighting corps')?
I don't know, but there's a lot of evidence this wasn't a factor in the decision to drop the bombs on Japan. The planners for the invasion and the planners for the bombing weren't exactly talking to each other and coordinating the strategy.
They had the bomb and they were going to use it. Everything else was an a posteriori justification.
Now think what will happen with easily deployed AI-powered weapons.
> the moral choice might well be the drones - because it doesn't put our service members at risk.
Not so clear cut. Because now sending people to die in distant wars is likely to get a negative reaction at home, this creates some sort of impediment for waging war. Sometimes not enough, but it's not nothing. Sending your boys to die for fuck knows what.
If you're just sending AI powered drones, it reduces the threshold for war tremendously, which in my mind is not "the moral choice".
All of this assuming AI is as good as humans.
Our drones will fight their drones, and then whichever side loses, will have their humans fighting the other side's drones, and if the humans somehow win, they will fight the other side's humans. War doesn't have an agreed ending condition.
> Anthropic is clearly the better company over OpenAI
Why do people keep falling into traps of anthropomorphize companies like this? What's the point? Either you care about a company in the "for-profit" sense, and then money is all that matters (so clearly OpenAI currently wins there), or you care about pesky things like morality and ethics, and then you should look beyond corporations, because they're not humans, stop treating them as such. Both of them do their best to earn as much as possible, and that's their entire "morality", as they're both for-profit companies,.
> they have to couch it in language clarifying that they would love to support war,
This is what baffles me when I see people flocking to them for subscriptions based on these events.
If LLM's are indeed a game changer professionally, you kind of need to pick one.
Personally, I loathe seeing power shift towards mega corporations like that, away from being able to run your own computer with free software, but it feels like the economics are headed that way in terms of productivity.
You cannot rely on a closed source "AI" in someone else's cloud for your work. After all, it can be disabled for you at any time. "AI" can easily steal all your technological secrets. At the request of the owner, "AI" can easily mislead you and insert backdoors into your products. "AI" can even easily incorrectly answer some questions specifically for you if the owner of "AI" wants to remove your competition. And you may not even understand it.
I agree with all that. And yet, here we are.
Technological surplus was created and then it was usurped and used for nefarious purposes.
> it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds.
(spoiler alert)
Wasn't this one of the plot points of the Val Kilmer movie Real Genius? They had to trick the students into creating a weapon by siloing them off from each other and having them build individual but related components? How far we've fallen! Nobody has to take ethics during undergrad anymore I guess...
Reminds me of the story of someone's woman working for a research lab to improve the computer-controlled automatic emergency landings of planes with total power failure.
... or so she was told.
She was unknowingly designing glide-bomb avionics.
I feel like these stories are apocryphal. I mean, I can't say for certain that no US DoD research program used subterfuge to trick the performers into working on The Most Racist Bomb. But I can say that in 20 years I've never seen a dearth of people ready, willing, able, and actively participating with full knowledge that they are creating The Fastest Bomb and The Sneakiest Bom and The Biggest Bomb Without Actually Going Nuclear.
IDK, maybe it's different outside the National Capitol Region. But here, you could probably shout "For The Empire" as a toast in the right bars and people wouldn't think you were joking.
I feel like these stories are apocryphal.
They're not. But if it makes you feel better to believe that, everyone has their own coping mechanism.
What? I'm not questioning whether the weapons research actually happened. I'm questioning the sincerity of people claiming they didn't know what they were doing. I've seen plenty of weapons programs. They aren't a secret to the people working on them. My point is, the government doesn't need to lie to researchers or even pay them very well to get them to develop weapons because there are plenty of intelligent-enough people willing to do it almost for free.
If "This doesn't fit into my mental model, so everyone else must be lying" is how you deal with things you didn't personally experience, do what you have to.
The inability to accurately cite any story about this, and the "friend of a friend" structure is what implies it's garbage.
Not to mention it itself requires a conspiracy theory: "no one would do this work voluntarily" (or "all the smart people have to be tricked because they're so smart they obviously agree with me").
As though people don't just go and work at Boeing or Lockheed Martin.
> "no one would do this work voluntarily"
The much more common reason is compartmentalisation. Employees are told as much as they need to know, no more.
If someone can design a glide bomb without knowing that it has an explosive payload, then they're not told.
The fear is not so much the employees themselves (they might be quite patriotic!) but that the information will leak out to the enemy, giving them a chance to counter the weapon or copy it.
That's a very different proposition to what the various parent posters are implying though. Like if you work for a defense contractor, you know what your work is for even if you wouldn't know exactly what the product or application was.
It was posted on HN by the husband of the person involved. Find it yourself.
Lots of people working on the Manhattan project did not know what they were working on. The core group of physicists did, but not many others.
I think you could get away with that excuse in 1945 when this whole system was first being created from scratch. It's been 80 years since then.
They knew the US was at war and they knew it was a government program for military purposes and they knew they were dealing nuclear materials.
A journalist not involved at all figured it out just fine, but at the very least it's not like it wasn't going to be a weapon.
Frankly though I wonder what the various judgemental people in these comments think about say, the tens of thousands of people who at the time were just straight up making artillery ammo.
I've worked as a contractor for a safety system that turned out to be for a foreign military. I was given a signal, and told to write software to fit it. The signal could plausibly be collected for a wide variety of civilian purposes.
What I realized later was that none of the civilian markets could possibly justify the cost of the project.
The particular type of signal fitting I was doing was only achievable by a few thousand expensive domain experts in the world, so, I think that addresses your other point.
Because working on things that go boom is like working on fireworks. The fact the end up on people is incidental.
“someone’s woman”?
lol I am guessing that was an autocorrect error.
I once saw the word nickel autocorrected incorrectly into something far worse. It was funny given the context (metals, not coins) but I wondered why someone would even have that word in their autocorrect dictionary.
What's in the autocorrect dictionary usually has nothing to do with what you typically write. No reason to wonder (i.e. if the insinuation being that that's a word they'd typically use).
We could joke about the auto correct knowing your subconscious mind.
Except if Facebook has auto correct, you can be sure it’s driven by a personal dossier on each of us, correlated by AI with every other person on the planet.
They know you were thinking that word!
The neverending benefits of personalization.
I see you have not met my (ex) sister in law. Alternatively, you have, and you are a much better (stronger? More stoic? More charitable? I don’t even know what it would take) man than I am. Hats off to you, and Godspeed!
My worst autocorrect story is a message to my mother in law referring to my sister in law. I told my mother in law that I’d give my wife’s sister “a*al’ when I got there. It was supposed to be ”a call” I’m still traumatized decades later.
God bless you for referencing that film.
>I’m going to tell you about how I took a job building software to kill people.
>But don’t get distracted by that; I didn’t know at the time.
Caleb Hearth: "Don't Get Distracted" https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted
But he did know he was going to work for the military.
"I’d be joining a contracting company for the Department of Defense."
(But interesting article otherwise)
To be fair, the name of that Department used to be very confusing...
The name of that Department was chosen to be aspirational, to encourage it to try to keep within its Constitutional guardrails, to keep it focused on the right mission.
Sure, it often didn't live up to its aspirations and a lot of the fence posts of those Constitutional guardrails got moved, but wearing those aspirations on its sleeve left some room for people to challenge it and openly criticize it by reminding the Department of its guardrails and its mission.
The name change is disrespectful to the Constitution, if not terrifying for other reasons.
Yeah but this itself doesn't necessarily have to mean anything, e.g. DARPA sponsored half of the nice things we're using every day.
"DARPA sponsored half of the nice things we're using every day"
That's a very bold claim. (And I am aware of the history of the Internet)
"Half" is obviously an exaggeration but apart from time-sharing operating systems, the Internet, what is now CSAIL and (partially) GPS, they sponsored a ton of open source projects. They used to maintain a catalog[0]. The Web Archive version[1] contains a partial list (e.g. OpenBSD was sponsored only for a few years and is not included there).
[0] https://www.darpa.mil/opencatalog
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140301185004/https://www.darpa...
The bigger issue with your perspective is that you do not realize that the underlying purpose of the things you do not attribute to the military or equate as bad, is still groundwork or “capacity building” deliberately for militaristic purposes and objectives, usually very intentionally so that you don’t realize it. You would likely not support things if you were overly told what the underlying objective was.
Let me put it this way, if you wanted a populace that will willingly enter the military to serve your purposes of world domination through constant warfare, would you promote TV and movies, rather than reading classical literature and philosophy; and fund and press movie houses to make films that put joining the military to go to war and templating being a “warrior” as a positive thing instead of a negative, murderous thing?
I don't have any perspective, just state a fact - DARPA did contribute to things we find useful.
The core issue itself is terribly complex because in an ideal world we would never need military at all, and at least in Europe we had this hope that humanity is evolving in this direction, and that eventually even the wars in the Middle East and Africa will calm down. 2014 and 2022 were rude awakenings - there are crazy people out there, and they became nation leaders, and will start a war for one reason or another. That's why I don't have a unified opinion on that, especially that some military tech like interceptors are saving people's lives.
also relevant to Ender's Game, which came out 8 months before Real Genius
Ender's Game the novel, but I would say that it's not actually super relevant. First, the original short story was 1977, and then Card expanded it into a novel which was published mid-1980s. The point in the story is that kids are sensitive, and supergenius kids more so, and that they don't want to interrupt performance with concerns about guilt. But Real Genius wasn't about that! It was about an anti-war stance born of the Vietnam War and creative-class hatred for Ronald Reagan's presidency.
Gotcha, I haven't actually seen the movie I just meant the concept of tricking and silo'ing genius kids to make them think they are playing a game when they're actually doing war/genocide is similar to the Ender's Game book. I don't know if this was just an idea floating around in the air or if it was inspired by Ender's Game, just interesting
Also in Good Will Hunting, when Will (Matt Damon) delivers a scathing job rejection to the NSA.
1997. The War on Terror has a lot to answer for.
https://youtu.be/tH0bTpwQL7U
The late 90s were full of media that questioned reality and authority - like X-Files, The Matrix, Dark City, all sorts of websites about conspiracy theories and UFOs, etc. The zeitgeist was full of speculation about hidden truths. The cultural mood was defiant and sardonic. There was rap, rap-rock, Beavis and Butthead, Fight Club, Office Space... One of the most popular pro wrestlers in the world played a character who beat up his boss and gave him the middle finger. Then after 9/11 it kinda seemed like suddenly the TV shows were all about cops and soldiers. Admittedly, my memories might be somewhat deceiving me. But I do feel that the mood suddenly shifted, much more than the actual damage done to America by the attack should have justified.
No, you're right, and I distinctly remember the conspiracy theorists and counter culture thinkers immediately circling around "this is going to be used to restrict our freedom." And of course they were absolutely right.
I also remember it was the worse possible cultural faux paux to indicate you thought invading foreign nations wasn't a good response to 9/11. I mean go look at the votes for invasion of Iraq, damn near 2/3 of both the house and Senate in favor. Every radio blaring patriotic songs, every school doing patriotic projects, every brown kid living in hell.
It sucked, bad.
You're right.
And the military in movies used to be depicted as inflexible, stubborn, paranoid, incompetent, and usually either "the bad guys" or authorities that impeded the progress of the main characters. (With exceptions; I'm not forgetting about Top Gun).
Then there was a sudden switch, with the military shown with cool gadgets, airplanes, tech, heroics, and generally being glorified. The transition must have happened before the first Transformers, but it was in full swing by then.
Were one of a conspiratorial mind, one would guess massive amounts of money were spent in changing this image.
No conspiracy necessary. The CIA bought the rights to the 1954 film Animal Farm, modified the ending to fit propagandist ends, and it went undiscovered for four decades. The original Top Gun was intended to recover the image of the US Navy after the Vietnam War. Etc etc etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93entertainment...
So, no conspiracy theory necessary.
It's all straight up conspiracy practice since long, to much cheerful bleating how it isn't.
Please lets also not forget computer games. Call of Duty, Battlefield, Medal of Honor, oh what a glorious thing to be an american soldier...
America's Army would like to have a word
Press F to pay respects
> No conspiracy necessary. The CIA bought the rights to the 1954 film Animal Farm, modified the ending to fit propagandist ends,
yea, I remember reading the book and then watching the movie and it had differences iirc, its available on youtube for free and I remember some comments talking about the different ending.
IIRC, in the movie, the animals finally kick the pigs out and everything. It was a good ending.
but in the book, there was not a good ending, the humans and the pigs were celebrating together and then ended up fighting in between each other
> Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
This is the last paragraph I found from the book (had to download it via archive.org to find the last para)
So am I correct or is there more to the story?
Confirmed, that's the last paragraph in my 1996 Signet Classics copy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93entertainment...
Just rewatched Buffalo Soldiers with Joaquin Phoenix. Really don't think that movie could be made today.
Such a great and underappreciated movie.
Mike Judge still does. Serendipitously there's a show called Silicon Valley... I also enjoyed the more recent Common Side Effects. But you even see it in King of the Hill and it's hard to miss in Idiocracy.
The late 90s were also a time of Law & Order, The West Wing, Apollo 13, and Saving Private Ryan.
And today is a time of Andor and Succession....
To be fair, West Wing, Apollo 13, and Saving Private Ryan all have very strong counter-authority veins.
Gen-X was making the popular new art at the time. It was a strong reflection of the feelings of our generation. We were (maybe still are?) known for not liking authority.
Reality Bites captures the zeitgeist well.
I think the money craze that came with dot.com, War on Terror spending, housing bubble, really flipped people into money at all costs.
As Gen-Xer I fully agree, I don't get the way things are with obedience, the rediculous situation that American families can lose their kids by having them playing alone in the garden, how everyone sells out for money (Punk would not happen today), the always smile and say no negatives at work being rediculous false (this one really drives me crazy),....
And yet Gen X is the demographic that fell hardest for Trump.
Was it? I am not on US.
If anything it is all about boomers, gen z and rednecks on YT and TikTok when going over MAGA and Project 2025 videos.
As far as I am aware, the people that didn't gave a damm to elections and ignored their right to vote, are the main reason.
this isn’t true either, 2024 election saw the highest number of people voting - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...
So what happened to those 34.7% voters that had better things to do than cast a vote?
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/2024-pre...
The exercised their rights not to vote. The “losing” side always thinks that higher turnout would have led to them “winning” which of course is a cry of a sore loser. The fact remains, 2024 election had the highest voter turnout ever and people have spoken (till the next one when we might get a chance to elect some adults to fix this shit)
There's a next time? I wouldn't bet on it.
every year we hear the same thing but wheels keep on turning. we will vote again, we will make more mistakes in 2026/28/30... this "there will be no election" comments are quite silly in my opinion, America gets stupid from time to time but we get the fuckers out and try something else (which inevitably leads to some progress followed by more failure followed by...).
Just remember it always comes down to - "it is the economy, stupid" - and economy is in absolute shambles and will get a lot worse before November and it'll be a massacre for the ruling part much like in 2018
I hope you are right, and that ICE isn't outside polling stations come November, pulling you away (just to "check your ID" for a couple of days, you know!) if you are a registered Democrat or look too brown or gay.
What worries me is that we are seeing unprecedented levels of lawlessness and open corruption in the presidency and a guy who has been open about his desire to be a dictator. Given what he did after the 2020 election I don’t see much hope that he would allow a congress to be seated that would impeach him.
When you don't vote, you're really just voting for "whoever happens to win". So I count the non-voters among (R) supporters, or at least as "OK with Trump". Otherwise, they would have voted.
Abstentions can be the most powerful vote, and with great power should come great responsibility. That's often not taught well enough in schools.
Abstentions can seem the laziest vote sometimes, but that doesn't diminish their power nor their responsibility. It is a freedom to be allowed to cast an abstention. Real democracy needs to allow for abstentions, especially explicit abstentions.
(In recent primaries there have been races where I have explicitly cast an abstention. No one will have read my "I don't care who wins this primary, I care who wins the general election" statements, but they are statements to be made. Right now some of the "strategy" in the US two-party system is one-party poisoning the primary vote of the other party by inflaming it with in-fighting in ways that leak into the general election. You have a harder time to win general elections when your candidate is already on fire coming out of the primary. "It doesn't matter who wins, let's stop in-fighting," is a message I can try to write on the ballot, even if not enough people hear it, it feels like the more powerful and responsible vote.)
The goal shouldn't be to get to 100% of people voting in every election, the goal should be to educate people that not voting is tacitly accepting the results of other people's votes. The goal should be teaching people that abstentions are a freedom, a right, a privilege, and should be treated as powerful and treated with responsibility.
I don't think that makes sense. If Harris had happened to win through some minor change in the timeline (she came very close after all), would those people whom you call R supporters instead somehow be D supporters, just because of that minor change in the timeline?
As for "OK with Trump", I think that describes some non-voters. However, there are also non-voters who are more accurately described as "not OK with either side, indeed dislike both sides so equally that neither one seems like the slightly better option".
There is also the factor of swing states. In most of the US, your vote for President pretty much doesn't matter. You almost might as well just put it in the trash. The vote in your state is, barring a massive political shift, locked in for one of the two major candidates. Now, yes, you can still send a message by voting in a non-swing state. But it's understandable why some people would just not bother to vote in a state where the outcome is almost predetermined.
> would those people whom you call R supporters instead somehow be D supporters, just because of that minor change in the timeline?
Yes.
See also: support; passive/active
This is not true:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls
I'm confused. The poll shows ages 45-64 had the highest percentage of Trump voters (54%).
Is that not confirming that Gen X (1965-1980, so ages 44-59 in 2024) was the most pro-Trump?
Gen X is the demographic that doesn't believe that elections are anything else but a clown show.
Based only on lived experience.
> Gen-X was making the popular new art at the time. It was a strong reflection of the feelings of our generation.
I posted this in a thread about the 90's film 'Hackers'.....
In the 1990's and for us Gen-X'ers, the worst thing you could do was to sell out; to take the mans money instead of keeping your integrity. Calling people and bands 'sell outs' (sometimes without justification!) was to insult them.
With the rise of 'influencers' the opposite appears to be the case; people go out of their way to sell out and are praised for doing so. This is a massive change in the cultural landscape which perhaps many born in the 2000's aren't aware of. (Being aware of this helps give some perspective to Gen-X media and films like Hackers).
BTW: Remember the 'product scene' in the film Waynes World?
Ethics are easy when you can afford food.
Post 2000s there has been a pretty fundamental change in the US economy. Things like rent and food were far cheaper. There was also a lot of potential income to be made by individuals by connecting buyers and sellers. Typically if you wanted to sell something like a car, you either went to a dealer that screwed you, or you put and ad in the local paper. If you watched around you could quickly buy cheap cars and turn them quickly for more than enough profit to make it worth while.
The internet quickly flattened this. First by pulling all the buyers and sellers on one advertising site it quickly turned into the fastest with the most capital won. Then the sites themselves figured out they should be the middle man keeping buying up the stock and selling it.
There has also been a huge consolidation to just a few players in many markets. This consolidation and many times algorithmic collusion has lead to the general ratcheting of prices higher. When you start adding things in like 'too big to fail' the market becomes horrifically unbalanced to large protected capital with unlimited funds from the money printing machine.
It's no wonder we quickly dropped ethics, most of us would starve to death in the system we've created.
> Post 2000s there has been a pretty fundamental change in the US economy.
American centrism strikes again.
I'm not American.
The release date of the show 24 is fun.
My pet theory is that NYPD Blue and 24 paved the way in the American public mind for authoritarianism via the "good guys bending the rules and using violence because they know this guy did it" theme.
CSI and Law and Order as well contributed to the perception that the majority of police officers spend their time diligently and righteously investigating real crimes (usually resulting in finding the culprit) instead of spending their days watching traffic in pursuit of pretextual traffic stops, and solving less than 50% of violent crime cases.
Ever heard of Dirty Harry? This is a very old trope.
What is Nov 6 2001?
I was absolutely disgusted by stuff like 24 and zero dark thirty when it came out. "If you cut the throat of the terrorist's son he'll break down and tell you where the bomb is" - they expected the audience to treat that as plausible narrative, and a lot of them clearly did.
A lot of the war propaganda from back then is also depressingly similar to what gets pumped out now: you can't argue with success, you don't want to be on the losers' side do you?
Similarly in the pilot episode of Designated Survivor. "Let's nuke Teheran" was seen as a valid, and brilliant, tactical move in order to get negotiations with Iran to go Kiefer Sutherland's way.
To give 24 some credit, it showed some Americans as complicit in the terrorism or corruption in the story. ZDT also touched on how torture wasn't as effective as assumed. I agree that the broader themes often feel biased/propagandized, framing the anti-hero, who's basically acting as a proxy for the government, as justified at almost any cost.
Add The Thirteenth Floor and eXistenZ to the initial list of movies.
> Then after 9/11 it kinda seemed like suddenly the TV shows were all about cops and soldiers.
There were some rare exceptions like Veep
"Why do you wear that toy on your head?" "Because if I wear it anywhere else it chafes"
"A laser is a beam of coherent light." "Does that mean it talks?"
"Your stutter has improved." "I've been giving myself shock treatment." "Up the voltage."
"In the immortal words of Socrates, who said, 'I drank what?'"
"Is there anything I can do for you? Or...more to the point... to you?"
"Can you drive a six-inch spike through a board with your penis?" "...not right now." "A girl's got to have her standards."
"What are you looking at? You're laborers, you're supposed to be laboring! That's what you get for not having an education!"
-- I'm sure I could remember more if I thought about it for a bit. That movie made quite an impression on young me.
I think my favorite exchange was the following:
Professor Hathaway: "I want to start seeing more of you around in the lab."
Chris Knight: "Fine. I'll gain weight."
Do you run?
Only when I’m being chased.
Ooh, I can't believe I missed this one.
If you are waiting until undergraduate level to take ethics, it's far too late to matter anyways.
Doubly so for "business ethics" classes which became à la mode in the post-Enron era. They attempt to teach fundamental ethics, when at most it should be a very thin layer on top of a well founded internal moral framework and well-accepted ethical standards inculcated from day 1 of kindergarten.
Morals are taught 0-9 [0], Ethics perhaps slightly later as it requires more complex thought processes.
[0] https://familiesforlife.sg/pages/fflparticle/Young-Children-...
Same with Ender's Game. They are playing war games but they're actually real. He sacrifices his units and commits genocide (xenocide) at the same time. Something he probably wouldn't have done had he known.
My undergrad wasn't in CS but my grad was. I was incredibly surprised to find that ethics isn't a requirement in most CS programs. That's a sharp contrast to traditional engineering and the hard sciences. CS people seem to love philosophy, yet I'm surprised not so much about this subset. We'll spend all day talking about if we live in a simulation (without learning physics) and what intelligence is (without studying neuroscience or psychology) but when it comes to what's acceptable to do at work the answer is always "if I don't do it somebody else will, at least I'll have a job". A phrase that surely everyone hears in an ethics 101 class...
Edit:
Oops, missed pazimzadeh's comment. I'll leave mine because I say more
And the world seen through media is heavily abstracted. And I think that makes people psychologically treat war like a game rather than something actually happening. We trick ourselves into believing it isn't real.
I wonder how much this changes based on country. The closest thing to a war happening within US borders was the attack on Pearl Harbor (I think). The US hasn't had conscription for 50 years. So there isn't much of a clearly visible and direct cost to war for many many Americans. I'm not arguing there isn't a cost, by the way, just that most can basically just not watch the news and have no idea war is happening.
Yes. I don't think any of us can really understand what it is like to be in a war zone. Proximity to that must completely change people's outlook.
Many prominent tech and science leaders have been disparaging philosophy for decades now. Not surprising that in the absence of any serious ethical thought, “make money = good” is the default position.
Your opinion seems to suggest that unless someone has the same moral view as you they must not have any morals at all?
What if their morals are “I am not responsible for how my products are used?”
You may not agree, but it’s a valid ethical stance to hold.
No, that isn’t what my comment suggests at all, on any level.
I don’t think you can have intelligent ethical opinions if you disparage and ignore the field that studies ethics (philosophy.)
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
I think there are definitely many positions with which I disagree, but are nonetheless well-thought through and coherent.
But it seems pretty clear that the people making these decisions haven’t done the work of thinking it through, and are instead just trying to maximize money. That’s my claim, at least.
> No, that isn’t what my comment suggests at all, on any level. I don’t think you can have intelligent ethical opinions if you disparage and ignore the field that studies ethics (philosophy.)
You're not suggesting that, but then put up your own requirements for someone's ethics to be "valid". So in the end you are filtering others ethical choices by your own requirements.
And your logic seems to work backwards: someone does something you disagree with based on your personal ethical view -> assume they aren't well thought out
My requirements for someone's ethical opinions to be "valid" are that they don't criticize the field of ethics as useless. I guess that is a "requirement" I have, but it's a pretty nitpicking, useless distinction to make.
If someone criticizes the French language, but doesn't speak a word of French, sorry, but I don't have much respect for their opinion on French.
And no, I don't "assume they aren't well thought out," because many of these people have explicitly said philosophy is a waste of time.
I'm just having an intellectual argument with you, so thanks for sharing your thoughts.
In a non-theological world, the source of ethics can be anything - parents, community, study of ethhics. None of them is more valid than another - because requiring "a respect for the field of philosophy" is a ethical position in and of itself.
One of my best friends is a philosophy grad, and another is a very intelligent financier. What we've come to realize is that speaking and writing and making arguments is fruitless. You either have had the embodied experiences to recognize a statement is directionally correct -- to various magnitudes -- or you don't.
No amount of words will change that.
It is my experience -- after seeing the quality of thinking from those philosophically trained (I am not) -- that learning philosophy is learning how to think, and by extension figuring out for oneself what is capital g Good.
Morals and ethics are different and you conflate them. That is the crux of your confusion. Someone can understand morality inherently without ever thinking about it; but ethics requires actual intentional thought over years and years of reflecting on lived experience. What is good for you and your small circle can be grasped intuitively, but to grasp what is good "at scale" must be reasoned about. Without having seriously grappled with this, one is liable to have simplistic views, and in many cases hold views that have already been trodden through and whose "holes" have been exposed and new routes taken in unveiling ethics.
Without seriously having interfaced with it, it's like talking to someone about the exercise science when all they know is do steroids, lift weight, and eat. Sure, that works, but it lacks nuance and almost no thought has gone into it.
Anyway, this is tiring. Philosophical discussions are not something to do with strangers. It requires intimacy and is a deeply personal conversation one should have with those close to them and explore together.
> Someone can understand morality inherently without ever thinking about it;
How so? This would infer some universal set of morality, which doesn't exist.
> Anyway, this is tiring. Philosophical discussions are not something to do with strangers.
I think it's tiring because you view ethics and morality as a box that thinking has to happen in. But it's not. Ethics and morality can be anything (as we've seen through human history).
To me this reads the same way some religious people believe that it is not possible for atheists to have morals because morals come from the Bible.
Excellent point. Philosophy (really anything not math-related) is seen as a waste of time by most people I know in tech. You end up getting a bunch of smart but unethical or misguided people. Engineering types end up being used as pawns in wider political games. Look at all the terrorists who are engineers, for example:
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t....
You still take ethics. The only difference is political views. It’s very easy to be consistent from an ethical perspective if you are convinced of a government’s particular powers.
The government has a monopoly on violence. Whether you want to enhance it or not all comes down to your political alignment, not ethics.
The most unethical people I know have taken ethics classes and signal that they did it.
Most of the pranks in Real Genius were actual pranks done at Caltech in the 1970s. The McDonald's prank, for example.
I don't recall Caltech having any ethics classes. Caltech did have an honor system, however, which was surprisingly effective.
To be fair, it wasn't like lockheed and raytheon and all the rest of the modern human killing machine companies have ever been hurting for engineering talent. Likewise for oil and gas.
If you are tricked into doing that it is not your fault. But the moment you realise you need to to a choice.
> Nobody has to take ethics during undergrad anymore I guess...
Especially not when certain people in positions of great power say things like "stupid rules of engagement" when referring to acts of war.
Fallen far, or maybe we are just more aware now, but anyway, I don't think that a lecture in ethics at university will fix things. That's:
(A) way too late, and
(B) without a strong character to begin with, this lecture will simply become a "necessary chore" for students, and basically go in one ear, and out the other ear. (Does that saying/phrase translate to English?)
By the time people start their undergrad, if they are not already at least trying to act ethically, that ship has sailed for most. Their upbringing and education did not manage to drill that into them before. I see it as more of an early childhood and parenting topic. If the parents are not leading by example and teaching their children ethics, then the children are often just going with the flow, not swimming against the current to uphold ideals. Why would they, if the other way is easier. I think it is rare, that people adopt ethics that they have not grown up with / raised according to.
So I would advocate ethics as a mandatory subject at school, if not primary school already.
As the Heritage Foundation has said, we are in a cold civil war for our country and right now, the authoritarians are winning.
The reckoning will come.
Watch as the same people pushing for war today will pretend they were always against it 10 years from now.
I guess we're just doomed to repeat the same cycles.
I'm a decade older so maybe I missed the memo but I think you'll have a hard time naming tech companies that actually refused to work with the military, which were large enough and important enough to be in danger of selling something to the military (i.e. not Be Inc. or Beenz.com)
Clearly, all of the traditional big leagues were lined up to take the Army's money. IBM, Control Data, Cray, SGI, and HP all viewed weapons research as a major line of business. DEC was the default minicomputer of the DoD and Sun created features to court the intelligence community including the DoD "Trusted Workstation". Sperry Rand defined "military industrial complex".
Yes, and IBM had a particularly tainted history from WWII.
For every company that stands on values, there is another that will do some shady shit for a dollar.
Well, they made a big deal about saying that while they sold their software to the Defense Department, it wasn't actually being used to kill people. Except for well-known military contractors (e.g., Raytheon), who have sold plenty of software specifically to kill people.
I guess there's a reason we saw plenty of articles about software used somewhat defensively -- such as distinguishing whether a particular "bang" was a gunshot, and where it likely came from -- instead of offensively -- such as improvements to targeting software.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Maven
> My, the world has changed.
No. Your tech experience was an aberration.
For almost all of history, including recent history, tech and military went together. Whether compound bows, or spears or metallurgy.
Euler used his math to develop artillery tables for the Prussian army.
von Neumann helped develop the atom bomb.
The military played a huge role in creating Silicon Valley.
However, to people who grew up in the mid to late 90s, it is easy to miss that that period was a major aberration. You had serious people talking about the end of history. You had John Perry Barlow's utterly naive Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace which looks more and more naive every year.
When people (myself included FWIW) warn about the dangers of American imperialism, it's because:
1. As President Eisenhower said in his farewell address in 1961 [1], every dollar spent on the military-industrial complex is a dollar not spent on schools or houses or hospitals or bridges;
2. Every American company with sufficient size eventually becomes a defense contractor. That's really what's happened with the tech companies. They're moving in lockstep with the administration on both domestic and foreign policy;
3. The so-called "imperial boomerang" [2]. Every tactic, weapon and strategy used against colonial subjects are eventually used against the imperial core eg [3]. Do you think it's an accident that US police forces have become increasingly militarized?
The example I like to give is China's high speed rail. China started building HSR only 20 years ago and now has over 32,000 miles of HSR tracks taking ~4M passengers per day. The estimated cost for the entire network is ~$900B. That's less than the US spends on the military every year.
I really what Steve Jobs would've done were he still alive. Tim Apple has bent the knee and kissed the ring. Would Steve Jobs have done the same? I'm not so sure. He may well have been ousted (again) because of it.
Then again, I think Steve Jobs was the only Silicon Valley billlionaire not in a transhumanist polycule with a more than even chance of being in the files.
[1]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
[3]: https://www.amnestyusa.org/blog/with-whom-are-many-u-s-polic...
> I really what Steve Jobs would've done were he still alive. Tim Apple has bent the knee and kissed the ring. Would Steve Jobs have done the same? I'm not so sure. He may well have been ousted (again) because of it.
Given that Steve Jobs was best friends with Larry Ellison, I’d say he wouldn’t have bent the knee because he would’ve been standing hand in hand with Trump, just like Larry.
>1. As President Eisenhower said in his farewell address in 1961 [1], every dollar spent on the military-industrial complex is a dollar not spent on schools or houses or hospitals or bridges;
This humanist view unfortunately doesn’t hold anymore in the modern world. Boomers will be happy as long as not a single dollar is spent on housing, so that their own homes can appreciate in value. Republicans would rather burn money than spend it on houses, hospitals, or bridges that might benefit immigrants or “other people” more than themselves.
I used an American political party only as a reference, but the same phenomenon can be seen in many countries around the world. Society has become incredibly cynical and has regressed a lot in terms of humanity.
>"Boomers will be happy as long as not a single dollar is spent on housing"
Not sure what boomers you are talking about. I for one am disgusted at what is happening with the things in general and with the housing in particular. I do not want my house to appreciate Ad infinitum. I do not want to have ever growing class of have-not's so that few jerks can own the governments and half of the world.
Just so we're on the same page, the GP was reeferring to "baby boomers", as in people born 1945-1965. Maybe you know that and that's when you were born. I don't know. But "boomer" has taken on a slang meaning the latest few years for someone who's simply not tech-savvy or is otherwise out-of-touch.
Generational politics has definite limits and isn't absolute but it's also true that the Baby Boomer generation as a whole enjoyed the great opportunities and wealth generation opportunities in history. They fled to the suburbs, subsidized by the government every step of the way, and then basically pulled up the ladder behind them. They also refuse to quit.
And then when crime receded (and there are multiple theories for why this happened), they moved back into the city, bought up all the real estate and then blocked building affordable housing there too.
I personally have a theory that the parting gift of the Baby Boomer generation will be to get rid of Social Security and Medicare since they don't need it anymore.
> I personally have a theory that the parting gift of the Baby Boomer generation will be to get rid of Social Security and Medicare since they don't need it anymore.
They do need social security and Medicare. Studies show even with social security and Medicare half or more might struggle in retirement due to insufficient savings.
Thank you for mentioning the term 'imperial boomerang'. You really saw it in the militarization of the police after the Iraq War. Gone are the donut munchers.
>refuse to let their systems be used for war..
I don't want wars.
But tell me, what would you like your country to do when conflicts arise due to want of natural resources? Would you want your country to just give up that resource your people depend on, like may be 50/50?
Do you believe it will always be possible to settle on a solution in a peaceful way that works for everyone?
Personally, I'd rather that my country (USA) be taken over by China than bomb innocents in the Middle East.
Hear, hear
Yes, there are many plus sides if USA were taken over by China.
1. You will see no protest on the street.
2. You will see no homeless on the street.
3. You will hear no more school shootings or any shooting.
4. No more tech companies conflicting with the government.
5. No one will sue the government because it's perfect.
6. All bad people will disappear.
7. Everyone sings praise of the government.
This is better than Utopia, you should pursue it.
Your logic here is sound, sure. But don't tell me you can be so naive as to believe that the U.S. military is a defensive mechanism
>But don't tell me you can be so naive as to believe that the U.S. military is a defensive
I am not. Every country is corrupt, and war makes a lot of money for powerful people, but does it justify sabotaging your own existence?
Literally yes. If you justify harming others out of nowhere by ‘sabotaging your own existence’ then yes.
‘Sabotaging your own existence’ is a magic sentence that can justify everything. Israel can kill children more than any other nation in the world, and justify it by ‘not sabotaging their own existence’
Anyone can do anything with this perspective. This is the exact point gere. Pull yourself back, if you are about to ‘not sabotage your own existence’ by simply killing innocent civilians because you believe a computer algorithm told you in about 15 years they or their children might do something harmful.
> Anyone can do anything with this perspective
Not really. Not unless one is thinking in absolutes, at which point one is by definition an extremist.
The rational dialogue that emerges is the proper size of a military for defensive—but not continuous offensive—purposes. I’d guess, for America, that is half its current size at most. (The wrong answers are zero and $1.4tn.)
Sure, any one can say anything. But I am not referring to that. I am talking about a case where it is objectively true.
But I think that is a question that anyone would rather not consider.
The issue is that if you don't consider that question, and jump into discussion or actions, in general just have an "outrage", then it would be very hard to take you seriously.
I don't know of any instance where modern warmongers fight wars based on subjective grounds. They all have “objectively true” reasons.
Imagine you are stranded in your home with all your loved ones, and you get a call from your "warmonger" president and the matter is urgent; he says "We have received intel regarding a enemy plan to bomb your house in 30 mins. This report is only x% reliable, but we have the exact location of the enemy and we have birds in air that can hit them in 5 mins. This might escalate into a larger conflict, Do you want us to proceed? "
What would your response be? What is the value of `x` at which you will approve of the pre-emptive attack?
Just curious.
I don't get the point. What does objectivity have to do with the value of x?
Your example seems to validate my point of view: warmongers disguise their subjectivity by basing their actions on “objective” models.
>What does objectivity have to do with the value of x?
It does not have anything to do with objectivity. I thought it to be futile to discuss that since, as you implied, predicting future can't be 100% objective, and thus decisions to avert a bad future outcome always need to be based on subjective decisions.
So this is another question where I want to ask you how you would make a subjective call.
Got it. Looks like we're on the same page. Everyone makes a subjective call.
Yes, we are on the same page, and you have got one question to answer.
Make your call.
100 is my answer. Exactly my question to you:
What is your percentage to say no lets do not take actions. Because again; with this perspective every single action is legitimate. There is a chance for everything. If there is a weapon that can kill every human on the planet, every country will race to invent it because every country will try to invent it. Every action is valid. Every weapon development is okey, because if you dont, others will. You can kill everyone, because everyone might eventually try to kill you, there is always a chance.
>100 is my answer
We both know that it is not true. Because by this logic, you wouldn't fire a weapon at someone who is about to stab your wife or child. Because there is a small chance that they will die of a heart attack before they can do it. So it is some value that is < 100%, but apparently that is not good enough for you.
You did not accept my answer and did not answer to mine as well.
On top of that, while you are pulling some hypothetical scenarios, the reality is exactly as I described. Governments, especially us gov, kept invading, bombing and killing people based on some subjective percentages and this is still ongoing.
Although you did not like my ‘prefer to die instead of kill’ idea, you still did not solve ‘you can kill everyone since there is a chance anyone can kill you’ problem. And reality is closer to latter, unfortunately.
What is objective; does iraq having chemical weapons objective for example?
Or childrens died because of invasion is more objective?
Which one?
Isn't the point of technology and engineering to find alternatives with the resources that one has?
Yes, but it takes time.
Like we have solar now. People talk about how it saves environment. But I think another similar win would be reduction in dependency on oil, and countries won't have to go to war over oil. But it takes time...
But it seems what technology gives, technology takes away. Because new technologies comes with its own resource requirements. And the cycle looks like it will go on...
> Yes, but it takes time.
So be it.
This doesn't excuse going to war with neighbors because you want to steal their stuff. Learn to live with yours.
Learn? Can you learn to live without eating? Do you know what happens when an economy collapse?
> Can you learn to live without eating?
Would you murder your neighbor to steal their food? Especially if you weren't really starving, just preemptively stealing their supplies?
All this talk of hoarding and taking resources by force used to be the stuff of villains. When did it become normalized?
Have you ever gone through a whole a week without eating anything? Have you seen your kids go through that?
If don't, then I will have to say you got no idea about what you are talking about..
> Have you ever gone through a whole a week without eating anything? Have you seen your kids go through that
Have you? And did you murder your neighbor to steal their food? Did you believe the best course of action was to fight your neighbors?
Your ridiculous analogy doesn't even apply to the US, one of the wealthiest countries in the world. In your imagined scenario, are they the poor starving family who must kill and steal to survive?
Dude. Think hard before getting backed into absurd metaphors.
>Have you?
I haven't, and that is why I am not making higher-than-you, virtuous claims about how I would act in that situation. Maybe you should do the same.
>Your ridiculous analogy doesn't even apply to the US, one of the wealthiest countries in the world
And where did that wealth come from? Sure, you have smart people, but it also require a functioning economy to mobilize and convert all those talent into wealth. If a external entity can choke your economy and if your government just stand-by, virtue-signaling to people such as yourselves, your wealth will disappear in no time. BOOM! Back to zero...
> I haven't, and that is why I am not making higher-than-you [...]
Then maybe stop making up hypotheticals that don't apply to me, you, or any of the nations involved? What are you hoping to achieve here? "Let's assume we live in a Mad Max world, would you steal all the women and water"?
> And where did that wealth come from? Sure, you have smart people, but it also require a functioning economy to mobilize and convert all those talent into wealth
So you think the US doesn't have a functioning economy or smart people, and therefore must resort to war to get their resources?
> BOOM! Back to zero...
So, in your bizarre logic, it's best to resort to theft and murder?
You win! Good day!
The US is taking money from food assistance and spending it on missiles.
I am sympathetic to the argument that I’d rather elected officials that have a path to be removed have the control of use more so than unelected executives.
Most of America's recent wars have been unjustified.
I think it's very reasonable to not want your products or work going towards making it easier for the US military wage unjustified wars.
I also think it would be reasonable to change your stance on that if America entered a war that you felt was justified.
(For example, I don't want to work for the military, but if we were being invaded I would consider it.)
Saying the military can't use your tool _today_ doesn't prevent you from changing your mind _tomorrow._
Enlisting after your country had already been invaded is too late. An ancient proverb reminds us that if you want peace, prepare for war.
> they have to couch it in language clarifying that they would love to support war, actually,
Yes they do because they are trying to sell to the Department of War.
No one made Anthropic try to be a military contractor. It’s pretty much the definition of being a military contractor that your product helps to kill people.
If you graduated in 2007, your classmates were born around 1985. Their parents were mostly born in the mid 50s to the mid 60s and came to political consciousness either during the Vietnam War or immediately thereafter. No war since has been even close to as unpopular or frankly as salient. It’s the passing out of cultural relevance of that war that you are noticing.
> No war since has been even close to as unpopular or frankly as salient.
Iraq.
Spoiler alert, a bunch of the current ones are going to be seen similarly too.
Also keep in mind when making comparisons that the Vietnam war was not unpopular with Americans at the beginning, and many people justified it all throughout, using language that will be similar to observers of later wars.
> Iraq
Not in same ballpark. There’s no Iraq generation the way there’s a Vietnam one.
> Spoiler alert, a bunch of the current ones are going to be seen similarly too.
No they won’t. The lack of a draft and mass domestic casualties dramatically changes the picture. Especially on the saliency axis.
Correct that there was no Iraq generation because there was no draft and numbers were way smaller. Vietnam had over half a million troops at the height of that war. Iraq had under 170k.
But the war was still deeply unpopular. There is a reason America did the extraordinary - to that point - and elect its first black president.
The economic toll will be greater with these wars than Vietnam.
There is an Iraq group but we’re just a much smaller group
I’m not trying to erase anyone’s individual experience, but it isn’t a generational defining event broadly across the U.S. population.
No
Me, an Iraq combat veteran had a different experience of that period than an investment baker of similar age
That was not true for WWII and to a lesser extent Vietnam due to the draft
The distinction is draft vs “all volunteer” wars
The biggest protest in world history was in response to the invasion of Iraq. It’s reasonable to call it unpopular.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_Iraq_War_prot...
Sure, but it's not reasonable to call it as unpopular domestically as the Vietnam War, which had more than 12 times the casualties, spread over a group that on the whole was unwilling to fight and had to be drafted into the conflict, thereby spreading the pain of lost loved ones throughout society rather than concentrating it heavily into the poorer and less politically powerful social and economic classes. As unpopular as the Iraq war was, the American people's distaste didn't really do much to end it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualt...
That’s reasonable. In the context of the larger discussion here a post up thread’s implication that a graduate in 2007 would be anti-war because of Vietnam is kind of dubious. Public opinion of the war shifted quite a lot in the four years after “Mission Accomplished” and Freedom Fries.
> No they won’t. The lack of a draft and mass domestic casualties dramatically changes the picture
American centrism strikes again.
Plenty of us of the same generation living in countries that didn't fight in Vietnam (with no such draft or casualties) share such ethical views.
Don't make this an American argument.
I think this person might just be seeing Vietnam in a retrospective lens and has not seen the pro vietnam war propaganda from the 1960s which was immensely popular.
I wasn't alive either but I've seen it after the fact. Also the kind of people who thought the Kent State massacre was the right thing to do. The political radicals of that era "won" many culture wars but they were a minority, and the influential, pro-war, pro-establishment people sounded exactly like the ones who were in favor of the Iraq War and who think what's going on in Iran right now makes sense.
There is a reason, for example, that John Fogerty of CCR [of the song "Fortunate Son"] wrote the mid 2000s song "It's like Deja Vu All Over Again" to describe the Iraq war. It's because the war propaganda was all the same, just with a rotating cast.
> There’s no Iraq generation the way there’s a Vietnam one.
And if autonomous weapons become the norm, _there will never be_.
Imagine a future where people just don't question wars on their ethical basis, since it happens far away and "no one is hurt".
The Overton window has not shifted, at least not among rank-and-file tech workers. There was very loud and vocal internal opposition to building and selling weapons[0]. They all lost the argument in the boardrooms because the US government writes very big checks. But I am told they are very much still around.
CEOs are bound to sociopathically amoral behavior - not by the law, but by the Pareto-optimal behavior of the job market for executives. The law obligates you to act in the interests of the shareholders, but it does not mandate[1] that Line Go Up. That is a function of a specific brand of shareholder that fires their CEOs every 18 months until the line goes up.
In 2007, Big Tech had plenty of the consumer market to conquer, so they could afford to pretend to be opposed to selling to the military. But the game they were playing was always going to end with them selling to the military. Once they were entrenched they could ignore the no-longer-useful-to-us-right-now dissenters, change their politics on a dime, and go after the "real money".
[0] Several of the sibling comments are mentioning hypothetical scenarios involving dual-use technologies or obfuscated purposes. Those are also relevant, but not the whole story.
[1] There are plenty of arguments a CEO could use to defend against a shareholder lawsuit that they did not take a particularly short-sighted action. Notably, that most line-go-up actions tend to be bad long-term decisions. You're allowed to sell low-risk investments.
Complaining loudly about working with the government to build weapons and then continuing to build them isn't the same as people refusing to work for companies that handle weapons contracts. The window has indeed shifted, with tech workers now merely virtue signaling on social media.
What tech companies were these? I was younger in 2007 but i feel like i would remember if companies were openly refusing to participate in war.
Such protests are commonplace at Google: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-...
Yeah, and they still happen even today (there were some recent ones with ICE and Israel), but the companies themselves have still worked in war businesses.
Yes, and the participating employers are quickly fired.
The only difference between now and 2007 is the curtain has been pulled back revealing how things have always worked.
It's easy to say "I will never let the Department of Defense use my search engine for evil!" Or "the more money they spend on me, the less they have for weapons!" ( https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Theo_de_Raadt ) when you aren't really expecting money. But when somebody shows up with a check, it becomes much harder to stick to your principles. Especially after watching Palantir (and "don't be evil" Google) rake in plenty of dough.
Also: https://gist.github.com/kemitchell/fdc179d60dc88f0c9b76e5d38... .
I’d argue it’s come full circle and it hasn’t changed a bit.
There wouldn’t be a Silicon Valley without World War 2 and US gov. funding of Stanford to develop radar basically.
The initial investment from then gave critical capital mass for Stanford, the VCs, and the tech companies of today.
https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo?si=gGza5eIv485xEKLS
> When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds.
I don't think it was very common really.
I think for the most part it was tech companies whose systems were not being used for war who like to boast that they refused to let their systems be used for war. Or that they creatively interpreted "for war" that since they were not actually manufacturing explosives, they could claim it was not for war.
Attitude towards war depends on context. In 2007 "war" meant "Iraq" which was extremely unpopular, pointless, and had an imperialist flavor. Today "war" means Gaza, Iran, and Venezuela, but it also means Ukraine and Chinese aggression, possibly ramping up to an invasion of Taiwan. I suspect Amodei and many Anthropic employees are thinking of the latter.
> Chinese aggression, possibly ramping up to an invasion of Taiwan.
It's amusing amidst the US bombing Iran, incarceration the president of Venezuela and his wife after slaughtering everyone who was in the room with him, seizing oil tankers off Cuba, continuing the siege of Gaza and on and on to start getting sanctimonious about China.
Taiwan is Kinmen island in Xiamen harbor, so a mainland invasion of Taiwan would be mainland China "invading" an island in its harbor.
Also mainland China does not recognize Taiwan and mainland China to be separate countries. The US does not recognize Taiwan and mainland China to be separate countries. Taiwan does not consider Taiwan and mainland China to be separate countries. I'm not sure what the invasion would be, a country invading itself? It would be like if the US president sent armed agents to Minnesota who started killing people willy nilly - oh yaa, that just happened.
The most satisfying thing is if mainland China did choose to reassert it's rightful authority in Taiwan against the colonial powers, there's absolutely nothing those western powers can do about it. Just like Russia's assertion over the West tring to nove it's NATO armies to its western borders in the Ukraine. It's amusing to see the US flailing about, hitting a Venezuelan here, a Cuban there to try to look tough. I guess Nicaragua is next on the list. The changes coming in the 21st century are welcome. A bozo like Trump as president is a sign of a fading West.
Actually dinosaurs existed in China before there were people. And their descendents, the birds, are still around. We should all consider it our moral duty to continue what was begun in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and overthrow the CCP and replace them with the true historical rulers, the chicken.
> Also mainland China does not recognize Taiwan
By this logic, America not recognising by the sovereignty of Venezuela, Iran and Cuba—and Israel of Palestine, as well as vice versa—makes everyone an a-okay actor!
> there's absolutely nothing those western powers can do about it. Just like Russia's assertion over the West tring to nove it's NATO armies to its western borders in the Ukraine
Russia is a spent power and geopolitical afterthought because of Ukraine. Its borders with NATO have increased massively, all while reducing its security, economy and demography.
Even Xi couldn’t fuck over China as thoroughly as Putin has Russia. But Xi going on a vanity crusade into Taiwan would essentially write off China’s ascendancy as a military and economic superpower this generation.
> if mainland China did choose to reassert it's rightful authority in Taiwan against the colonial powers
An aging dictator invading a democracy. At least Deng chose a quarry he could crush [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...
Palestine is only a state due to international recognition. It meets no definition of a state, it controls no land, has no currency, government, military, etc. It meets no criteria for statehood yet is recognized by most of the world as a state. Taiwan (and e.g. Somaliland) meet all the criteria for statehood and yet are not recognized as states. Venezuela, Iran and Cuba meet the criteria for statehood and ofcourse are actually recognized universally as states. State (pun intended) of the world.
I would like to believe there's no chance Xi would invade Taiwan but I also didn't think Putin would invade Ukraine. Those leaders are full of themselves. If we learnt much over the last few years is that anything can happen. China has both declared the intention and built the capabilities to invade Taiwan. As the saying goes if a loaded rifle is introduced in the first act of a play, it must be fired by the final act.
> Taiwan does not consider Taiwan and mainland China to be separate countries.
This is false. Both the government of Taiwan, and the people here, obviously consider the two countries separate, and neither have made any overtures challenging the sovereignty of the CPC in nearly fifty years. Not to mention the fact that the last government to do so has been overthrown in the 90s (the overthrow of the KMT settler colonial dictatorship).
You will now vaguely refer to the ROC constitution, but I'll preempt that by saying the constitution makes no claims to PRC territory, full stop. And the constitutional reforms in the 90s explicitly recognize PRC sovereignty over its territory - because Taiwanese people aren't the KMT and want nothing to do with the KMT's now 8 decade old fight.
> I'm not sure what the invasion would be, a country invading itself?
I know exactly what it would be: tens of thousands of PLA dead at the order of Xi in service of his old man's ego, and economic disaster for both countries, followed up by the most riotously uncontrolled occupied territory in the PRC. Taiwanese people in living memory bled to overthrow a military dictatorship, you think they won't fight to do so again?
PRC invasion of Taiwan would be imperialism.
There's a distinction between countries and governments. Both sides officially consider themselves to be China, the country, but under different, competing governments. They're the product of a civil war inside China, after all.
The current ruling party of Taiwan would like to change that, but they haven't done so for the obvious reason that the PRC would not accept it (and most Taiwanese people prefer to just leave things as they are).
> Both sides officially consider themselves to be China
There is no "China, the country." "China" just means, essentially, "Empire." It's like a country claiming to be Europe, or maybe better, The Roman Empire. Many States may try to make claims for the title to support their legitimacy and heavenly mandate to rule, but that doesn't make it true.
> They're the product of a civil war inside China, after all.
Only one side of that conflict still exists. The other was overthrown by the people of Taiwan in the 90s. Descendants of those overthrown maintain government positions under that party name, but it's essentially a different government, given that it's a multi party democracy now, not a single party military dictatorship.
> The current ruling party of Taiwan would like to change that, but they haven't done so for the obvious reason that the PRC would not accept it (and most Taiwanese people prefer to just leave things as they are).
This is mostly true, with caveats: Most people in Taiwan prefer independence, but don't want to declare it to trigger a war, so therefore they only prefer status quo because it involves independence without war. If they could get it, most Taiwanese would prefer declared independence with no threat of war, but pragmatism rules out.
I'm also not sure I agree the DPP is necessarily pro-overt independence, just the current president tends to use more aggressive language than normal.
"China" is analogous to "France," not "Europe."
There was a civil war inside China, with the rulers of both competing sides claiming the entire country as their own for decades after the shooting ended. Inside Taiwanese politics, there has been a shift relatively recently (in the last 20 years), but it would be a major shift if that were actually implemented as official policy.
> Many States may try to make claims for the title to support their legitimacy and heavenly mandate to rule, but that doesn't make it true.
We live in a post-WWII world of national sovereignty and inviolable borders (or at least we did until very recently). That's what China rests on for its claims, legally speaking.
"France" is a great example, as is "Italy." What we perceive of when we hear those words is a territory and government that are perfectly overlain. In reality, what one might consider France or Italy in reality contains other sovereign states! San Marino, The Vatican, Monaco, Andorra.
Personally I think it's important for modern people to reject this feudal era idea that a government can claim a mandate to rule over certain territories just because of the territory of previous governments, or because of the distributions of certain ethnicities, religions, or languages. I think it's important for people to maintain an identity separate from any given government, to defang the ability of governments to leverage racialized nationalism to protect the state's continuity at all costs, even to the detriment to the people living in its territory.
By the way, it remains false that Taiwan makes any claims to PRC territory. Imagine how silly you could make me look if you could quote exactly where in the Taiwanese constitution it does! I invite you to try.
> Imagine how silly you could make me look if you could quote exactly where in the Taiwanese constitution it does! I invite you to try.
Okay, since you asked for it. Article 4 of the constitution of the Republic of China:
"The territory of the Republic of China within its existing national boundaries shall not be altered except by a resolution of the National Assembly."
This was passed in 1947, when the Republic of China very explicitly claimed all of China (plus Mongolia). The constitution sets that claim in stone, and says that it can only be changed by an act of the legislature. There's never been such an act.
Taiwan formally recognizes mainland China as the "Mainland Area," and legally considers it part of the ROC but under different rules than the "Free Area." It's a legal mess that arises out of formally claiming a territory that they don't control (and now no longer want to regain control over).
I didn't realize it was the same person I had made this comment to twice, so I will copy and paste my answer here:
> > The key phrase is "existing boundaries." The constitution was passed in 1947, when the "existing boundaries" of the ROC were very clear: all of China, plus Mongolia.
Nope, they were never formally defined, not even in legislation.
This flexibility was explicitly acknowledged in the constitutional reforms, when a clear delineation was made between "territory the ROC controls, and mainland territory (which the ROC does not claim)". The constitutional court also addressed the question directly: https://cons.judicial.gov.tw/en/docdata.aspx?fid=100&id=3105... TLDR "the constitution does not define the actual territory."
Thus, the constitution does not represent the ROC claiming PRC territory. Lacking any other Taiwanese claim to the territory (legislation, etc), it's therefore a fact that Taiwan makes no claims whatsoever to PRC territory.
> and legally considers it part of the ROC but under different rules than the "Free Area."
There is no evidence to back this claim.
> It's a legal mess that arises out of formally claiming a territory that they don't control
There is no evidence that Taiwan makes a formal claim to territory it doesn't have sovereignty over (aka, PRC territory).
They were formally defined by the term "existing boundaries," which was clear in 1947. It most definitely did not mean the island of Taiwan, a tiny part of the Republic of China at the time.
> TLDR "the constitution does not define the actual territory."
That's not the TLDR of the ruling, and nothing like that appears in the ruling. The TLDR of the ruling is that the court does not have the authority to rule on what the territory of the ROC is.
> Thus, the constitution does not represent the ROC claiming PRC territory.
The constitution clearly defines the existing territory as the borders of the ROC at the time of the passage of the constitution, in 1947. That was explicitly maintained by the ROC government for decades after it lost the civil war. The current ruling party doesn't agree with it, but hasn't changed the constitution or passed any act that eliminates the claim.
>> and legally considers it part of the ROC but under different rules than the "Free Area."
> There is no evidence to back this claim
You're disputing that the ROC formally defines a "Mainland Area," as opposed to recognizing the mainland as belonging to a separate country? This is not even something you can reasonably dispute. They do use that legal fiction.
>there's absolutely nothing those western powers can do about it
the USA can drop a JDAM down the chimney of any leader who decides to do so
that’s not nothing
> if mainland China did choose to reassert it's rightful authority in Taiwan
Wait...you mean China doesn't currently have authority in Taiwan?
How could that be??
China looks like the good guy now, but if Xi decided to “reassert control” over Taiwan, it would quickly become an international pariah and everyone would forget about Trump immediately, the country would immediately be isolated from everyone other than their closest (geographically speaking) allies. Is China ready to do that? Not today, maybe in a decade or two (when they’ve replaced the USA as the top economic/military power, there won’t be severe consequences). Xi is smart enough to wait, taking Taiwan now wins them nothing and loses them everything.
We'd just cut off all of our goods manufacturing and leave the shelves empty? I don't think it's likely.
> We'd just cut off all of our goods manufacturing and leave the shelves empty? I don't think it's likely.
All bets are off if China attacks Taiwan now, I think, it would be hard but there would be a response like that. In a decade or two, probably not, but more due to China's dominance in the world by that point rather than just their ability to make things clout.
Xi isn't dumb, he isn't going to stir the pot right now, he doesn't have to, China doesn't have much to gain from it. China has nothing but patience.
Iraq was much more popular in 2003 [1] than the current war in Iran is [2].
[1] "In the months leading up to the war, majorities of between 55% and 68% said they favored taking military action to end Hussein’s rule in Iraq. No more than about a third opposed military action."
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/03/14/a-look-back-...
[2] "Some 27% of respondents said they approved of the strikes, which were conducted alongside Israeli attacks on Iran, while 43% disapproved and 29% were not sure"
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/just-one-four-americans-sup...
> It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue.
> When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war,
In 2007 the US was the sole world hegemon. It could afford to let the smartest people work on ad delivery systems.
In 2026, in certain fields, China has a stronger economy and military. Russia is taking over Europe. India and Brazil are going their own way. China is economically colonizing Africa.
The US can't afford to let it's enemies develop strong AI weapons first because of the naive thinking that Russia/China/others will also have naive thinkers that will demand the same.
---
People were just as naive with respect to Ukraine. They were saying that mines and depleted uranium shells are evil. But when Russia attacked, many changed their minds because they realized you can't kill Russians with grandstanding on noble principle. You kill them with mines and depleted uranium shells.
Hopefully people here will change their minds before a hot war. As the saying goes, America always picks the right solution after trying all the wrong ones.
The world changed in many ways. America now resembles China or Russia in terms of authoritarianism and oligarchy.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47270470
> Dean Ball: What Secretary Pete Hegseth announced is a desire to kill Anthropic. It is true that the government has abridged private-property rights before. But it is radical and different to say, brazenly: If you don’t do business on our terms, we will kill you; we will kill your company. I can’t imagine sending a worse signal to the business community. It cuts right at heart at everything that makes us different from China, which roots in this idea that the government can’t just kill you if you say you don’t want to do business with it, literally or figuratively. Though in this case, I’m speaking figuratively.
It's because they need enormous amounts of money for their datacenters
And enormous amount of political support because of the negative perception of AI in society
It's not just that.
There was the 3 laws of robotics, where a robot/software was not to do any harm.
There was concerns over privacy and refusal of sharing your name and info on the internet. After all it's full of strategers and there was danger
Don't get into cars with strangers
And probably some of the same companies where you could get fired for publicly expressing some mildly controversial sociological theories like James Damore did are also companies that would not hesitate to work with the CIA or the Pentagon on mass surveillance or weapons systems.
2007 was 19 years ago. If you step back another 19 years, you'll find that the major tech companies of the era had huge defense contracts: IBM, HP, Oracle, SGI, Texas Instruments, etc. Not only that, the development of many technologies we take for granted today -- like integrated circuits, the Internet, even Postgres -- were directly funded by the DoD. Much of the growth of Silicon Valley in the early days was a direct consequence of working with the military.
So the military likes to keep saying.
Most people here have no cultural relationship to that era of 38 years back. You may as well talk about the bubonic plague that ravaged San Francisco in the early 1900's and how it changed the course of the city that eventually led to where it is today.
> the world has changed.
It's the effect of a cult of personality. People don't feel like they want or need this. But they're on board with the cult.
But ma, look at our stonk price!
It's certainly entertaining to read about ancient industry history, with people on DARPA grants objecting to military interest in the stuff the military was paying them to do.
In 2000 I worked for a company that was building a mobile telephony and data product. The partner company asked us to help them implement the lawful intercept function, as is required by law, which we did, however they were asking for 5+% LI traffic when the common practice was 2-ish%. Our hardware was exceptional, we could trivially have done 100% at line rate with zero impact. The engineers all stepped aside, and finally: "Fuck those guys. They get their 2%."
It's one of the better ethical moments I've had in my career of working for _mostly_ very ethical companies (so obviously not any social media or crypto).
Let's not imply the world changed on its own. Trump changed it.
> I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.
> I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.
> my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war
Holy mother of bubbles. No, for several decades it was a common thing for the L3 Harris, Lockheed Martin, etc to scoop up half the geeks from most graduating classes.
Yes, the equivocal wording means nothing. It's clear that Anthropic has no moral qualms about participating in war crimes, since that's been America's MO since forever. America has provided free weapons to Israel to continue their slaughter in Gaza and has now joint forces with the same to assassinate leaders under the auspices of peace talks, and kill schoolchildren and other civilians as part of a terror campaign.
When I graduated, companies had mottos like Don't do evil.
And did they stick to it?
> My, the world has changed.
Revisionist history.
When you graduated in 2007, the leading tech companies were Microsoft, Google, IBM, Cisco, Apple, Intel, HP, Oracle, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments.
How many refused DoD application of their products?
I only recall one -- Google. (And it actually first agreed to Project Maven before later backing out.)
You have to recognize that boomers, with all their faults, took military action seriously. And Silicon Valley looked up to the likes of John Perry Barlow and 60s counterculture.
Their kids don't give a shit.
I don't know what you're talking about. This is exactly as I remember things back in the Iraq war. With us or against us and all that.
> classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war
I don't want to be stuck with horses when the enemy is invading with tanks.
How well do horses fare against tanks - anyone know? Tanks are really big and bulky and I'm sure (well-trained) horses could literally run circles around them, which wouldn't do any good because how would you get through the armor.
A cavalry charge was tried once in the opening days of WW1. A machine gun took care of it. Tanks have machine guns.
P.S. Horses where then relegated to hauling equipment around, not combat. This persisted even into WW2. The Germans used horses extensively for transport. You don't see it much in the documentary films, as the cameramen were instructed to not show the horse drawn stuff. They wanted to present the image that the Wehrmacht was mechanized.
Students are idealistic. The real world has a habit of blunting that.
> My, the world has changed.
Has it though? I'd say it's morphed, not changed. This is still, underneath it all, Hanseatic League and East India Company domination style colonialism, but adapted to and shaped by the digital age.
The US has pretty much all throughout its history had its military-industrial complex and warfare as an economic motor too, and in view of this, it's inevitable that software gets integrated.
Israel, the most recent settler-colonial state (of course some people try to claim it's not using various mental gymnastics, but I'm not fooled), was the experiment and has become a model for how to intermingle the industrial-military complex with society to the degree they two become indistinguishable, and with backing of the West it's been a very profitable and, I hate to say it, successful model.
Here's[1] a review of a book about the subject, talking about the state incubating start-ups and spawning a tech sector for the sole purpose of warmongering.
[1]: https://theconversation.com/the-harvard-of-anti-terrorism-ho...
Be careful with this "they are all the same" logic. As an empire, I would rather have the WWII to 2016 USA than the current one and the current one to Russia.
You're quite right that there are degrees in hell.
It’s like cheating on a spouse, it’s not much of a claim to say “id never cheat” when there are zero opportunities to do so.
Same with the claims from companies like Google - “dont be evil”. Easy to say when there is nothing on the line.
But when the choice is between your claimed morals and the future success of your company, those morals disappear in a hurry. But they were never strongly held in the first place.
Didn't the silicon valley basically bootstrapped with defense contracts?
There's an old German short film called Nicht löschbares Feuer (Inextinguishable Fire, 1969)[1] that I'm fond of. It was a protest film against Napalm and how some companies wouldn't really let their employees know what they were actually working on.
"I am a worker and I work in a vacuum cleaner factory. My wife could use a vacuum cleaner. That's why everyday I pick up a piece. At home I try to assemble the vacuum cleaner. But however I try, it always becomes a sub-machine gun.
...
This vacuum cleaner can become a useful weapon. This sub-machine gun can become a useful household appliance.
What we produce it depends on the workers, students, and engineers."
That last line is still very relevant today.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnpLS4ct2mM
This question has been boiling in my brain for quite a long time.
Consider a hypothetical scenario where one spy chinese or russian programmer working in Google or Meta might have siphoned off (copied and uploaded) all the important code (Monorepo) to the Mothership and all of us are now sitting ducks.
I am sure, this question might have crossed your minds. I have no idea. if blueprints for the TPU chip design could get leaked, imagine what might have already happened?
That kinda happened already in 2009. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora
Industrial espionage also was publicly disclosed around the plans for the joint strike fighter. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017/july/chinas-...
I’m sure in the classified arena there are a lot more examples.
Minor point but this doesn't only have to be russian/chinese spies but rather this can be anybody including say the UK/Israel or even countries which can be considered "allies"
I'd also be surprised if this code isn't already available with the US forces too and sometimes the enemy can be from within too.
Fun fact:
DOW Chemical was producing Agent Orange, but was getting a ton of public pushback - so bad it decided to stop production, forcing the Pentagon to look for an alternative supplier.
That supplier? A German privately owned pharmaco called Boehringer-Ingelheim. It's Chairman at the time? Richard von Weizsäcker, future President of Germany.
The production site was in Hamburg, is contaminated for the next thousand years. Boehringer is legally forced to operate pumps to prevent the dioxins in that site from reaching the water table. If those did, it would wipe out the full population.
Oh those righteous Germans.
Disclosure - Boehringer denies the above: https://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com/boehringer-ingelheim-di...
Judge for yourself.
NIH on Exposure, AO and BI: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK230789/
Deeper dive on that BI Hamburg site: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/consumer-health/diox...
Nitpick here:
They didnt produce the final Agent Orange, they produced on of the materials needed for Agent Orange:
2,4,5-Trichlorophenoxyacetic
That's one of the herbicides used to defoliate trees in the agent orange.
Bhopal disaster comes to mind.
This sounds like the plot to the story Johnny Cash tells in One Piece at a Time, minus the machine gun, of course.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZuJivIwV8o
This is really, really , really bad revisionist history boarding on fanfiction - The U.S. military directly built the entire foundation of the modern tech industry. There's a reason that the Internet started out as ARPANET (ARPA [now DARPA] being a DoD agency).
What else did they build?
> moral grounds
more like fashionable virtue signaling that survives only the least amount of inconvenience
Ever since I was young I was fairly divided on the subject. I've dealt with some highschool students affected by the downed aircraft MH17 and that lead to lots of grief among students. It usually lead to strong anti-war sentiments but some also felt a need to "do" something with it.
If no one works on defence systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized, perhaps not this week but in 5 years. Therefore I can reconcile the idea of working for defence related r&d. I also know that these sentiments are used by unscrupulous individuals to gain influence, but I don't feel like we should let that cause a divide between people with a strong moral compass and those without, since we'd be worse off if there was no one in a position of power to make moral decisions. That requires people to judge work based on it's content instead of the domain. It also requires workforce to have enough collective pressure to stall immoral defence (or rather attack) systems.
Automated decisionmaking tools throw a wrench into this because it brings us steps closer to mass deployment of questionable and potentially unhinged munitions. If laws mandated human-in-the-loop systems it would be a better outcome.
No one should apologize for feeling conflicted while giving an issue considerable thought. Constantly reassessing your position based on the changing nature of the world should be encouraged to be the default approach.("Constantly" within reason of course).
I can imagine some Americans making a decision based on the threat of other authortarian states and being left completely bewildered when they have to grapple with the notion that their government may be the bigger threat to their own security.
> If no one works on defense systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized
The reality is that the US government has not historically been engaged in defense. They have been engaged in offense. If you live in the united states and work on "defense," you are working on offense. If even if you are designing something like missile interceptors, they have historically been used primarily to protect US assets in wars that the US started.
Perhaps you'd like to know how well interceptor missiles fare today. They are rapidly being made obsolete. Offense is still the best defense.
> Offense is still the best defense.
That's a psychotic thing to say about starting new wars and aiding genocides. The only thing that's being defended are the profits of western oligarchs.
That's exactly the argument made by Putin to invade Ukraine. Congratulations.
> If no one works on defence systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized, perhaps not this week but in 5 years
All the things we have are jeopardized because those systems are actually attack systems and were just used to start a war. We will be lucky if it wont grow into WWIII.
And I just read an article about how those defense systems are used to bomb hospitals with double tap tactic - meaning you bomb rescuers when they come. Literally the first day of that no-defense war, they were used to bomb a school. And before that, they were used to execute fishermen and maybe smugglers with no judicial review. Just to make someone feel manly.
> If no one works on defence systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized, perhaps not this week but in 5 years. Therefore I can reconcile the idea of working for defence related r&d.
I am not saying this line of thinking is completely absurd. But I think every individual considering this should reflect a lot. (1) Is your country using its ""defense"" systems wisely? (2) Won't the technology be replicated by adversaries anyways? (3) etc..
Overall, the number of people and resources spent on Weapons R&D is probably significantly more than people working on things like diplomacy, ethics, or activism for international human rights (assuming human rights violations are the only legitimate reason for war).
It's significantly safer for individual nations and humanity as a whole if we're not all armed to the teeth constantly on the brink of large conflict, and instead are more or less ethically aligned, all respect basic human rights, and respect other nations.
I think that there is a difference between wishful thinking about how things should be versus preparing based on how things are.
Also diplomacy doesn't have a great track record for the past 100 years.
I don't think the world has changed. There's just a madman in the white house. Look at the "Presidents" tweet for god sake... how is this normal?!
"THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS! "
"The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution. Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.
Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!"
What are some examples of a tool the military wanted but the company refused to allow them to use it and getting away with it?
My guess is that Hegseth saw this tiktok showing a vision of robots deployed by the Chinese army:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/z5I8HDkrKbI
The project management book we used in the university noted that if a person refused to work on weapons/military systems and similar, there's no other choice than to respect that, and even asking for its reasons would be borderline unacceptable (depending on your closeness with said person).
Now the only reason models trained on any and every public data can't be attached to autonomous weapons is that we didn't fed enough data to these systems to carry this tasks reliably yet.
You said the overton window is moved, yet there's no window to discuss about in today's world. As a human being you either get exploited or get exploded. In either case human is the product. We just serve machines at this point.
What we now call Silicon Valley was created by the Navy in the late 19th century because they needed advanced radio technology to coordinate Pacific patrols. From then to about five years before the time you’re talking about, schools and tech companies worked closely with the military.
On the timescale of the industry as a whole, working with the military has been the norm and we are seeing a reversion to mean after about two decades of aberrant divergence.
These are kind of unrelated issues. You’re right that it used to be companies just didn’t want to be involved in war at all, & generally speaking that isn’t going to cause issues.
The core of the issue here is having a private company which is trying to dictate terms of use to the military, which is not really something that has been done before afaik
Originally this contract was signed with these terms included, and it wasn’t until Anthropic started investigating how its tech was used by Palantir in the Maduro operation that this became an issue.
On a surface level it seems like Anthropic is doing the right thing here but this is really at the root of this & the outcome of the case (and whether or not Anthropic is a legitimate supply chain risk) depends entirely on the details of those conversations they had with Palantir.
I quit a job 8 years ago because I learned my code had been deployed inside missiles. Many of my colleagues had similar red lines. I doubt many would now.
Maybe not war, per se, but still relevant to this topic, around this time, there was a famous AT&T whistle blower (Mark Klein) who described the company's role in domestic surveillance by the NSA.
Maybe companies are more open about it today, but it is hard to make such a wide assertion.
When I was a kid just the rumor of "selling out" could kill the popularity of something, now it's often the goal.
As much as I agree with a lot of these principles, in principle, the crux of the fight is Anthropic feeling and behaving like they're entitled to be involved in things far beyond anything they're legally allowed to be, and the military leadership telling them, rightly, to take a hike and not let the door hit them on the way out.
Effective Altruism is a deeply silly, flawed, unserious, superficial way of engaging with the world if this, FTX, and shrimp welfare are the outcome of people putting it in action.
What Anthropic wants is to be able to go back and pontificate and sue a government if they determine that their terms of service have been violated. In order to enforce that, they wanted oversight, access, and to intervene if they felt it was being put to a purpose they disagreed with, namely surveillance or autonomous weapons/killing, etc.
As an AI platform, they can decide if they want the military to be able to use the software. I'm 1000% on board with this. They don't get to sit an Anthropic employee down and say "ok, now you watch these soldiers and make sure they follow the rules, and if they do anything wrong, you hit the big red button that shuts them down." They don't get to program a Claude oversight agent to do that, either. That messes with realtime operations. They don't get to go back and sue "ackshually, we looked at these logs and determined that you violated rule 102.3a in the contract, because one of the terrorists was participating from an IP address determined to reside in the continental US" or whatever.
Anthropic doesn't get to hold the US military accountable. It doesn't get to do oversight. It doesn't get to constrain its scope of operation, through legal threat or active intervention or contracts or otherwise.
Chain of command and rule of law constrain the US military. Congressional oversight and rule of law hold it accountable. A private contractor, no matter how noble or principled, doesn't get extra privileges.
Anthropic playing political games, advocating for unelected and unaccountable power to be granted a private corporation, is what got them designated a supply chain risk, and I can see the argument for it. Depending on how much effort they put in to hassling the government and pushing for their side, it remains to be seen whether the designation sticks.
And in principle, I also see the utility of being extremely heavy handed when slapping down a private company trying to make a power grab like that. Either through ignorance or incredible arrogance and entitlement, a private company and industry needs to learn their place in the grand scheme of things. Anthropic isn't special, their place is right alongside all the rest of we the people; they don't get extra privileges because they feel strongly that they're particularly right or righteous.
OpenAI effectively said "yeah, rule of law, thumbs up, sounds good." and took the $200B on the table. Anthropic was pushing for extra private oversight and accountability, and it doesn't matter if it was surveillance, autonomous weapons, or not eating babies - the particular rule doesn't matter, the precedent being set of private corporations getting a say, at all, beyond legal limits, is the point. No company gets to tell the US military what to do or what not do, or hold them accountable post-hoc, or constrain available options, because if they absolutely need to break a technicality for a good reason, when national security and defense is under consideration, a private company's rules and terms of service is the very last thing in the world that should be important to that discussion.
I'm a Snowden fan and absolutely want the global surveillance apparatus to vanish, and don't want an AI singleton dystopia, and I'm probably waaayyy more liberal and liberty minded than is reasonable, but even I can understand where this line in the sand is, and why it's there. I'd be shocked if Dario lasts the year as CEO, it's clear he's ill equipped for real world, adult decisions.
Aren't shifts in the Overton Window are qualitatively different from attempts to avoid the wrath of an organized crime syndicate in power?
VCs have mined all the low hanging fruit of the internet. Exactly how many attention grabbing advertising companies, crypto scammers and gambling sites can the world stand. Enshittification is forcing them to seek new horizons.
USA is collapsing.
Around 10 years ago, in college, in Calculus class I had a very ambitious classmate, wanted to go to DARPA and work on Robotics. I asked if he was thinking it through solely from technical perspective or considering ethics side as well. Clearly, he didn't understand the question and I directly inquired - what if the code you write or autonomous machine you contribute to used for killing? His response - that's not my problem.
After spending couple of years studying in the US, I came to conclusion that executives and board members in industry doesn't care about society or humans, even universities don't push students towards critical thinking and ethics, and all has turned into a vocational training, turning humans into crafting tools.
The same time, at Harvard, I attended VR innovation week and the last panel discussion of the day was Ethics and Law, which was discussed by Law Professor, a journalist and a moderator and was attended a handful of people. I inquired why founders, CEOs or developers weren't in part of the discussion or in attendance? Moderator responded that they couldn't find them qualified enough to take part in the discussion. The discussion basically was - how product companies build affects the society? Laws aren't founders problem, that's what lawyers are for, and ethics - who cares, right?
This frenzy, this rat race towards next billion dollar company at any cost, has tore down the fabric of the society to the individual thinking level; or more like not thinking, just wanting and needing.
>” I inquired why founders, CEOs or developers weren't in part of the discussion or in attendance? Moderator responded that they couldn't find them qualified enough to take part in the discussion.”
This seems more like credentialist arrogance than a well-reasoned judgment.
See in your case with the military you can directly say, hey my code will be used to bomb other people possibly. But in today's times it isn't (I am sure even then) so cut and dry. I worked in AdTech industry (like 60% of the bay area techies). So the ad tech I write gets shown to millions/billions. What about ads influencing elections and then politicians waging wars? Anti-vax ads which influence people and then kill them. Scam ads. Insurance ads and then people not getting cancer meds from the same insurance. Am I responsible for those deaths? I would say Yes.
But what is the option? I feel each of us wants to draw a line based off of our morality but the circumstances don't allow us to stick to it (still gotta pay rent)
We are all on a Titanic the way I see it. It's just the DARPA guy is gonna sink first. Rest of us are just pretending to be Jack trying to be the last ones to go.
Well you cannot be responsible for adults' discernment or their critical thinking. If those same ads are being shown to children that would be different.
I don't see this as a binary thing. Legally we tend to draw a clear line between child and adult for pragmatic purposes, but I don't think my responsibility of intent disappears just because someone hits a magical number. I have steered clear of various gambling / "gaming" jobs which have had silly high salaries as a result; I don't in any way want to participate in things which are meant to play the weak points of the human psyche like a harp, for profit.
But they are?
And it's a fallacy to assume that critical thinking is something that you're born with. In addition to the media landscape being completely ingrained into society. I can't really escape recommender engines anymore when consuming media.
If your exposure to media is curated since you were born, how are you going to tell if you're being deceived? It's pretty much the allegory of the cave.
This isn't really the moral dilemma you make it out to be.
"But what is the option?"
Don't see money as the only goal?
Otherwise it ain't black and white.
There are forms of advertisment that are not so bad and there is a need for kill devices since there are lots of other existing kill devices. But this ad technology and this actual war ministry who take pride in revoking all "woke shit" like "rules of engagement" - I would not work for. There is other work, even if it pays less, but money ain't everything.
> Don't see money as the only goal?
That’s easy to say when you have money, it kind of sounds like “let them eat cake”
Do you claim there are only unethical income choices? Or do you claim your expected standard of income comes only with unethical offers?
I think that you can find something morally wrong with most companies or practices within these companies.
Oh if you are looking for dirt, you can find dirt allmost anywhere, but im gemeral I do see a difference in making a website for a kindergarten, vs applying the most efficient tech to track and target children with manipulative ads.
Sure, but maybe you'll have to ad dark patterns, track users or create ad campaigns yourself for this kindergarten website.
Maybe that kindergarten want to cut food and people costs to make more money. Which could lead to very real consequences for the kids as well.
Yes and if you have ethics then you can say no. Also I never saw a Kindergarten website that even remotely did this.
Do you seriously believe that your only alternative is to work building ads or weapons?
> But what is the option? I feel each of us wants to draw a line based off of our morality but the circumstances don't allow us to stick to it (still gotta pay rent)
I was with you up to this point, but when you say "life is to hard to stay moral" I am thinking about how buying the wrong shampoo contributes to micro plastic in the ocean, or how buying a fitting jeans that is not exploiting labor is an extremely time intensive endeavor, or how avocados may be vegan but often produced unsustainable. Basically I thought you were making this point from The Good Place https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lci6P1-jMV8 .
But when you are working in IT, an industry that is generally still very well of, avoiding an employer that is actively making the world a worse place, is a low bar to cross. It's just one decision every few years, which also is comparatively easy to research (you are probably doing it as your normal preparation for the job interview anyway) and the impact of that decision is enormous in comparison to most other decisions you make, so it's well worth it to ponder a bit.
I think moral purity tests for work places is a delicate and tough question event for software development.
Which work places would you feel are acceptable?
What about a bank? They invest or loan money to weapons manufacturers.
What about a renewable energy company? What if that company accepted investment with funds from Saudi Arabia / UAE / Qatar?
Etc.
Given the atomization and layering of work, this has become much harder to truly judge. Ten years ago I was excited to join a customer feedback platform - what could be better than helping companies understand their customers and provide better services and products? You can probably see where this is going, but inevitably the tools were just used to better tweak product profitability and eliminate end customer surplus, to the customer company’s benefit. And they were used by the likes of draft kings et al along with the Starbucks and Nikes of the world. I hear people claim that, in capitalism, no one hands are clean, and I am inclined to agree.
The option is to quit your job and go get a different one. It amazes me that people choose to work at Meta etc. I mean, it’s good for them, but they are choosing a bit more money whilst harming the rest of society. That’s a really bold move, to say that you just don’t care about other people.
Agreed. You can quit. That is always an option. "Gotta pay the bills" is definitely valid for some small subset of the us population but that certainly doesn't apply to software engineers in a hub like the bay or seattle. These people delude themselves into thinking they "must" have their ridiculous Meta pay to pay for their $2.5M house and their current lifestyle. Golden handcuffs and turn the blind eye to what they are doing.
> So the ad tech I write gets shown to millions/billions. What about ads influencing elections and then politicians waging wars? Anti-vax ads which influence people and then kill them. Scam ads. Insurance ads and then people not getting cancer meds from the same insurance.
Don't forget ICE and other government agencies using the bidstream data to track the location and behavior of immigrants, dissidents, etc, so they can be tracked down and arrested and sent to the gulag.
Hi, I work in edtech.
There are hundreds of sectors and industries that don't have net negative effects on society and involve software development.
My pet theory is that this has been accelerated due to the cultural rejection of the humanities as worthy of study.
Orwell wrote about this: https://orwell.ru/library/articles/science/english/e_scien
> "The fact is that a mere training in one or more of the exact sciences, even combined with very high gifts, is no guarantee of a humane or sceptical outlook."
As Tom Lehrer sang:
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun.
> what if the code you write or autonomous machine you contribute to used for killing?
This line of thinking, that creating machines that kill is unethical, will destroy the West. If the US wasn't so good at producing killing machines in WW2, you wouldn't be here to complain about DARPA ethics.
Instead of having engineers develop the most advanced machines for killing (i.e. protecting the West) such people go into producing the most addictive content delivery systems, destroying the brains of minors.
Why are those the only two options?
>This line of thinking, that creating machines that kill is unethical, will destroy the West
Hell yeah
What is this “West” that you care so much about?
> This line of thinking, that creating machines that kill is unethical, will destroy the West.
He specifically said autonomous killing machines. You understand the difference right?
Reread the original quote:
"what if the code you write OR autonomous machine you contribute to used for killing"
We’re the bad guys. We were only the “good guys” for like 4 years in the 1940s and we still did internment camps. Everyone is costing off that 80 year old aura to justify a death machine.
Which is why on a human level I have zero respect for many CEOs. The world would be a better place without them and they are actively working on making it worse. In fact I believe the rest of the tribe should punish them for this anti-social behavior to disincentivize it in the future.
The one industry that people dislike that I haven’t been in is war. I hope to be in weapons one day. The ethics are pretty straightforward to me: kill as few as possible to protect your interests; and that may be many people; but it is not really that many people.
Anyway, I won’t guess at your friend’s motivation but if you gave me the ability to make America’s industry better at prosecuting war you’d better believe I’d do it with great enthusiasm.
Besides I’ve been around long enough to know that when the rubber hits the road the ethical people will find their way rapidly to the Paradox of Tolerance and suddenly find that violence is highly desirable. I find this kind of high variance behaviour is undesirable and leads to unhappiness all around.
Nothing has destroyed my faith in humanity more than the frantic race to the bottom of the AI insanity the last couple years. You can feel the frenzied greed in the air, masses of investors piling over each other to get a piece of the golden pie at any cost. It’s fucking disgusting.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun
That's just patently false. Tons of executives and board members in industry absolutely care. Some are in it just for philanthropic purposes.
Where are they? The vast majority of executive and board members are kissing every inch of this administration's ass.
It's best to work with the system, while you think you can still influence it.
Oh? Name them, with receipts for actions taken, not vague gestures towards morality.
The actual logical end point of most of the 'for the good of humanity' folks in the bay area is:
'Only I can be trusted with the money, power, and weapons that I believe will break the world, but I promise it is for the best. No system or power should hold me to account in the event I am wrong or change my mind. Trust me.'
I know many of them personally, and I will not name any of them, so that virtue-signaling radical leftists on the internet cannot harass them.
Absolute burn. But accurate.
I cannot stand this kind of absolute thinking from the left or right. It’s usually just cope for personal deficiencies.
> Moderator responded that they couldn't find them qualified enough to take part in the discussion.
With a gate keeping attitude like that, are you really surprised engineers don’t want to participate?
The problem as stated isn't finding interested engineers, but qualified ones. Reframing it as just about appeal is disingenuous.
Why would an anyone need prequalification to walk into a room and sit in an audience while lawyers talk about stuff on stage? Just let them in.
There is no such thing as “qualified”. The engineers actually doing the work definitely get a seat at the table, otherwise it’s an academic circle jerk detached from reality.
What if a new weapons technology was developed by an adversary but not developed by your country. Then it was used to attack and perhaps conquer your country? Or cause an unduly higher number of casualties due to disparity of force?
Raised an eyebrow a little at this sentence: "Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences."
Let me rephrase it for you:
"We both want a docile American public who go along with our desires so we can achieve goals that may be contrary to the interests of the American public."
My eyebrows basically left my face after reading the whole thing.
This is not the forbidden love story I would've asked for.
The Department of Defense was named as such after the detonations of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
We - as a humanity - collectively recognized the weight of our creation, and decided to walk back
Discussing “AI alignment” in the same breadth as aligning with a “Department of War” (in any country) is simply not an intellectually sound position
None of the countries we’ve attacked this year pose an existential threat to humanity. In contrast, striking first and pulling Europe, Russia, and China into a hot war beginning in the Middle East surely poses a greater collective threat than bioweapons, sentient AI, or the other typical “AI alignment” concerns
Why aren’t there more dissidents among the researcher ranks?
> Why aren’t there more dissidents among the researcher ranks?
Because they’ve likely all lost faith in humanity watching Trump get reelected and now just want to get rich and hope to insulate their families from the reality we’re all living in.
Not disagreeing with you but “I lost all faith in humanity so I might as well run the gas chambers” is the delusion of a psychopath and completely inexcusable.
Among those who would resist, half would've done so outwardly by now and been fired, the other half would be hiding their activity. In both cases we wouldn't be hearing about them now.
>We - as a humanity - collectively recognized the weight of our creation, and decided to walk back
We ran out of bombs actually. If there had been more bombs there would have been more bombings.
It wasn't that the US ran out, a 3rd bomb could have been dropped within two weeks of the first 2 had Japan not surrendered after the initial round https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Event...
It needed to be built first. The us had no bombs left.
The bomb was built with decision to delay shipment until the 13th to see if Japan surrendered. On the 13th no word had come, but the shipment was further delayed to wait for word anyways. On the 14th word of Japan's decision to surrender was announced. https://www.marshallfoundation.org/articles-and-features/gen...
Had the bomb already been shipped, nothing about these delays suggests it would have instead been dropped before surrender instead of just delayed there. In reality, the pause sources from when Truman intervened immediately after Nagasaki (which was bombed on the 9th, Hiroshima previously on the 6th) by the 10th in hopes of unconditional surrender instead.
Had Japan not surrendered for some reason (they had more going south at the time than just the nukes) the US may well have dropped a 3rd bomb over another approach. That said, I'll give due credit to Truman that the activity was paused on hopes of surrender first rather than waiting for the next one to arrive.
Technology and national defense are 100% part of the same conversation.
I'm not saying the government can't overreach or over control, but if I or you or any of us were in charge of the defense of a country then we'd want to make sure technology from our country at the very least wasn't used to hurt us and if possible used to help us.
That's what alignment means and it's totally reasonable.
Nazi Germany and Hitler didn't pose an existential threat to Europe until they did pose a threat.
And even then you had politicians like Chamberlain in the UK who wanted to make peace because the UK wasn't directly threatened (this is after much of Europe was under siege).
Which of the countries that the US has recently attacked are you comparing to Nazi Germany?
Would love to enumerate those commonalities. Run by a psychopath? Commitment to violent lethality? Burning billions of dollars for uncertain goals? (ok there's one)
Certain patterns at top ranks?
They have the same what and why, but they don't agreee on the how.
As someone looking at this from outside the US, the whole sequence of events is frankly terrifying.
I fear that frontier AI is going to be nationalised for military purposes, not just in the US but across the globe.
At the same time, I really don’t know what Anthropic were expecting when they described their technology as potentially more dangerous than an atom bomb while agreeing to integrate purpose-built models with Palantir to be deployed in high-security networks for classified military tasks.
Good cop/bad cop has proven very effective at manufacturing consent. The two political parties of capital interests have it down to a science. This is just the AI iteration playing out.
Well I will say that if there's a word that describes what the Department has been up to in Venezuela and Iran, "Defense" does seem to be the least Orwellian option.
I was actually very impressed with their post. It’s a work of art for how carefully it was worded.
My takeaway is that they are bending a knee to smooth things over. It’s business and it’s human behavior. They are actually furious and would love to tell Trump to crawl up his own ass, but that doesn’t help anyone in the long run. It’s in everyone’s best interest to get back to work and hope for the best tomorrow. It’s the adult thing to do. However, it's exactly why humanity is the shitshow it is right now. One side is trying to keep the world going by adulting while the other side keeps acting like complete fucking idiots.
Just be mindful that you filled in the gaps between the lines with what you wanted to read, not necessarily what's true.
Has Dario been to the whitehouse?
You seem to be implying that would mean something. Sounds naive/desperate.
Why?
> Our most important priority right now is making sure that our warfighters and national security experts are not deprived of important tools in the middle of major combat operations.
> we had been having productive conversations with the Department of War over the last several days, both about ways we could serve the Department that adhere to our two narrow exceptions, and ways for us to ensure a smooth transition if that is not possible.
Why are people leaving openAI when this is Anthropic's stance? Are their two narrow requirements enough to draw the ethical boundary people are comfortable with?
Frankly it’s a shitshow all around. The truth is that nobody gives a fuck about this. They have no moral qualms, just practical. And these are the people that should bring us the future. Man what a depressing scenario.
It’s a mistake to conflate “wants to spend money on the most ethical option available” with “ think the most ethical option available is perfect”
Why wouldn’t you move your dollars to someplace incrementally better?
You make it sound as if "the most ethical option available" is.. actually ethical?
Their statement doesn't make it sound they are incrementally better, they are trying to bend over backwards to keep working for war.
I am not greatly relieved by this post of Anthropic's. That said, they seem to have lines and are willing to stand by them; I don't see where OpenAI has done that. So, for now and from my point of view, the point goes to Anthropic.
Moving my subscription is not terribly consequential, but since the products are so similar and easy to substitute with one another for my uses, it seems best to participate in what in aggregate is a signal that is being noticed and commented on and interpreted to mean that a significant number of people who buy AI access do care about this.
There are so many inference providers not working for Department of War. Even Alibaba and sure China has lots of issues but they are not bombing anyone now if that's your first priority. Or else, smaller US / European / Asian companies with pure civilian focus. SOTA open weights models they serve are perfectly suitable for coding and chat. I run a local Qwen3.5-122B-A10B-NVFP4 instance and it writes entire Android apps from scratch and that's a midsized model.
Can you give a list of high quality alternatives? Morally speaking i would put China on par with the US if not worse (due to their ongoing Uyghur genocide). I will check out Qwen3 but would be interested in others.
I'm not sure there's really any good large model providers
Sorry for the off-topic but what hardware are you running Qwen3.5-122B-A10B-NVFP4 on? Is it physically local or just self-administered? Thanks in advance.
I have an NVIDIA Thor Dev Kit, a somewhat less known cousin of DGX Spark.
Because Anthropic is called Anthropic and they have this really warm and inviting visual aesthetic.
What’s a “warfighter?” Do they come from the “Gulf of America?” We used to call them servicemen or service members. Emphasizing they served the people. I guess that’s too effeminate for our roided up and ironically hyper-insecure Secretary of Defense.
A new term was needed some decades ago. "man" titles have not been politically correct for a while, "member" sounds awkward and bureaucratic. In some other languages, "soldier" can be used for all military personnel, while English ended up with a more narrow meaning.
"Awkward and bureacratic" is literally the point of naming conventions commonly adopted by democracies. Titles like "president" or "prime minister", departments like "Department of Defense", referring to government employees as "civil servants", etc. are all intentional measures meant to strip away the prestige and egotism associated with positions of authority in an effort to avoid it going to people's heads, and to remind them that they are meant to serve the good of the public that pays for their existence rather than ruling over them.
"Service member" is awkward, because it has too many syllables. People won't use it when shorter alternatives are available. And it's bureaucratic because it's unspecific. It doesn't tell anything the service those people are members of, and it doesn't tell what kind of work they do.
It has one more syllable than ‘warfighter’, which also doesn’t do any of the things you said.
I'm not sure how much more clear warfighter could be. "One who fights wars."
Service member is extremely vague. "A member of a service."
Growing up, "the service" was synonymous with "the military" among my grandparents who, y'know, fought in WWII
The world wars were an unusual period. When I grew up, "veteran" usually meant an old man. Most men in my grandparents' generation had seen combat.
Except for extreme periods in history (that I hope we can avoid), most service members don't end up directly participating in a war.
> It doesn't tell anything the service those people are members of, and it doesn't tell what kind of work they do.
I'm pretty sure that term could even work for the Pods in some of my Deployments.
Reddit discussion from 2016 (so before Trump).
https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/4ta3hh/cmv_th...
There are many reasons to detest the current political landscape. Don't get distracted.
What term to you prefer for referring to sailors, pilots, soldiers, etc collectively?
Literally what they wrote: service members.
Warfighter is not a new term and has been used in the military since at least the 1990s and was used by Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump.
Service members are anyone serving in the military.
Warfighter is used to describe combat roles.
If useful to distinguish between the two, warfighter is the correct term.
I was unaware that the secretary of defence was a combat role?
He (and his allies) have referred to him as "warfighter": https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/23/look-ma-im-a-warfighter...
In that context he is clearly referring to his previous combat roles on the ground in Iraq.
It would be like a barista becoming CEO of Starbucks and saying, "the employees are happy to have a barista as CEO."
You're right about the age of the term but it's nothing to do with combat, but rather just a nice sounding umbrella term that makes talking about joint forces easier because every military service has their own special name for their personnel (soldiers, sailors, Marines, etc..).
The POGiest of POGs are "warfighters" and individual organizations within the DoD proudly advertise how they serve runny eggs and chicken to warfighters every day or issue their uniforms/equipment with incredible lethargy or maintain their personnel records in 20+ different systems duct taped together.
"Service member" does get used a lot still. Usually abbreviated to "SM".
Source: Personal experience in both combat arms and non combat arms roles.
Not really a new term: “warfighter” always has made me cringe but it’s been commonplace in defense contractor pitches to DoD for many years. Basically, if you hear it being used you’re likely in the presence of someone who does (or did) DoD work. Totally unsurprising to see it here given this is a DoD contracting argument that we’re all watching from the sidelines.
The term war fighter is distinct from service member. War fighter means mission critical and typically in a theater, while a service member might be someone sitting behind a desk in a less critical role. Similar to having mission critical production systems and supporting production systems.
When you perform your business impact analysis, these will bubble up in different ways, requiring some differences to the playbooks.
There isn’t really a distinction day to day on this in practice. It covers everybody - just easier to say than all the official titles and typically for morale helps to carry the name all the way to the back office to connect to what’s happening at the pointy end.
I hate this glorification of war.
Good PR moves.
Exactly, it’s all marketing seems to get new customers. And it worked.
Because there aren't any actual good guys in this story. There is one group that is taking short term gains, and another group that feels rejecting this will lead to long term gains. Neither one of them gives any shits about the use of their technology in to kill people. They just are interested in their companies turning a profit.
Both of these companies have heavy PR teams that they use to convince you that they do, in fact, care about these issues. But that is PR and generally to be considered bullshit. They care about nothing other than their bottom lines.
This has been a wonderous PR move by Anthropic. It gets to make money off the US war machine while somehow being able to portray themselves as the "good guys" in the story leading to that whole #cancelOpenAI trend. If you're dumb enough to believe that Anthropic is really the "good guy" in this story, I have some meme coin to sell you.
Nothing brings home the Orwellian nature of USA 2026 more for me than the word "warfighter".
Just remember, we're not at war with Iran. The House Speaker said so.
We can use the word war because Iran used the word war. But it is not a War in the constitutional sense. Or something.
Trump also says it's war. Different parts of US government leadership are arguing opposite tacks. That said, it's clearly intended to create an existential threat to Iran, so it's plainly obvious that the USA started an actual war.
we are though, they plotted to assassinate the US president, not to mention being the #1 sponsor of terrorism in the middle east, attacking our allies
US took out Iran's supreme leader. It's simple tit for tat.
Sure they did. Thats why we only discovered it after we assassinated their current and former leaders.
I will bet that before the election, you were one of the many shouting that voting for Kamala would mean war with Iran.
It's pretty wild to observe you all getting firmware updates in real time. At least it proves, once and for all, that any attempt at reasoning is futile.
The president's club says that we are. Did the house vote for starting it?
I continue to be surprised how many people haven't heard term until now, it's been in common use in the US for 20+ years.
To me the most Orwellian thing is everyone using the newspeak name for the DoD.
DoW is the opposite of newspeak, it is much more transparent and honest about what that organization is and has been for my entire life
DoW is newspeak. Thats not it's name.
They do a lot more war than defense don't they?
That may be true but changing the department's name can only be done with an act of congress, which has not been done yet. Thus, the name is still officially and legally Dept of Defense.
Just because a name is more accurate doesn't mean that it's its new name. Otherwise we wouldn't be the United States of America (we are literally not united bc Hawaii and Alaska are not contiguous, and we are figuratively not united because... Well, you know)
All of that's irrelevant for what "newspeak" means.
Maybe, but the comment I was replying to wasn't talking about newspeak.
It's in a reply chain that's talking about newspeak. You compacted your context way too early.
The reply chain is talking about newspeak but the parent of the comment I was replying to was
> DoW is newspeak. Thats not it's name.
I understood that comment I was replying to was responding to was replying to the latter part of the comment.
Discussions and threads can evolve. They are not static.
I'm confused... now you were talking about newspeak? How odd.
I'm not sure how you got that from my comment.
As a recap, my reply to your reply was that DoD is the actual newspeak, and your reply to that evolution of the discussion is that you were not discussing newspeak.
In trying to understand if I'm missing something, I looked up what newspeak means. I (as well as probably a few other commenters based on the contents of their comments) was under the assumption it meant "new speak" meaning it's something new.
In case anyone else reading this was not aware of this, this is what I discovered.
It's a term from George Orwell's 1984, describing a language used to make thoughts unthinkable by removing words from the language. It has nothing to do with "age of the term."
Hence, Dept of Defense is indeed newspeak. Dept of War, while being a new name for the dept, is too literal to be newspeak.
Thanks for the opportunity for me to learn something!
Department of Defense has historically been a prime example of newspeak.
I think Department of War is also newspeak. Or at least, they didn't change the name just to get the name in line with the amount of war the department does.
They changed it because they wanted to do more even more war. The amount of war the department does under the name "Defense" has been status quo for a long time, and my take is they wanted us to think of them differently so they could do even more war, which they have since been doing.
Oh apologies, I interpreted your comment as intended to be part of the discussion rather than as a non-sequitur.
Discussions and conversations can evolve. Read the thread again.
The person you're responding to probably hasn't read the book and is just parroting the word. That's kinda where we're at right now in society. I see the comments by malfist and abustamam are similar. No idea what newspeak means, just parroting and saying "that's not its name".
The problem will get worse as we have a generation raised by LLMs.
After hearing Palmer Luckey's argument for the name change[0], I tend to think it's good change.
Some of his arguments:
It used to be called the department of war, and it had a better track record with regard to foreign conflict, under that name then it did under the DoD name.
Department of war is a more honest name, department of defense is a somewhat newspeak term, although "Department of Peace" would be worse.
It's harder to seek funding for "war", then it is to seek funding for "defense". If you ask someone, "Do you want to spend money on education or war?", you will get a different answer asking, "Do you want to spend money on education or defense?".
[0] Palmer Luckey talking to Mike Rowe about the name change: https://youtu.be/dejWbn_-gUQ?t=1007
The problem with this argument is that the _original_ Department of War is now called the Department of the Army, which existed alongside the Department of the Navy. Besides, it’s a moot point unless Congress actually changes the name.
> It's harder to seek funding for "war"
I'm confused. This seems like a bad change.
Regarding Luckey's other statements, I can almost assure you that the administration did not think as much about it as Luckey has. Insecure Pete just thought the title "Secretary of Defense" was too wussy so he wanted to be Secretary of War.
Also, I think people mainly have issue with the fact that Trump is just randomly and unilaterally renaming random stuff and demolishing buildings without congressional approval. If he had gone through the correct alleys then maybe people could ignore it. Maybe. We'd probably still have qualms about it, but at least we'd know that our representatives had a say.
> I'm confused. This seems like a bad change.
It’s a good change in that it discourages unwarranted funding. Bad for the DoD’s budget, good for the country.
It’s analogous to why `React.__SECRET_INTERNALS_DO_NOT_USE_OR_YOU_WILL_BE_FIRED` is a pretty good name.
(But even if it's a decent name in isolation, it isn't actually the name of the department, and using it is a tacit submission to the power of the executive over congress. So… bad overall.)
Good point. Yeah it's an accurate description of the department; I'd want to rename a bunch of other departments to be more accurate too, since apparently names are arbitrary now!
> It used to be called the department of war, and it had a better track record with regard to foreign conflict, under that name then it did under the DoD name.
The flaw in this logic is maddening
It's been in use by overly earnest DoD officials and Raytheon salespeople. But no normal person would use it unironically.
However I suppose Amodei in this context can be included in the former group.
Yeah, it’s common alright. Commonly used as a joke by every veteran I’ve ever met to mock try-hards.
Oh good, I've always had respect for soldiers, but never the govt. I'm glad to hear that soldiers are not buying into this name BS.
Edit: not sure if you're talking about the term warfighters or dept of war. Either way, warfighters just sounds silly, regardless of how long its been in use, and dept of war also sounds silly. It's like what my 5 year old nephew would call his fictitious military agency.
Warfighter - it’s basically “oh we got a badass over here.” People who take things and themselves too seriously and chest pound about their service too much.
It’s exactly the kind of language people like Hegseth love.
Also sounds like something my nephew pretending to be a soldier might call himself :) great to know we are being led by toddlers.
> newspeak name for the DoD.
They changed the name and it matches the intention. It is not a newspeak name anymore.
> They changed the name
No, they didn't. The name of the department at issue is “the Department of Defense” and of its head the “Secretary of Defense” — these are set in statute (the latter for slightly longer time than the former) and the relevant statutes has not been changed, since the office of the Secretary of Defense was created in 1947 and the Department of Defense was created in 1949. The executive branch has just decided to use a nickname for a government department (which is the historical name for a prior department which was split to form two of what are now the three main direct subordinate elements within that department.)
That’s not what the law is. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/111
I went to a military high school up until 2011 and never remember hearing it. My dad and grandpa were military for 20 years each and I've never heard either say it. It definitely hasn't been used broadly in the US for very long (maybe in very specific circles). Even my friends who work as engineers for defense contractors now have never called people "war fighters" around me.
It's been on thr MRE's for decades, hasn't it? At least that's what I remember seeing after disaster relief came in.
Idk, it might've been used on stuff in the past. My point was that it wasn't a thing that normal people (even normal people in the military) would say. The person I'm responding to described it as "common use" for the last couple decades and that just doesn't match up with my experience at all.
The actual warfighters probably don’t use the term, but it has been common for at least 20 years among the staff and contractors supporting them.
Arguably the original name was the newspeak and the new name is more honest
Well, I’m in the US and have been following politics closely for the entire time window you mention, and this year marks the first time I’ve heard it. It is very jarring and a notable rhetorical shift from the concept of “service”.
Same.
20+ years would mean it started to be commonly used around the Iraq invasion, for context on “Orwellian”.
Really? You made it through Covidpocalypse, but the there warfighter is a big problem?
Everytime I hear 'Department of War', it just saddens me. Warfighter is the same.
"When the way prevails in the empire, fleet-footed horses are relegated to ploughing the fields; when the way does not prevail in the empire, war-horses breed on the border." Tao Te Ching chapter 46.
I work in the defense industry. I have not heard a single person say Department of War or DoW.
The guy that replaced Noem yesterday was dubbed by Trump a ‘MAGA warrior’
Long time ago I worked for a company that I learned was selling it's software to help target people during the Iraq war. I quit because I cannot support building software that kills people.
This is a message to people working for that line of business at Anthropic. You don't have to do it, you can quit. If you are helping this insane administration to conduct war on Iran quit. You don't need to have that kind of blood on your hands.
I saw a someone's hypothesis that a generative model was used to help classify buildings to decide what to bomb and that the Girls school was misclassified. If this was an Anthropic model, I can imagine what it feels like being a worker there in that line of business.
Were you earning seven figures tho? That suppresses moral stances rather quickly I reckon
Perhaps. It should do the opposite though - you've likely got enough in the bank that you don't need to work a day in your life again.
There is a reason they call it 'fuck you money'
I've also quit a job where the products I was working were meant to be deployed to CBP to hunt down immigrants. It's a nice gesture, but it won't stop these companies. They just hired someone else without an ethical backbone, and continued the project like nothing happened.
Tech leadership is rotten to the core, and that can't be fixed by individuals making a stand.
> They just hired someone else without an ethical backbone
Or who simply had a different point of view than you.
Yes, a point of view without an ethical backbone, at least in the context of American society. I suppose they could be a Chinese or Russian national considering it ethical to harm the United States, but I don't see a point of drawing that distinction.
Being blanket against CBP is a position without an ethical backbone. It’s just a childish burying head in the sand. Every semi stable country enforces its immigration laws and checks passports of visitors. Claiming the US doing so is somehow unethical is completely misaligned with a sustainable welfare and government services system.
The problem is not the roles, but how those roles are carried out and the complete lack of accountability. It's difficult for citizens to believe that government agencies are noble endeavors when we see ever-creeping anti-Constitutional scope, and rampant unpunished criminality among their members. It would be fantastic if this weren't the case, of course. Unfortunately the only check mechanic we the People seem to have is to consider them hostile entities best avoided until they're drastically reformed.
I don't see masked thugs harassing citizens in other countries. Maybe the problem isn't that immigration is enforced, its how they are doing it? Both Obama and Biden deported more people than Trump.
I agree it won't fix the problem, but marginal drops in labor supply and skill can still have an impact.
I've quit jobs and been laid off from jobs and I will admit that when I do, I always kind of hope that the company goes bankrupt the day after I leave because I was so important. Companies I've quit or been laid off have gone bankrupt, but it took years and sadly I don't think there's any way for me to draw a logical connective of "no tombert -> company fails".
I've never quit a company on purely ethical grounds, but I have turned down interviews and offers because of them. They're probably not going to go bankrupt just by not hiring me, but I like to think that making it incrementally harder to find talent slows down their progress of doing evil things, if only a little.
That's probably still a delusion of grandeur on my end, but we all should have an ethical line that we won't cross; most of us end up working for monsters and/or assholes, especially at BigCos, so your options generally boil down to "work for an asshole who's doing evil that you can live with" or "go live in a Unabomber shed". I guess it's important to make sure that "the evil thing you can live with here" isn't just any act of evil.
Or someone with a backbone, i.e. willing to enforce the law.
At a technical level, I don't believe they're specifically working on targeting anyone. They're providing a general-purpose API that Palantir is presumably using to build the target-finding software.
I imagine that's why the implementation got so far along before this blew up. Someone at Anthropic talked with someone at Palantir and they had a "you did what? Did you read the contract terms" moment, and that was after it went into production.
if all the good people leave all the important positions, what will happen?
Normally I'd agree with this sentiment, but I'm having a hard time feeling bad we took out the Ayatollah. You know, what with him killing tens of thousands of Iranians who demanded reform. I didn't care one bit for him doing that.
I too quit a job that made a significant pivot to weapons R&D. It was a hard move, and honestly I still haven't recovered from it. I don't regret the decision in the slightest though.
One aspect that sticks with me was the sheer excitement of a lot of people in the room, engineers excited to be working on new problems. I believe many didn't consider the consequences of their labor.
As a worker it can take time for it to sink in that the products you are actively working on are being used for immoral/unethical purposes. I've also noticed a perceived weakness when expressing these types of views to colleagues, responses either masked by apathy or just direct justified destruction of lives along patriotic or ideological lines.
Its worth bringing up these stories whenever appropriate I believe, people sometimes _need_ a jolt even if the probability of success are low.
To state the obvious, I think when corruption and power in government go unchecked, companies eventually end up facing situations like this. It’s almost like making a deal with the devil.
At the beginning, they’re usually doing it for the money — and maybe some level of patriotism. Eventually they find themselves involved in things so ugly that they can’t really stomach it anymore. At the same time, they can’t easily back out either.
Then a new CEO comes in and thinks the previous guy was too soft, "He couldn’t handle it, but I can."
And the cycle continues.
Mike Masnick's commentary at [1]. (Yes, I'm aware that he used "hostage note" to refer to a note written by a hostage rather than a note written by a hostage-taker.) Key excerpt:
> Under any previous administration—Democrat or Republican—a company telling the Defense Department “we’d prefer our AI not make autonomous kill decisions without human oversight” would have been a mostly unremarkable negotiating position. It might have been a deal breaker for that particular contract. The two sides might have parted ways. What would not have happened is the Secretary of Defense going on social media to accuse the company of “betrayal” and “duplicity,” the President directing all federal agencies to stop using the company’s products, and the company’s CEO subsequently having to write a public groveling statement apologizing for having accurately described the situation while pledging free labor to the government that attacked him.
[1] Anthropic's Statement To The 'Department Of War' Reads Like A Hostage Note Written In Business Casual - https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/06/anthropics-statement-to-...
It'll be very interesting to see how this case gets resolved - in court and in the court of public opinion. I believe it's incredibly important and I hope they prevail.
I would say to you who would equivocate and dither about lending your skills to a morally and ethically compromised war machine in exchange for a fat paycheck, the same thing that I teach my children:
"Everything and I mean everything can be taken from you except your integrity, only you can give that up"
Defense doesn’t pay better than regular tech. The people in defense are doing it because they believe in helping the govt.
I would argue those at OpenAI or Anthropic are making considerably more than just "regular tech"
I used to work in defense, and this is not true either. People work in defense because it is effectively a job where you can never lose your job except for absolute gross misconduct, have a hard-cap of 40 hours a week / 80 hours a pay cycle (commonly leads to people working "9/80 schedules" and taking every other friday off), and generally speaking you have a lot of chances to move around org charts when programs change. A "cushy" job with very low chance of being fired with a stable paycheck is valuable to a lot of people.
There are also missions people find valuable, like SBIRS ground, where theoretically real lives are being protected. I know a lot of people who enjoy finding meaning in their work, and there are many programs that bring that level of satisfaction (again, look at things like SBIRS ground).
Messages about project Maven, Palantir and Anthropic integration are flagged by certain interest groups:
"Palantir's Maven uses Anthropic's Claude code, sources say."
https://www.reuters.com/technology/palantir-faces-challenge-...
It is always astonishing that the reviled mainstream press is more critical than hackers these days.
Under Secretary of War Emil Michael: I want to end all speculation: there is no active DeptofWar negotiation with AnthropicAI
https://x.com/uswremichael/status/2029754965778907493?s=46&t...
It's worth reading his recent comments on this whole affair: https://www.a16z.news/p/emil-michaels-holy-cow-moment-with
Thank you, will take a look
Is it actually worth reading propaganda, though?
> But if we don’t trust that process and we’re like, ‘Well, the laws are behind the tech, so I’m going to make a decision that impacts 3 million people in the department and then 350 million people in the country’, you don’t get to do that, if you believe in the system. And if you don’t believe in the system, as imperfect as it is, what do you believe in? You’re taking upon yourself to, kind of, be God. And that’s not something that I want, even though I’m a small government free market person. The government has to have a monopoly on violence to protect the country.
What a weird (and false) dichotomy. If I don't want the government to use AI for fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance, I'm taking upon myself to be God?! Also, "monopoly on violence" never meant unregulated violence.
Not sure why Dario apologized for the internal memo leak. Seems like an odd thing to backtrack on.
Probably because it hurts its position either in court or during negotiations with the DoW.
Right, I was hoping for Anthropic to stand its ground a bit more. There’s quite a bit of “ring kissing” undertones in today’s memo.
I think this is one of the weaknesses of rationalism and effective altruism, is that it tries to make a clean break from the common law legal reasoning that the government, and thus corporations, operate on. While I find rationalism to be a useful lens, the fact is that the common law legal framework is totally dominant, and so these deontological arguments made rationally collapse very quickly when translated to the dominant framework.
To be fair, common law and the current system are totally fucking dumb. Everyone that has come up with it and perpetuates it should be ashamed of themselves.
As much as Trump and Hegseth would like it to be called the Department of War, it still takes an act of Congress to change the name of the Department of Defense. No reason to call it by anything else until that happens.
Department of peace sounds even better than defense.
They are pacifiers. Kills everything until it’s pacified.
No it doesn’t, it sounds like newspeak.
Departament of defense sounds like a newspeak for a country that was not in any danger of being invaded for a century or more and all the wars abroad it participated in, it entered pretty much by choice. Department of war is way more accurate.
I'm pretty sure they're being sarcastic
This is such a foot stomping childish thing to get caught up on. It does not at all matter what a dept is called. Try to get over the extremely superficial.
On the other hand, the parent post is entirely correct.
What, I ask, is the point of having laws and rules if you can just ignore the ones you don't like?
Its just a name, who cares?
Not me.
…but, if you break the law, you break the law. Not maybe maybe who cares, its not me being water boarded, I dont care…
If you break the law. You break the law.
Otherwise, who gives a duck what congress says?
Just fire them all and crown Trump King of America.
I’m being facetious. …but maybe its more of a big deal than you superficially pretend it is.
It’s just another case of the administration blatantly breaking the rules.
…so, you know. If youre ok with no laws or rules, I guess its fine.
Seems a bit chaotic to me. I prefer my governing body to be… marginally bound by some kind of responsibilty to something or someone.
link to the memo?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HCmdjFGXwAAPI3d?format=jpg&name=...
thanks a lot
Not everything has to be a conspiracy or some 4D chess business move. Dario is a morally motivated person and regretted the tone that was being conveyed in that memo, so he apologized.
Yeah, that's completely unbelievable. You don't just accidentally call Trump a "dictator" or go on an extended tirade about Sam Altman. Clearly, he was speaking how he truly felt and how he's doing damage control.
> he was speaking how he truly felt
People can speak how they truly feel and then regret the tone with zero cynicism.
Its incredibly simple - they want to get off the supply chain risk list.
Its very evident in his statement, he's trying very hard to clarify what that list means for corporations and downstream business with large commercial and strategic companies.
Imagine if Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc decided that they don't want to ANY sort of minuscule risk (real or perceived) to their massive public sector business lines (via all their DoD DoJ NHS and other 3 letter agencies, state agencies, city and local municipals etc) - and decide to cancel their enterprise Anthropic licenses - which is a VERY possible scenario.
And these are the big players, theres a whole slew of medium and small players all with existing government contracts that need to tread carefully.
Because optically it makes him look terrible.
One of the things that Altman does great is that when he writes he writes as though it will be read by the public every time. It’s why he is able to constantly post his own internal memos/posts on twitter. It’s great too because it makes him look “transparent”.
Sam?
Feel free to look through my post history and decide for yourself if I’m likely to be an OAI/Sam fan.
Try decoupling how you feel about people and what you think objectively about them.
BTW, this deal went south when Anthropic argued that AI systems should never make kill decisions without meaningful human oversight.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/26/anthropic-pe...
We deserve to know if Claude was involved with targeting the girls’ school that was bombed in the first hours of the attack on Iran. 50-100+ girls are reported to have been killed.
Claude is integrated into Palantir’s Project Maven targeting system. The Pentagon has touted how many more targets they were able to attack with this system (1,000’s).
NY Times: Analysis Suggests School Was Hit Amid U.S. Strikes on Iranian Naval Base
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/world/middleeast/iran-sch...
Reuters now reporting "U.S. military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school that killed scores of children"
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-investigation-p...
And nobody else because the geniuses at Reuters thought it was a good idea to make it an exclusive. Also paywalled.
At this moment, I think we should have politics in left, right and center of our workplaces and life discussions everywhere. If you are not explicit with your stance then you are going to dragged along without your choice.
Politics has nothing to do with this. Simply put, spying on citizens or letting machines autonomously kill people is immoral, bad, and a crime against humanity.
> I apologize for the tone of the post
What a world we live in now where private companies are apologising for the "tone" of their speech while official representatives of the government daily express blatant lies and misrepresentations without the slightest fear of consequence.
It really is incredibly sad that what was one of the most respected countries in the world has descended to this - an utter mockery of a functioning democracy.
It’s a business decision.
that just makes it sadder?
The apology was for an earlier leaked post. In that post his tone descends into a diatribe, deserving of apology.
He lashes out, accusing others of lies, spin, gaslighting and peddling. He refers to "Twitter morons", takes a swipe at Trump (who doesn't) and self-delights in the belief that Anthropic are seen as "heroes" while the competition "sketchy".
Not a great post. It's in the own goal zone.
This feels like the time when 2 people in my friend group broke up, and both they kept writing me essays to explain why they were the ones in the right, sharing incredibly intimate details about who is in the right hoping I would act as some sort of fair mediator and judge.
One of the not-so-subtle ways we know a person is a supporter of russia's war in Ukraine is when they refer to it as "Special Military Operation".
That begs the following question: why does Dario Amodei repeatedly call the Department of Defense "Department of War"?
Aren't people generally on board with preferred names? That's what the DoD wants to call themselves.
They don't get to choose.
It's a sad reflection on how low our country has fallen that the one tech company that tries to hold to some value -- nothing outstanding, just something very basic -- not only gets branded a "risk" but has to virtually grovel as Amodei does here.
DoD still has not meaningfully moved to the DoW moniker, to me it represents the most fascist tendency, to make announcements and presume that’s enough to change the truth on the ground. The legal entity one contracts with is DoD. Going along with “DoW” is signal to me that a party has capitulated to the most absurd form of governance.
Pragmatically, it's for the best to use its preferred name instead of legal name when sucking up to the department and Trump to try to get back in good graces.
Maybe it's bad that Anthropic wants to embrace the Department of War?
And the legal entity of Google is Google LLC yet most people don't use that name when talking about Google.
Everyone knows that the companies have to comply, so a company trying to convince the public that they can choose to not comply, is just telling a lie. I don't understand why Anthropic tries damage control here. Why not just admit that all the data given to them, is also used for war-purposes? We currently see the build-up of a much larger warfare. These things are inter-connected. Even more so when some of it is done for politics (e. g. re-election or simple election "boosters"; reminds me of the old movie Manufacturing Consent or the follow-up "brother" Wag the dog).
What do you mean they have to comply? If something was already in a contract they agreed to, sure. But there is nothing legally forcing private companies to do business with the DoD, short of the government forcibly nationalizing them.
Amodei, Altman, and the many that have gone before them: I'm just so bored of these god complexes. They are all the same.
Anthropic: totally cool if you use our tech to kill women and children if you do it the right way, but not totally cool if you use it for certain types of surveillance.
The public: Anthropic are so noble, we should give them ever more praise and money.
Is that the synopsis? (Not really paying attention.)
It has become a moral imperative to not work on this technology that is meant to replace us and the one thing that has separated us from machine and beast.
Slow it down as much as possible to give us more time.
Could they please start using the correct name? Department of Defense?
They still want that contract so they'll continue to pander.
The correct name is the Department of War.
Calling it the Department of Defense implies a system of laws, checks and balances which no longer exists.
It very much still exists, and statements like this are what’s called “obeying in advance.” Don’t do it.
I'm sorry but it does not very much still exist. Otherwise, Congress would be doing something other than praying for the Anointed One and his holy war.
I'm not obeying in advance, but I'm not giving lip service to normality, either.
You are. Congress could stop this right now if they wanted. That they aren’t is of course a problem, but that’s very different than saying the system of checks and balances doesn’t exist. The latter is giving the executive power it doesn’t have.
You should respect the government’s choice. It is elected after all
The executive doesn’t pass laws. Congress created the Department of Defense. Only Congress can rename it. The executive being elected is irrelevant to this point. The Constitution actually matters.
It is the DoD u tip congress says otherwise
Congress hasn't said otherwise, so...
This isn’t how this works. Laws don’t change just because the executive decides it’s going to ignore them. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/111
Only Congress has the authority to change the name. Given they *haven't* authorized it, the name remains DoD. It doesn't work the other way around.
they should rename it to the department of invasions, domestic surveillance, and coups
Department of War is correct.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
Executive orders aren’t laws. This is: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/111.
Not all actions that are taken at an executive agency are done because of a law.
Let me state this very simply: executive agencies have only the power granted to them by Congress. So yes, all actions taken by an executive agencies are bound by the law. Anything else is ultra vires and of no effect.
I don’t feel that old, but I guess being 45 is ancient in tech.
The Silicon Valley tech jobs we have now has a history rooted in World War 2 and funding of it by the US gov.
https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo?si=gGza5eIv485xEKLS
I’m not saying war is good or anything, but also don't ride a high horse cause none of it would be here w/o WW2.
But a civilian should have the right to participate in defense and not offense without fear of retribution or being humiliated. They are not the only game in town. All the DOW had to do was drop them, pick Openai and support the latter including recommending it to all the nations that listen to the president. That would be good for Openai business.
Thanks for sharing. This is very interesting.
Watching this, I realised one thing: Germans, once upon a time phenomenally intelligent folks, got eroded by a bunch of stupid politicians’ ambitions.
> Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences.
They should rather say, we don't have to take you to court, just a misunderstanding.
Despite being arguably the leading frontier AI lab at the moment, Anthropic is punished for not following orders. Pete Hegseth now has the power to determine the economic policy of the US when it comes to AI. The US is becoming a state-planned economy in the worst possible way.
Is the term "warfighter" new? I had never hears it until recently. Sounds like "soldier" would be the usual terminology.
no, but it wasn't common. It's Hegseth's choice of words, just like Department of War isn't the name of the DoD but Hegseth puts it on his office door.
It's more badass and cool, so it is used in public announcements now. All they have is rhetoric.
What do we think are the chances that the government is attempting to destroy Anthropic’s value so they can buy it for pennies on the dollar?
High! Look at Intel…
this paid off so well for anthropic and so poorly for sam altman. Optics are everything- look at the comments of the cbs interview.
The Anthropic CEO/team should have learned to just say nothing.
Or more importantly - say something that says nothing.
When you say nothing to politicians like this then eventually the story moves elsewhere.
But these guys had to put a stake in the ground and yell it out loud.
In politics you must know when to speak and what to speak and how to speak without speaking.
Why can't companies/governments make weapons that capture autonomously instead of killing in the same fashion?
People don't like to be captured and tend to run away.
The purpose of the system is what it does. The US keeps destabilizing countries, funding genocides, and indirectly killing millions upon millions. This has been the 'bipartisan' consensus of our 'elite' class since the beginning.
Look at the votes taken today if you need a refresher.
No one wants the middle way of 'capture' that hypothetically exists between peaceful cooperation and wars of domination, so it will not exist. You should consider, in this moment, if you stand for imperial aggression, or against it, as there is no third way.
So is this a backtrack or clarification on their original stance? Do I need to be worried about skynet killing grandma?
"As we wrote on Thursday, we are very proud of the work we have done together with the Department, supporting frontline warfighters with applications such as intelligence analysis, modeling and simulation, operational planning, cyber operations, and more."
It's disgusting honestly. There are likely at least 136 directly reported civilian and child deaths linked to the operations where their services were used. And they are very proud.
Anthropic is the new Dixie Chicks.
The leaked memo Anthropic is referring to:
"Anthropic CEO says company was punished for not giving "dictator-style praise" or donations to Trump"
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/anthropic-ceo-say...
This is turning into just another reality show. There are no adults anymore.
The real question is when the chinese will be able to supercede american llm tech.
Under Secretary of War Emil Michael posted that there is no active negotiation with Anthropic:
https://x.com/USWREMichael/status/2029754965778907493
Is it really officially called "Department of War" now?
I built a website that shows a timeline of recent events involving Anthropic, OpenAI, and the U.S. government.
Posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195085
I wish people still knew how to compromise when it's in their best interest to do so. Heads up for those that live in a fantasy land: They are going to create both autonomous weapons and mass surveillance with AI. It's better to have a seat at the table than to cede to your biggest competitor (of even more questionable moral / ethical character).
Can we stop buying into the stupid "Department of War" naming!? An act of Congress is needed to rename it, so unless that happens (unlikely, given the current leaning toward gebral inaction on the part of Congress), it's still the Department of Defense and we shouldn't buy into this administration's warmongering PR.
Have they said why they removed the safety pledge?
The internal memo did read as fairly unhinged and political, which is not the message Dario likes to present. I'm glad he addressed this. It was unprofessional and unhelpful - even if Sam Altman is, in fact, a disgusting lunatic.
The one where he accuses Trump of retaliating against Anthropic after failing to solicit a bribe?
That should be the headline here. We know Trump personally made $4B last year, and we know he's been using the full power of the US gov't to retaliate against people that don't "support" him.
Come 2029, when there's an opportunity for the corruption trials to start, this sort of behavior needs to be front of the public mind, both at the top, and throughout his network of appointees.
I find it frustrating that apparently we just gave up on Trump giving up his tax returns, or putting his businesses into a blind trust. This was a big deal in 2016~2019, but I guess the entire world just decided it wasn't worth it.
Now we have a president who doesn't even hide his bribes, and instead starts multiple cryptocurrencies and has a publicly traded company in order to optimize the bribery. Maybe this is this "Department of Government Efficiency" thing I keep hearing about; it's never been more efficient to bribe public officials.
> I find it frustrating that apparently we just gave up on Trump giving up his tax returns, or putting his businesses into a blind trust. This was a big deal in 2016~2019, but I guess the entire world just decided it wasn't worth it.
When you give a guy who started a coup the keys to the kingdom, instead of a life-long prison sentence, arguing over what his taxes were a decade ago is... Splitting hairs.
I at least personally think it's a fight worth fighting for.
Well I say that, it's not like I'm doing anything about it outside of complaining on the internet, which is nothing.
There is no department of war. Congress can rename the department of defense but hasn’t.
All you need to know is in the willingness of people to play along with the Trump administration’s willful steamrolling of the law.
A lot of people downvoted me for saying the messaging of the internal post was bad. Good to see Dario is smart enough to see that it was a bad look.
I’m curious to hear from the conspiracists out there what’s silently cooking while all this noise is happening.
There’s so much circular investment and connections that makes you wonder if this is a theatre in some form or another.
Say this were to be the case, what would be the end goal? Genuinely curious.
What's next, bribing Trump with gold bars and donations to "charity"?
They have a crypto coin for explicit bribing
You can also "invest" money for Trump's family to "earn" their "management fees."
You got me wondering, so I checked to see how much Anthropic's bribed Trump so far. According to Dario, Trump has been soliciting bribes, but they refused to pay, and the contract "renegotiation" is retribution:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47269649
"Amodei claimed that tensions between his company and the Trump administration stem partly from the firm’s refusal to financially support Trump and its approach to AI regulation and safety issues."
I don't think we won't get AGI if Anthropic were to implode, and frankly, right now, I'd rather have someone say clearly, "They cannot stomach the existence of someone telling them 'No' or adhering to moral principles. Like spoiled children they can't hear the former and are terrified by later because it might expose them to the condemnation they deserve."
That seems overly vindictive. How would your opinion change in a hypothetical world where "AGI" was dependent on Anthropic's survival?
It feels extremely dystopian that a country has a department dedicated for war.
Trump admins censorship is just as bad as Bidens. We need an administration that doesn't abuse the power of the government in the free market
Cringing every time I see the word "warfighter", and disappointed that they're still pushing to keep that contract.
i am truly rethinking my Anthropic Subscription currently.
This is reflection of corruption in the system that you cannot escape. No one is calling out Trump on his corruption, illegal use of powers and pathetic behavior, killing of people and setting up world war 3. And we call out others. We need to stay strong. If it comes to world war 3, we all lose.
“ Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences.”
What a sentence that inspires trust in Anthropic. DoW is currently bombing a sovereign country in a blatant act of aggression. It has been complicit in the gaza genocide. There should be zero cooperation.
the US military is operating outside of all domestic and international law, and the fucking idiots at anthropic think they get a say? mumbling lackies! they took money from that particular devil, and are owned now.
[flagged]
- Companies need to please Trump exist - CEOs can no longer speak on issues which might hurt the go of president - Freedom of expression is limited to freedom to support Trump
Trump is the communist nobody warn you about :-D
Nowhere, because there's no such department..
"fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance"
I still don't buy this discussion. How exactly do they want to use an llm for autonomous weapons, given it's not even possible to reliably have a piece of code written without having to review it?
And how is a 1M token window model suppposed to be useful for mass surveillance?
Honest questions, I am sure I am missing some details. Because so far it looks like a very sophisticated marketing strategy.
> How exactly do they want to use an llm for autonomous weapons
Probably the same way Claude can play Pokemon: give it a bunch of informations and let it make a decision by itself to achieve a specified goal.
One thing is playing Pokemon, one thing is decide who to kill. Also: if they are planning to use it on the field, there is going to be a velocity issue. Claude and any other LLM require a non negligible amount of time to ingest the input and spit the output.
You seem to be under a mistaken impression that there is some good faith and competence here. Fascists don't give a shit about accuracy. Collateral damage actually increases the fear of being mistakenly caught up and encourages those at risk to loudly support the Party hoping it will protect them.
You are saying fascists don't care if it inaccurately targets themselves?
Not really. Look at the longstanding "I didn't think the leopards would eat my face" dynamic. The whole movement is rooted in othering an outgroup for which violence against is moral and good. None of its supporters imagine themselves ever being in that outgroup, and if they do end up there by then it's too late.
In the domestic surveillance context, it's not like decisions of an automated system are ever going to be used to arrest anybody the bossman is protecting.
On the battlefield, commanders don't really care about collateral damage to the grunts, generals don't really care about collateral damage to whole units, etc. Look at how Russia is prosecuting its meat grinder against Ukraine. That type of failed state oligarchy appears to be the Trump regime's grand vision for our country.
But if the argument is that they don't care about accuracy, then what's to stop the system from targeting themselves or the leaders they support?
Remember, the system is not accurate, so you cannot accurately tell it to avoid or ignore anyone special.
I think they do care that it's accurate. That it accurately targets other people not themselves or their leaders.
It's very easy to make up for that with a human in the loop or deterministic secondary checks (enumerated list of protected people or locations). The point is that nothing about the "AI" magic has to be super accurate.