Personal attacks aren&#x27;t allowed here.Perhaps you don&#x27;t owe AI tycoons whose names start with A better, but you owe this community better if you&#x27;re participating in it.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a>

It&#x27;s good that there are still empathic humans in the decision and build chain when it comes to AI systems...

Good luck with that. I just don&#x27;t see either Google or OpenAI listening to their employees on this. They might have their own reasons for not wanting to help build Skynet, but if they don&#x27;t, I&#x27;m sure those employees can readily be replaced with somebody more compliant.

Club Penguin was a gem. Now all we get are Roblox.

Nicely done. Hold this line — there’s got to be one somewhere.

Well yes, but context matters here and this is the US government&#x27;s decision to take with a US-based company.While I understand why it matters for folks affiliated with prominent AI companies in particular to sign this, the more the American people stand together, the more pressure I think that puts on our government to act responsibly.Idealistic and naive? Probably. But sometimes grassroots efforts do spark change, and it&#x27;s high time the people of the USA start living up to the first word in our country&#x27;s name.Anyways, to answer your question directly: I welcome all the fine people of the world everywhere to join in what this open letter stands for.Unfortunately, it&#x27;s abundantly clear to many of us Americans that the current administration doesn&#x27;t care what we think, never mind what people outside our country do. So I&#x27;ll just start with the group that this department (in theory) is supposed to represent.

Would you like to see this extended globally? Could such a spirit exist multinationally? It’s asking a lot, because you’d be asking for a lot of courage from places like China, India, Russia, Middle East … anywhere that’s not Europe basically.

I&#x27;d love to see this extended to any American regardless of past&#x2F;present employment with Google or OpenAI

Most survive by bending. See e.g. Google and surveillance a decade ago.

Many people don’t think there is a moral case against training a model on copyrighted data without obtaining a license to do that specifically.

&gt;&gt; you cannot be both moral and successful in the US.I assumed the use of massive scraped datasets, with copyrighted material and without consent, to train large AI models, had already established this.

The only way they survive is if their board fires the CEO and they bend the knee. The other option is they are given the green light to sell to one of the US Governments trusted partners: Microsoft&#x2F;Oracle&#x2F;X.

Either way, the bribes will flow like wine, the message has been sent loud and clear

We should care because if they win they empower others to stand up as well, and not just in the area of AI safety. Courage is contagious, and whatever else you think of Anthropic, they’re showing real courage here.

Yeah, I find it funny how we&#x27;re now defending these AI companies, when they&#x27;re clearly still an enemy of the working class.They&#x27;ve made it incredibly clear their plans are to disenfranchise labor, and welcome in a world of God knows what with their technologies. Like they&#x27;re making a stand on mass surveillance, this seems a bit like a red herring, cool they stop using their tools for war fighting, but continue to attack their fellow working working class?All three of these companies are spending hundreds of millions to psyop decision makers across every industry to give your salary to them. Get out of here, with &quot;We will not be divided&quot; OpenAI, Google and Anthropic employees are not friends of labor and should not use our phrases.. or they&#x27;d sabotage and or quit.And why is there no mention of how we caught OpenAI being used in government dashboards through Persona, only two weeks ago, that were directly connected to intelligence organizations and tools to identify if you are politician or high profile personds? OpenAI has been complicit in this since last January when 4o was the first model that qualified for &quot;top secret operations&quot;(kind of weird how 4o went onto cause a bunch of people to go literally insane and commit crazy acts of violence yet is allowed to be used in the most sensitive aspects of government.. nothing to see here).

Who cares whether the &quot;company&quot; survives? I&#x27;ve seen this movie. A few of them in fact. We&#x27;re on the chopping block here, lol.

Anthropic has enough investment money and enough additional investor interest that they can ride this out longer than this administration. It won’t be good for business, of course, but it’s not the end of their world.&gt; it will just be perfect proof that you cannot be both moral and successful in the US.I hate this situation as much as anyone, but it’s a unique, first of its kind challenge. I don’t think it’s generalizable to anything. This is a unique situation.

From a revenue perspective I think they’ll be fine, right? Weren’t the value of the govt contracts $200m out of like $14b revenue?Assuming the govt doesn’t take other crazy measures to punish them.

They&#x27;re gonna crucify them. They called the Trump administration dictators. Not good.

I hope Anthropic will survive this. If they don’t it will just be perfect proof that you cannot be both moral and successful in the US.

I&#x27;m disappointed Anthropic made this mistake as well.

In this case I think the opponents made a huge mistake by calling themselves Department of War, and it&#x27;s something that can be exploited.Department of Defense was the actual lie, the newspeak term. They were not really defending anything, they were using military power globally for pursuing economic interests. However, it was easy to convince people that the whole endeavor was a good thing, because defending your country against the baddies is good, and you should support anyone doing that (otherwise you&#x27;d be a traitor!). Thank you for your service (defending us).On the other hand, the term Department of War is hard to sell, because most people don&#x27;t want to participate in a war or support someone who wants to start one. Thank you for your service... invading other countries? killing and raping innocents? ransacking resources?This is an irrelevant detail, but if I&#x27;d read the title &quot;Department of Defense vs. Meta&quot;, I&#x27;d first think Meta is leaking confidential info to other countries. However, if I&#x27;d read &quot;Department of War vs. Meta&quot;, I&#x27;d think Meta doesn&#x27;t want to promote an unnecessary war.

Yeah, it takes an act of Congress to rename a part of the government, normally it’s a milquetoast event like renaming a postal office, but this admin thinks the law doesn’t apply to them.Currently the government executive branch is claiming they have that right and the legislative branch can get fucked.I am taking advice from the current executive admin around names and continuing to call the Department of Defense by their biological name.

You’re kinda already conceding to some of your opponents points when you use legally invalid names like “Department of War”I appreciate the sentiment but don’t preconcede to your opposition by using their framing.

Aren&#x27;t they using the Israeli version of Signal which backs up messages because the law requires it?Pretty sure I remember that from the fumble

They&#x27;ve already been using Signal - which is &quot;commercial&quot; app, meaning it&#x27;s not meant to be used like that - for top-secret (or at least highly sensitive) military communications during the military strikes on Yemen. If that was fake, I apologise, I was deceived. I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if things turned out that way again, to be honest. That&#x27;s something to be expected, actually (IMO).

They are after the models without post training guardrails.

Identity affirming care now includes avoiding the DODs deadname. What a world.

The legal name of the department is still the Department of Defense. The &quot;Department of War&quot; is a preferred name by the administration.

No problem! The DoD^HW will just use DeepSeek!(I wish this were a joke)

This was a brave, heartwarming read. Thank you to the teams

More like a nightmare. This isn&#x27;t happening by accident. They aren&#x27;t being opportunistic either. They&#x27;re playing a game that they planned at least two decades ago. If the books they wrote and published openly aren&#x27;t evidence enough, you can look at the Epstein files. Look past all the obvious horrific crimes in it, and you&#x27;ll the see signs of their numerous interventions in society through large scale social engineering, that got us to the dystopia we&#x27;re in now.

I don&#x27;t know why you&#x27;re being downvoted. This letter is completely toothless, and what you&#x27;re suggesting is literally the only thing that these people could do that would make a difference.

Needs a union. With strikes and all that jazz.

Yeah, it&#x27;s a nice gesture, but having watched Google handle the protests in recent years and their culture inching a step closer to Amazon, I do not foresee their leadership being swayed by employee resistance. They&#x27;ll either quietly sign an agreement and discreetly implement it, or they will go scorched earth on their employees again.

Anthropic have a pretty progressive corporate governance structure, so there is a good argument that they will stay true to their principles. However, this will likely be the biggest test for how strong that governance structure is up to now.

If I had decision input at Anthropic I&#x27;d be giving serious consideration to reincorporating in the EU or Japan, and also doubling or tripling my personal legal and security budget.

If they&#x27;re truly principled, and these are true red lines, given no other recourse, I would be impressed if Anthropic decided to shut down the company. Won&#x27;t happen, but I would be smashing that F key if they did.The other two definitely never would in a million years.

So much for the hope with leaders such as Sam and Dario

Sure. It’s just that sprinting is dictated by money.Money rules region, race, ideology, etc.

Mankind is doing what it does best at scale: sprinting mindlessly into problematic scenarios because the species is fragmented and has arbitrarily established concepts of groups defined by region, race, ideology, etc.As a species, this is just natural selection.

&quot;We hope our leaders will...&quot; I realize things are moving quickly, and the stakes are high here, but thinking about what happens if the hopes are not met might be a next step.

Since when has war been waged according to the whim of a corporation?The tools will be used however the government wants them to be used. The government makes the laws and wages the wars, and the corporation will follow the law whether it wants to or not.So either you are willing to work on a tool that is not under your control, or you are not.

I&#x27;m sure China doesn&#x27;t care it&#x27;s not safe... and there&#x27;s the issue

Anthropic does not object to its use for war. In fact Anthropic explicitly allows its semi-autonomous use in war, e.g. for identifying targets. They just won&#x27;t permit its use for full autonomous war, yet, because they don&#x27;t believe it&#x27;s safe enough.

OpenAI employee <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;wesamo__&#x2F;status&#x2F;2027772549895995417" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;wesamo__&#x2F;status&#x2F;2027772549895995417</a> Wesam has done this.

My take is that none of the AI companies really care (companies can&#x27;t care), they just realize that if they go down that road, public opinion will be so vehemently against AI in all forms that it will be regulated out of viability by the electorate.Also, if AI exists, AI will be used for war. The AI company employees are kidding themselves if they think otherwise, and yet they are still building it (as opposed to resigning and working on something else), because in the end, money is the only true God in this world.

My guess is their HR is already monitoring it with instant termination processes in place.

Everyone knows anyone who signs this from xAI will be a former employee by tomorrow.

It&#x27;s hard to deny an offer to become a millionaire in the next 3 years if you just hang tight at xAI, especially if you don&#x27;t have any offers from competing AI labs. Also, LLMs are converging into an easy-to-replicate commodity. It doesn&#x27;t matter much who wastes their money on you to build them.

There is a specific kind of person that joins xAI over the other companies and it is definitely not a moral one.

All the more reason to collect their employees&#x27; signatures.

This kind of screams desperation, but I guess that&#x27;s what happens when you&#x27;re niche AI.

XAI has already announced they are 100% in<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.ai&#x2F;news&#x2F;us-gov-dept-of-war" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.ai&#x2F;news&#x2F;us-gov-dept-of-war</a>

They should be collecting signatures from employees at xAI. I think they&#x27;re probably most likely to fill the space left by Anthropic.

Please don&#x27;t fulminate on HN. The guidelines make it clear we&#x27;re trying for something better here. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a>

I don&#x27;t view that as an additional new risk. Investors are already all-in on AI, despite being one geopolitical event away from apocalypse regarding Taiwan.

&gt;The executive branch can categorize AI technology as equivalent to nuclear weapons technology.Theoretically, but this would run the risk of collapsing the US tech sector, which at this point is a significant part of the strength of the US economy, and thus making it likely that the Republicans will lose power in the next elections.

Does this mean there is a non zero chance we will get some kind of grok+chinese model mix that&#x27;s used across the entire US military? Ironic isn&#x27;t it.

The government has always had monopoly over violence.Not only in the US, but everywhere else there is a government.Arthropic is trying to make that a corporate prerogative, which is why its causing such a stir.

It is a rough precedent that the government can force private citizens to build weapons for them.

Anthropic&#x27;s public statement declared their intent -- and in fact desire -- to allow their use of technology against me, as I&#x27;m not a US citizen.Why should I stand with them? They only believe US citizens have democratic rights.I&#x27;m sure Anthropic&#x27;s hands are tied in so many ways, but that&#x27;s no concern of mine.I&#x27;ll get by with GLM-5 and running Qwen locally.

I am not a fan of Anthropic guys, but this time I stand with it. We all should.

&quot;What have the Romans ever done for us?&quot;
(<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ</a>)

Donating the first polio vaccine to humanity.Funding the majority of HIV prevention in Africa.The list is long, but you knew that.

When have US corporations (or simply &quot;the US&quot; really) ever done the right thing for humanity?

I agree. We will need hardware ownership as well eventually. But the earlier you open-source, the more you slow down the centralization because people will be more likely to buy hardware to run stuff at home and that gives hardware companies an opening to do the right thing.

Sure, but we could have Hetzners and OVHs who just provide the compute for whatever model we want to run.

Open Source here is not enough as hardware ownership matters. In an open source world, you and I cannot run the 10 trillion param model, but the data center controllers can.

Don&#x27;t compare general intelligence to bioweapons. A bioweapon cannot defend against or reverse the effects of another bioweapon.

&gt; bioweapons convention was successfulWas it successful? The jury is still out.

Because bioweapons suck, this is why. On the other hand AI sucks too, but it has at least some use

because bio-weapons labs take more to run than a workstation pc under your desk with a good graphics card. both in equipment material and training. Its hard to outlaw use of linear algebra and matrix multiplications.

I&#x27;d prefer something akin to the Biological Weapons Treaty which prohibits development, production and transfer. If you think it isn&#x27;t possible you have to tell me why the bioweapons convention was successful and why it wouldn&#x27;t be in the case of AI.

I&#x27;m referring to the current situation. How is it not applicable? I think the government wants to eventually nationalize these companies and we have to stop them.

&gt; This is why you can&#x27;t gatekeep AI capabilities.What is why?You never actually say that part, unless it&#x27;s &quot;It will eventually be taken from you by force&quot; which doesn&#x27;t seem applicable to this situation or this site?

&gt; This is why you can&#x27;t gatekeep AI capabilities. They will eventually be taken from you by force.Some form of US AI lab nationalization is possible, but it hasn&#x27;t happened yet. We&#x27;ll see. Nationalization can take different forms, not to mention various arrangements well short of it.I interpret the comment above as a normative claim (what should happen). It implies the nationalization threat forces the decision by the AI labs. No. I will grant it influences, in the sense that AI labs have to account for it.

I run local models on Mac studios and they are more than capable. Don’t spread fud.

&gt; hardware to run themCosts a few hundred thousand per server, it&#x27;s a huge expense if you want it at your home but a rounding error for most organizations.

Scaling has hit a wall and will not get us to AGI. Open-source models are only a couple of months behind closed models, and the same level of capability will require smaller and smaller models in the future. This is where open research can help: make the models smaller ASAP. I think it&#x27;s likely that we&#x27;ll be able to get something human-level to run on a single 16GB GPU before the end of the decade.

What use are weights without the hardware to run them? That&#x27;s the gate. Local AI right now is a toy in comparison.Nukes are actually a great example of something also gated by resources. Just having the knowledge&#x2F;plans isn&#x27;t good enough.

We shouldn&#x27;t be scammed by people who intend to get back on the Trump train once they&#x27;ve gotten what they want. But if someone&#x27;s willing to openly oppose the Trump regime, even out of self-interest, I&#x27;m happy to let them feign as much ignorance as they&#x27;d like. If his power isn&#x27;t broken the details of who resisted him when won&#x27;t matter.

What are you talking about? Google employees and the corporation itself in particular overwhelmingly donated to the Harris campaign.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opensecrets.org&#x2F;orgs&#x2F;alphabet-inc&#x2F;recipients?id=d000067823" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opensecrets.org&#x2F;orgs&#x2F;alphabet-inc&#x2F;recipients?id=...</a>The corporation gave millions _after_ Trump had already won. If your criticism is that, then that does not apply to the people signing.

This letter and all of this is meaningless.If they actually wanted to do something they wouldn’t have sat back and funded Republican political campaigns because they were pissed about the head of the ftc under Biden.But they didn’t. They gave millions to this guy and now they’re feigning ignorance or change ir wherever this is.It’s meaningless. Utterly meaningless.Get what you pay for, I suppose.

The logic used in the treats is that it&#x27;s a national security risk to not use Claude, but it&#x27;s also a national security risk to use Claude.We shouldn&#x27;t expect these people to consider how the logic breaks down one step ahead when it never made sense in the first place.

I am certain that there exist people who are 1) capable of advancing the state of the art in AI, and 2) free of the hubris that lets them believe that their making AI somehow gives them a veto over the fates of nations.

If it&#x27;s taken by force, it will stagnate. It makes no sense at all.

I’m tired of these bizarre hypothetical gotcha arguments. If AI can create bioweapons, it can equally create vaccines and antidotes to them.We live in a free society. AI should be democratized like any other technology.

There are plenty of physical and legal barriers to creating a bioweapon and that&#x27;s not going to change if everyone becomes smarter with AI. And even if we really somehow end up in a world where everyone has a lab at home and people can easily create viruses, they can also easily create vaccines and anti-virals. The advancements in medicine will outpace bioweapons by a lot because most people are afraid of bioweapons.Intelligence itself is not dangerous unless only a few orgs control it and it&#x27;s aligned to those orgs&#x27; values rather than human values. The safety narrative is just &quot;intelligence for me, but not for thee&quot; in disguise.

I think it is much more likely they will be (and are) generating protorealistic images of ther favourite person (real or fictional) with cat ears. Never underestimate what adding cat ears does.OK, maybe someone will build a bioweapon that does that for real. :P

A &quot;world where millions of AGIs run on millions of gaming PCs, where each AI is aligned with an individual human&quot; would be a world in which people could easily create humanity-ending bioweapons.  I would love to live in a less vulnerable world, and am working full time to bring about such a world, but in the meantime what you describe would likely be a disaster.

This is why you can&#x27;t gatekeep AI capabilities. It will eventually be taken from you by force.It&#x27;s time to open-source everything. Papers, code, weights, financial records. Do all of your research in the open. Run 100% transparent labs so that there&#x27;s nothing to take from you. Level the playing field for good and bad actors alike, otherwise the bad actors will get their hands on it while everyone else is left behind. Start a movement to make fully transparent AI labs the worldwide norm, and any org that doesn&#x27;t cooperate is immediately boycotted.Stop comparing AI capabilities to nuclear weapons. A nuke cannot protect against or reverse the damage of another nuke. AI capabilities are not like nukes. General intelligence should not be in the hands of a few. Give it to everyone and the good will prevail.Build a world where millions of AGIs run on millions of gaming PCs, where each AI is aligned with an individual human, not a corporation or government (which are machiavellian out of necessity). This is humanity&#x27;s best chance at survival.

Hegseth shared a Trump tweet a few hours ago saying they&#x27;re going to quit doing business with Anthropic.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;i&#x2F;status&#x2F;2027487514395832410" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;i&#x2F;status&#x2F;2027487514395832410</a>

It&#x27;s rather amusing that this is the proverbial &#x27;red line&#x27;, not y&#x27;know, everything else this administration has been tearing up and running roughshod over. Maybe this would&#x27;ve been less of an issue if companies were more proactive about this bullshit in the first place?That&#x27;s why it&#x27;s hard for me to feel bad about companies suddenly finding themselves on the receiving end. They dug their grave inch by inch and are suddenly surprised when they get shoved into it.

The UK and Europe welcome the US Footgun Operation. Plenty of opportunities for those top researchers and engineers over here.The EU (which is not the same as Europe), is also looking a bit sharper on AI regulation at the moment (for now… not perfect but sharper etc etc).

Well that&#x27;s quite a leap to make. Plenty of room in between those options.

&gt; ... UAE? :-)At least you are not paying taxes for the things you don&#x27;t agree on. It&#x27;s indeed a strange time we are living in.

&gt; I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. hasAnd where would they emigrate? Russia? China? UAE? :-)

The President is crashing out on X because a company didn’t do what they wanted. “Forcing” is not a binary. Do you seriously believe that the government’s behavior here is acceptable and has no chilling effect on future companies?

The government declaring a domestic company as a supply chain threat is a tad more than “refusing to do business” don’t you think?

I think the bigger insanity here is the labeling of a supply chain risk. It prohibits DoD agencies and contractors from using Anthropic services. It&#x27;d be one thing if the DoD simply didn&#x27;t use Anthropic. It&#x27;s another when it actively attempts to isolate Anthropic for political reasons.

The government is doing far more than “refusing to do business” here.

&gt; The Department of War is threatening to […] Invoke the Defense Production Act to force Anthropic to serve their model to the military and &quot;tailor its model to the military&#x27;s needs&quot;This issue is about more than the government blacklisting a company for government procurement purposes.From what I understand, the government is floating the idea of compelling Anthropic — and, by extension, its employees — to do as the DoD pleases.If the employees’ resistance is strong enough, there’s no way this will serve the government’s interests.

I mean Secretary of War can not act any other way to be honest. It’s just a fucked up situation.

They&#x27;re labelling Anthropic a supply chain risk, without even the pretense that this is in fact true. They&#x27;re perfectly content to use the tool _themselves_, but they claim that an unwillingness to sign whatever ToS DoW asks marks the company a traitor that should be blacklisted from the economy.

One of the options they&#x27;re discussing, which is legal according to this law, is to simply force Anthropic to do what they want. As in Anthropic will be committing a felony if they don&#x27;t do what the DoKLoP wants, and the CEO will go to jail and be replaced by someone who will.

I don&#x27;t see how public policy is being &quot;forced&quot; on anyone here? It seems like the system is working as intended: government wants to do X; company A says &quot;I won&#x27;t allow my product to be used for X&quot;; government refuses to do business with company A. One side thinks the government should be allowed to dictate terms to a private supplier, the other side thinks the private supplier should be allowed to dictate terms to the government. Both are half right.You can argue that the government refusing to do any business with company A is overreach, I suppose, but I imagine that the next logical escalation in this rhetorical slapfight is going to be the government saying &quot;we cannot guarantee that any particular use will not include some version of X, and therefore we have to prevent working with this supplier&quot;...which I sort of see?Just to take the metaphor to absurdity, imagine that a maker of canned tomatoes decided to declare that their product cannot be used to &quot;support a war on terror&quot;. Regardless of your feelings on wars on terror and&#x2F;or canned tomatoes, the government would be entirely rational to avoid using that supplier.

Sweet summer child, the purpose of government is a monopoly on forcing things down people&#x27;s throats. When people lose control of their government that monopoly doesn&#x27;t go away, especially when the Don running the show has blackmail on every influential person in society taken from a decades long intelligence operation by offing it&#x27;s leader.A vast number of people in positions of responsibility right know have their life at the mercy of the redaction pen and are ultimately going to do whatever it takes to keep that pen out of the &quot;wrong hands&quot;

Individuals at that company could have simply refused to do business with DoD in the first place, but that sweet murder money is too good to pass up

The problem with forcing public policy on companies is that companies are ultimately made from individuals, and surely you can’t force public policy down people’s throats.I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. has. Such a waste of talent trying to make them bend over to the government’s wishes… instead of actually fostering innovation in the very competitive AI industry.

Ironically the flag flown mostly by the people who voted for this tyranny.They should reprint it to say &quot;Step on me Daddy.&quot;

Use the feedback forms within their platforms to let the companies know your thoughts

Actions like these often lead to unions. Look into the history of how the Kickstarter union came to be.It often starts as collective action in response to a blatant disregard for the values of the workers

Yes, take disparate sets of employees and like, oh idk unionize while you still have power.

I think you&#x27;re right, this isn&#x27;t about a specific request but about defense contractors not getting to draw moral red lines. Palmer Luckey&#x27;s statement on X&#x2F;Twitter reflects the same idea: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;PalmerLuckey&#x2F;status&#x2F;2027500334999081294" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;PalmerLuckey&#x2F;status&#x2F;2027500334999081294</a>The thinking seems to be that you can&#x27;t have every defense contractor coming in with their own, separate set of red lines that they can adjudicate themselves and enforce unilaterally. Imagine if every missile, ship, plane, gun, and defense software builder had their own set of moral red lines and their own remote kill switch for different parts of your defense infrastructure. Palmer would prefer that the President wield these powers through his Constitutional role as commander-in-chief.

&gt; My understanding is that it’s aboutWhat is &quot;it&quot; in your comment?The refusal to sign a contract with Anthropic, or their designation as a supply chain risk?

My understanding is that it’s about the contract allowing Anthropic to refuse service when they deem a red line has been crossed. Hegseth and friends probably don’t want any discussions to even start, about whether a red line may be in the process of being crossed,
and having to answer to that. They don’t want the legality or ethicality of any operation to be under Anthropic’s purview at all.

It’s about punishing a company that is not complying. It’s a show of force to deter any future objections on moral grounds from companies that want to do business with the US gov.

you mean beyond this: [0]&gt;In 2025, reportedly Anthropic became the first AI company cleared for use in relation to classified operations and to handle classified information. This current controversy, however, began in January 2026 when, through a partnership with defense contractor Palantir, Anthropic came to suspect their AI had been used during the January 3 attack on Venezuela. In January 2026, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote to reiterate that surveillance against US persons and autonomous weapons systems were two “bright red lines” not to be crossed, or at least topics that needed to be handled with “extreme care and scrutiny combined with guardrails to prevent abuses.” You can also read Anthropic’s self-proclaimed core views on AI safety here, as well as their LLM, Claude’s, constitution here.[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47160226">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47160226</a>

I&#x27;ve gathered that the dispute is over Anthropic&#x27;s two red lines: mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Is there any information (or rumors even) about what the specific request was? I can&#x27;t believe the government would be escalating this hard over &quot;we might want to do autonomous weapons in the vague, distant future&quot; without a concrete, immediate request that Anthropic was denying.Even if there was a desire for autonomous weapons (beyond what Anduril is already developing), I would think it would go through a standard defense procurement procedure, and the AI would be one of many components that a contractor would then try to build. It would have nothing to do with the existing contract between Anthropic and the Dept of War.What, then, is this really about?

Sam Altman tells staff at an all-hands that OpenAI is negotiating a deal with the Pentagon, after Trump orders the end of Anthropic contracts - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47188698">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47188698</a>

Altman says OpenAI agrees with Anthropic’s red lines in Pentagon dispute - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47187488">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47187488</a> - Feb 2026 (8 comments)

Tech companies shouldn&#x27;t be bullied into doing surveillance (eff.org) - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47160226">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47160226</a> (160 comments)

Here&#x27;s the sequence (so far) in reverse order - did I miss any important threads?Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47188697">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47188697</a> - Feb 2026 (31 comments)I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47186677">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47186677</a> - Feb 2026 (872 comments)President Trump bans Anthropic from use in government systems - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47186031">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47186031</a> - Feb 2026 (111 comments)Google workers seek &#x27;red lines&#x27; on military A.I., echoing Anthropic - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47175931">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47175931</a> - Feb 2026 (132 comments)Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47173121">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47173121</a> - Feb 2026 (1527 comments)The Pentagon Feuding with an AI Company Is a Bad Sign - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47168165">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47168165</a> - Feb 2026 (33 comments)Tech companies shouldn&#x27;t be bullied into doing surveillance - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47160226">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47160226</a> - Feb 2026 (157 comments)The Pentagon threatens Anthropic - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47154983">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47154983</a> - Feb 2026 (125 comments)US Military leaders meet with Anthropic to argue against Claude safeguards - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47145551">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47145551</a> - Feb 2026 (99 comments)Hegseth gives Anthropic until Friday to back down on AI safeguards - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47142587">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47142587</a> - Feb 2026 (128 comments)

So big tech wants to court Trump with millions in donations and now that the big bully they supported is bullying them.. we’re supposed to feel some kind of sympathy? Am I missing something here? Why did Anthropic get involved with the military in the first place?

I missing the actual letter. I think that part of the content is hidden behind some javascript. Can someone post it.

Not using Claude only weakens the state. Just don’t oblige

The primary purpose of these products is mass surveillance why else would they be allowed to be built ?

We all knew AI had the potential to be extremely powerful, and we all perused it anyways. What did we think would happen? The government&#x2F;military always takes control of the most powerful&#x2F;dangerous systems. If you work for a defense contractor or under ITAR then you already know this.The right way to deal with this is political - corporate campaign contributions and lobbying. You&#x27;re not going to be able to fight the military if they think they need something for national security.

That&#x27;s what taking a stand looks like... if any of these employees lose their job, they are welcome to come crash at my place for as long as they would like; they will have a roof over their head and I will cook them 3 meals a day.

Not all tech employers are total weenies who would refuse to hire someone for taking this stance.Most are, but not all.

How is posting on this website with your full name not career suicide?

When you put it like that, it makes me almost want to wish for Anthropic to die from this. But the blow to the field in general would be huge, and I benefit from their service as well.

USA can’t just deny the ability to leave if you are deemed to be important for national security?

Anthropic will just move out of the US. A lot of scientists fled Nazi Germany in the early stages.  A lot of them fled to USA and end up being part of the Manhattan project that gave the Abomb that helped US win and end the war.   We are going to bleed a lot of AI researches and engineers.

Don&#x27;t you know enforcing whats best for your citizens clearly erodes trust? Just keep selling off your future for short term gains! Anything else is heckin problematic :(

Oh come on. Saying “no” is not eroding trust, it’s taking a stand.When the US banded human embryo research did that erode trust? I didn’t hear anything about that at the time.

It is absolutely unsafe to depend upon American companies, and I can guarantee you that all over the world, people are actively looking for alternatives already. You never know what happens next, things that used to take years happen in a single Truth Social post now, and no matter how twisted your worst nightmare scenarios look, this ridiculous band of crooks in charge of the USA manages to one-up them.

&gt;It&#x27;s not only the US being special in this case.It&#x27;s the US being special in how there&#x27;s zero good reasoning behind any of this. A private company made a choice and it&#x27;s retaliating like a spurned date.

Unfortunately, every country has a law somewhere saying it can take private property at will if it is in the national interest.It&#x27;s not only the US being special in this case.The problem is pretty simple: there is money to be made and someone will do what the Pentagon wants. Will it be worse in capabilities than Anthropic? Probably, but as long as it can be used to wage autonomous war wherever the US military decides, it will be good enough.Anthropic can stick to their beliefs as much as they want, but it will not change the outcome, maybe just postpone it a bit.On an unrelated note, I think the Pentagon erred when it labeled them a supply chain vulnerability, they should have used the DPA to make them do what they need. Less drama and much cheaper compared to replacing them with a whole different company.

Among other consequences, if Anthropic ends up being killed it’s going to be just another nail in the coffin of trust in America.Companies who subscribed will find themselves without an important tool because the president went on a rant, and might wonder if it’s safe to depend on other American companies.

December 14, 2024&gt;After famed investor Marc Andreessen met with government officials about the future of tech last May, he was “very scared” and described the meetings as “absolutely horrifying.” These meetings played a key role on why he endorsed Trump, he told journalist Bari Weiss this week on her podcast.&gt;What scared him most was what some said about the government’s role in AI, and what he described as a young staff who were “radicalized” and “out for blood” and whose policy ideas would be “damaging” to his and Silicon Valley’s interests.&gt;He walked away believing they endorsed having the government control AI to the point of being market makers, allowing only a couple of companies who cooperated with the government to thrive. He felt they discouraged his investments in AI. “They actually said flat out to us, ‘don&#x27;t do AI startups like, don&#x27;t fund AI startups,” he said....keep making petitions, watch the whole thing burn to the ground when Trump decides to channel the Biden ideas in this field.

I can respect a stance while simultaneously calling out how much I dislike it.

Taking principled stands should absolutely be respected.

No, but I find it obnoxious as an end user.

It sounds like you think that Anthropic is the first company regulating the use of their product. This is not a novelty whatsoever.

&gt; Imagine if a gun manufacturer sold a gun that you couldn&#x27;t use against X or Y country.The point here, of course, being that Anthropic is very specifically claiming to not be a gun manufacturer, and Hegseth&#x27;s response is that the DoD (W?) will force anthropic to build guns.

Only Israel can make software upgrades and changes to their F35.

&gt; Imagine if a gun manufacturer sold a gun that you couldn&#x27;t use against X or Y countryThat kind of happens with F35s that the US sells to its allies.

Imagine if a gun manufacturer sold a gun that you couldn&#x27;t use against X or Y country. Private companies imposing such demands on our military should not be respected. Having weapons that can randomly detect a false positive and shut themselves down because they think you are using it wrong is a feature I would never want built in.I have also been against these terms of services of restricting usage of AI models. It is ridiculous that these private companies get to dictate what I can or can&#x27;t do with the tools. No other tools work like this. Every other tools is going to be governed by the legal system which the people of the country have established.

This whole episode is very bizarre.Anthropic appears to be situating themselves where they are set up as the &quot;ethical AI&quot; in the mindspace of, well, anyone paying attention. But I am still trying to figure out where exactly Hegseth, or anyone in DoW, asked Anthropic to conduct illegal domestic spying or launch a system that removes HITL kill chains. Is this all just some big hypothetical that we&#x27;re all debating (hallucinating)? This[1] appears to be the memo that may (or may not) have caused Hagesth and Dario to go at each other so hard, presumably over this paragraph:&gt;Clarifying &quot;Responsible Al&quot; at the DoW - Out with Utopian Idealism, In with Hard-Nosed Realism. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and social ideology have no place in the DoW, so we must not employ AI models which incorporate ideological &quot;tuning&quot; that interferes with their ability to provide objectively truthful responses to user prompts. The Department must also utilize models free from usage policy constraints that may limit lawful military applications. Therefore, I direct the CDAO to establish benchmarks for model objectivity as a primary procurement criterion within 90 days, and I direct the Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment to incorporate standard &quot;any lawful use&quot; language into any DoW contract through which AI services are procured within 180 days. I also direct the CDAO to.ensure all existing AI policy guidance at the Department aligns with the directives laid out in this memorandum.So, the &quot;any lawful use&quot; language makes me think that Dario et al have a basket of uses in their minds that they feel should be illegal, but are not currently, and they want to condition further participation in this defense program on not being required to engage in such activity that they deem ought be illegal.It is no surprise that the government is reacting poorly to this. Without commenting on the ethics of AI-enabled surveillance or non-HITL kill chains, which are fraught, I understand why a department of government charged with making war is uninterested in debating this as terms of the contract itself. Perhaps the best place for that is Congress (good luck), but to remind: the adversary that these people are all thinking about here is PRC, who does not give a single shit about anyone&#x27;s feelings on whether it&#x27;s ethical or not to allow a drone system to drop ordinance on it&#x27;s own.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.defense.gov&#x2F;2026&#x2F;Jan&#x2F;12&#x2F;2003855671&#x2F;-1&#x2F;-1&#x2F;0&#x2F;ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE-STRATEGY-FOR-THE-DEPARTMENT-OF-WAR.PDF" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.defense.gov&#x2F;2026&#x2F;Jan&#x2F;12&#x2F;2003855671&#x2F;-1&#x2F;-1&#x2F;0&#x2F;ART...</a>

We have international laws and rules of war. We have weapon treaties (well, some of them are expiring). Sure, not everyone is signatory, or even follow the conventions they have ratified, but at least having these things in place makes it even remotely possible to categorize and document violations and start processes towards rulebreakers and antihumanist actions.So I looked into what they cooked up in 2023, plus which countries signed it (scroll down to a link to the actual text). It&#x27;s an extraordinarily pathetic text. Insulting even.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.state.gov&#x2F;bureau-of-arms-control-deterrence-and-stability&#x2F;political-declaration-on-responsible-military-use-of-artificial-intelligence-and-autonomy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.state.gov&#x2F;bureau-of-arms-control-deterrence-and-...</a>

We will not be divided! United in obeying only orders from woke governments, be it on gender ideology, &quot;misinformation&quot;, &quot;fact checking&quot; or takedowns, cancellations, blackouts and bans.

This is a very different vibe in the US than it has been in living memory.

By that logic we should expect all governments to regress to totalitarianism, which hasn’t happened, and isn’t what’s happening here.The question isn’t if some would attempt these behaviors, but rather if we and our democratic structures empower those people or fail to constrain them.

Democratic governments care about this to a degree but only autocratic ones get paranoid.

Is it really incredible?Only if you&#x27;re naive. I guess most here are.Governments are paranoid, particularly about losing control and influence over its subjects. This is expected behaviour.

Yes, it would help so much.  Especially if a lot of people with money and power voiced their honest opinions at the same time.

Honestly though, would it help if those in charge voiced their honest opinions?The current political climate is this is the kind of thing that will get you &quot;investigated&quot; and charged with crimes.And the government has already threatened that it will commandeer these companies whether they like it or not.If someone in charge wants to make a difference, there might be more effective things to do than to speak out in this instance.

&gt; Grok&#x2F;XHead(s) will of course agree with the administration. And employees will likely be making themselves a target if they sign this letter. All anonymous from said company is not a good look at all.Speculation of course; let&#x27;s see what really happens.

I just hope that the non-executive co-signers aren’t all fired once Hedseth becomes Acting CEO of Google or OpenAI eventually when this administration commandeers both company in the name of National Security

&gt; Without having someone knowledgeable enough to build and operate them, AI models are worthless to the C-suite.The obvious solution is to use AI to build and operate them. If AI is as intelligent as the hype claims it shouldn&#x27;t be an issue. It&#x27;s not as if the goal wasn&#x27;t to get rid of workers anyway. Why not start now?

&gt; I&#x27;d prefer to see board (or executive) level signatories over lay employees -- the people who can enforce enterprise policy rather than just voice their opinionsAlthough it would be nice to have some high-level signees there, I think we shouldn’t minimize the role of lay employees in this matter. Without having someone knowledgeable enough to build and operate them, AI models are worthless to the C-suite.

Re: Reading,
I don&#x27;t see any xAI names on the list (currently 643) and only Google and OpenAI are selectable company options. And this page on HN is only calling out xAI.

I wouldn&#x27;t call senior AI researchers &#x2F; scientists laypersons. In fact in this sense politicians are laypersons.There are already several comments here showing xAIs involvement. Please save clutter and read before posting.

I don’t have any particular insights, but I’m curious to learn the antitrust implications of how the execs can&#x2F;cannot coordinate.

Or they can just not sign contracts with the DoD.  They landed themselves in this situation by making a deal with the devil.  At any rate, unless Finland is about to announce a massive surge in funding for their military this doesn&#x27;t solve Anthropic&#x27;s desire to suckle sweet taxpayer money off the military industrial complex&#x27;s teat while simultaneously pretending to have principles.

&quot;hostile to business&quot;.. Employees of a business playing moral philosophers, priests or policy influencers miss the entire point of business.The employees themselves can definitely gtfo to Finland for the reason that they have an unrealistic perception of business and the world. The business itself has no obligation to pay attention to magical thinking.

Or just reincorporate in Finland or something. If the US is going to be this hostile to business, time to gtfo.

I don&#x27;t think people get to those positions by having firm principles

&gt; It&#x27;s incredible how quickly we&#x27;ve devolved into full-blown sci-fi dystopia.How so? The steps towards where we are now have been gradual over the last 2 decades, at least. This recent step has opened the door for those in power to grab onto even more power and wealth, and they&#x27;re naturally seizing it. All of this was comically predictable. Oh, and BTW, the people on this very website have brought us here. :)You know what will happen next? Absolutely nothing. A vocal minority will make a ruckus that will be ignored, partly because nobody will hear it due to our corrupted media channels, and partly because the vast majority doesn&#x27;t care and are too amused by their shiny toys and way of life.This dystopia is only different from fictional ones in that those in power have managed to convince the majority of people that they&#x27;re not living in a dystopia. It&#x27;s kind of a genius move.

&gt; It&#x27;s incredible how quickly we&#x27;ve devolved into full-blown sci-fi dystopia.It&#x27;s pretty bad, but at least the AI industry is still run by humans. Wait a decade or two, when the AI lobby is run by AIs, and the repressive apparatus of the day uses autonomous weapons to do what ICE and friends do today but perhaps focused on &quot;alignment&quot; of the ... humans. You know, if they sufficiently worship AIs in the way they express themselves. Forget about Anthropic and OpenAI; we will look back and rue the day mathematics was invented.

I&#x27;d prefer to see board (or executive) level signatories over lay employees -- the people who can enforce enterprise policy rather than just voice their opinions -- but this is encouraging to see nonetheless.I can&#x27;t help but notice that Grok&#x2F;X is not part of this initiative, though. I realize that frontier models are really coming from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, but it feels like someone is going to give in to these demands.It&#x27;s incredible how quickly we&#x27;ve devolved into full-blown sci-fi dystopia.

No surprise to have not heard anything from xAI

I think it&#x27;s an important call-out though. Can never be too safe in this landscape.

And you propose that how exactly? Every method they mention has identity attached to it in some way. They specifically want to be able to deduplicate submissions too, so I don&#x27;t see what non-identifying options you&#x27;re imagining they might accept either.

Looks like it supports alternative proof of employment. They don&#x27;t require disclosing identity as long as they are convinced you work for these companies.

Looks like the letter itself appears to be behind a piece of Javascript. I was not able to to see the letter&#x27;s text with noscript turned on and had to find it elsewhere online. I don&#x27;t want to discourage these companies employees from banding together to fight this abuse, but this is something to consider.

Why are the signing employees (at least the anonymous ones) trusting the creators of this website? What if it was set up by someone who wanted to gather a list of all the dissidents who would silently protest or leave the companies or whatever? Do you know whom you are going to hold accountable if it turns out these folks don&#x27;t delete your verification data, or share it with your employer, or worse?Also, another warning to anonymous users: it&#x27;s a little bit naive to trust the &quot;Google Forms&quot; verification option more than the email one, given both employers probably monitor anything you do on your devices, even if it&#x27;s loading the form. And, in Google&#x27;s case, they could obviously see what forms you submitted on the servers, too. If you wouldn&#x27;t ask for the email link, you might as well use the alternate verification option.Anyway - I&#x27;m not claiming it&#x27;s likely that the website creator is malicious, but surely it&#x27;s not beyond question? The website authors don&#x27;t even seem to be providing others with the verification that they are themselves asking for.P.S. I fully realize realizing these itself might make fewer people sign the form, which may be unfortunate, but it seems worth a mention.

For companies &#x2F; billionaires obeying in advance means they are buying their subscription to a period of favors like better contracts, lesser scrutiny over mergers, lighter enforcement of all laws.I’d like to think that they are scared&#x2F;obeying, but they’re likely just joining an organization.

This came up in my noncooperation training recently[0]. Thank you for posting this.[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;freedomtrainers.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;freedomtrainers.net&#x2F;</a>

The book &quot;On Tyranny: 20 lessons from the 20th century&quot; by the historian Timothy Snyder is an excellent read for these times. The very first lesson is &quot;Do not obey in advance&quot;. It&#x27;s about how authoritarian power often doesn&#x27;t need to force compliance, people simply bend the knee in anticipation of being forced. This simply emboldens the authoritarians to go further.I&#x27;ve been disappointed to see many businesses and institutions obeying in advance recently. I hope this moment wakes up the tech community and beyond.

Shame. Although I guess Altman has now fully given up the “for the good of humanity” schtick.

Well, it looks like OpenAI will be working with the Pentagon: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.axios.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;02&#x2F;27&#x2F;pentagon-openai-safety-red-lines-anthropic" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.axios.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;02&#x2F;27&#x2F;pentagon-openai-safety-red-...</a>My personal guess is that Sam Altman said he&#x27;d let policy violations go without a complaint and Dario Amodei said he wouldn&#x27;t.

These 2 Exceptions shouldn&#x27;t have to be disputed.At this point I&#x27;d go far to say I wouldn&#x27;t trust any company with my AI history that caves to DoD demands for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.Your AI will know more about you than any other company, not going to be trusting that to anyone who trades ethics for profits.

&gt;We are the employees of Google and OpenAI, two of the top AI companies in the world.Does this mean you dipshits are going to stop your own domestic surveillance programs? You sold your souls to the devil decades ago, don&#x27;t pretend like you have principles now.

Let me guess without looking up, debt interest, gov pension, medicare?

You are 100% wrong. You listed entitlements. National Defense is half of all discretionary spending.Homeland Security is less than 1&#x2F;6th the budget of DoD alone.

&gt; who are by far the largest budgetary expense for the tax payernot even top 3

Covid shutdown should have killed our economy, nothing short of government spending prevented otherwise.So many people in the US live a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle, that the covid lockdowns without government spending would have likely devolved into zombie apocalypse territory where hungry people were ransacking homes in more affluent neighborhoods (yes, even occupied homes). This is why people also bought lots of guns and ammo during Covid. You may think those people are crackpots, but I feel we actually got very close to it happening.My local food bank (big city) ran out of supplies just as they announced the first waves of stimulus or whatever they called it (the weekly checks). So I’m pretty sure we were literally only days away from that being a reality.

The US would not be net negative growth without government spending. Other components of GDP grow a lot, outside of recessions.Sure if you immediately stopped government spending today we&#x27;d have negative growth today but that&#x27;s not because other things aren&#x27;t growing, it&#x27;s because you just removed part of the base that existed last year. That would be true of literally pretty much any economy ever, or anything that&#x27;s growing and you decided to remove a chunk of the base from.And yes I absolutely believe the government does not have better generative AI than Anthropic or its competitors.

&gt; The USA showed itself to be a Command Economy that uses &#x27;private enterprise&#x27; as a fascade of legitimacy during Covid.This is the case for every government&#x2F;nation in the world. The difference between communism and capitalism, is that the Politburo in capitalism allows the natural selection of elites based on their performance on an open economy. At least that was the case until 2011.

&gt;or admitting they spend money on routine BS with zero frontier war fighting capabilities.Trying to imagine somebody that doesn’t know that the military buys dumb stuff and for some reason a human doesn’t come to mind. I keep picturing a horse

At some point in the not so distant future, it seems entirely likely for the US to bail out OpenAI &#x2F; Nvidia &#x2F; etc using national security as justification. Democrats and Republicans really can get along as long as their donors get what they want. No matter how the regime changes in the coming years, the DoD will keep getting funding, and that funding will increasingly go to vendors who don&#x27;t mind killing people.Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, and 60 years later it&#x27;s eating everyone&#x27;s lunch.

The USA showed itself to be a Command Economy that uses &#x27;private enterprise&#x27; as a fascade of legitimacy during Covid. Without government spending, employment, and contracts, the USA would be net negative growth.Now the DoD, who are by far the largest budgetary expense for the tax payer, wants us to believe they don&#x27;t have a better Ai than current industry? That is a double sword admission; either they are exposing themselves again as economic decision makers, or admitting they spend money on routine BS with zero frontier war fighting capabilities.Either way, it is beyond time to reform the Military and remove the majority of its leadership as incompetent stewards and strategists. That doesn&#x27;t even include the massive security vulnerabilities in our supply chains given military needs in various countries. (Taiwan and Thailand)

&gt; domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversightspoiler alert: this is already happeningdo labs in China have a choice in the matter?

The Department of War doesn&#x27;t exist, don&#x27;t meet the fascists on their own terms at any level. They don&#x27;t debate or operate in good faith.

it&#x27;s the first step towards actually organizing. Reminds me of how the Kickstarter union came to beAny collective action should be encouraged

Now that Sam has already ignore this, it&#x27;s time for OpenAI employees who signed to actually do something <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47189650">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47189650</a>

This is a nice gesture but completely meaningless. There is absolutely no commitment in this. &quot;We hope our leaders..&quot; has no conditions, no effects.If you&#x27;re an employee and actually believe in this you need to commit to something, like resigning.

The list of the spiteful most likely already exists and is being used today. All these mass media have been weaponized by various bad actors.Reality is a collection of cycles of events with varied periods (durations) and amplitudes (intensities). Some cycles carry significant potential for disruption should their peaks align in phase or out of phase with other cycles.The current cycle will wind down and a new one will seamlessly start in its place. Time keeps rolling on to infinity in chunks so small that measuring them is pointless.There is no singularity. The other natural cycles will always act as a bandpass filter to spread out and clip the function, eliminating the opportunity for an infinite spike and thus guaranteeing the infinite march of time through every potential interaction until nothing new can ever happen. Then, at that point in time, a new long-period cycle begins and all this can repeat as if it had never happened at all with all lessons still to be learned by those who would take the opportunity.

Instead of Epsteins blackmailing disgustful human nature, it&#x27;ll be rogue AIs sending selective blackmail, 24&#x2F;7, to the spiteful among us (e.g. to motivate targeted killings, either by human or machine).&gt;All of this should remain a bridge too far, forever.Hopefully Singularity will be graceful, killing-off everybody simultaneously#PaperclipMaximizer #HimFirst

The best way for AI companies to fight this would be to remind those who request this capability that the AI knows exactly where they live, where they hang out, and that any one of them can also be targeted by a rogue AI system with no human in the loop. Capabilities that they are requesting could jeopardize them, their personal assets, and their families if something goes haywire or, in the much more common case, where the AI is used as an attack tool by an outside adversary who has gained unauthorized access.All of this should remain a bridge too far, forever.EDIT: It is one level of bad when someone hacks a database containing personal healthcare data on most Americans as happened not long ago. A few years back, the OPM hack gave them all they needed to know about then-current and former government employees and service members and their families. Wait until a state-sponsored actor finds their way into the surveillance and targeting software and uses that back door to eliminate key adversarial personnel or to hold them hostage with threats against the things they value most so that the adversary builds a collection of moles who sell out everything in a vain attempt to keep themselves safe.Of course we already know what happens when an adversary employs these techniques and that is why we are where we are right now.

We Will Not Be Divided