Friday February 27 2026

Hacker Times

Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

Discussion

I believe deeply in the existential importance of using AI to defend the United States and other democracies, and to defeat our autocratic adversaries.

Anthropic has therefore worked proactively to deploy our models to the Department of War and the intelligence community. We were the first frontier AI company to deploy our models in the US government’s classified networks, the first to deploy them at the National Laboratories, and the first to provide custom models for national security customers. Claude is extensively deployed across the Department of War and other national security agencies for mission-critical applications, such as intelligence analysis, modeling and simulation, operational planning, cyber operations, and more.

Anthropic has also acted to defend America’s lead in AI, even when it is against the company’s short-term interest. We chose to forgo several hundred million dollars in revenue to cut off the use of Claude by firms linked to the Chinese Communist Party (some of whom have been designated by the Department of War as Chinese Military Companies), shut down CCP-sponsored cyberattacks that attempted to abuse Claude, and have advocated for strong export controls on chips to ensure a democratic advantage.

Anthropic understands that the Department of War, not private companies, makes military decisions. We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner.

However, in a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values. Some uses are also simply outside the bounds of what today’s technology can safely and reliably do. Two such use cases have never been included in our contracts with the Department of War, and we believe they should not be included now:

Mass domestic surveillance. We support the use of AI for lawful foreign intelligence and counterintelligence missions. But using these systems for mass domestic surveillance is incompatible with democratic values. AI-driven mass surveillance presents serious, novel risks to our fundamental liberties. To the extent that such surveillance is currently legal, this is only because the law has not yet caught up with the rapidly growing capabilities of AI. For example, under current law, the government can purchase detailed records of Americans’ movements, web browsing, and associations from public sources without obtaining a warrant, a practice the Intelligence Community has acknowledged raises privacy concerns and that has generated bipartisan opposition in Congress. Powerful AI makes it possible to assemble this scattered, individually innocuous data into a comprehensive picture of any person’s life—automatically and at massive scale.
Fully autonomous weapons. Partially autonomous weapons, like those used today in Ukraine, are vital to the defense of democracy. Even fully autonomous weapons (those that take humans out of the loop entirely and automate selecting and engaging targets) may prove critical for our national defense. But today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons. We will not knowingly provide a product that puts America’s warfighters and civilians at risk. We have offered to work directly with the Department of War on R&D to improve the reliability of these systems, but they have not accepted this offer. In addition, without proper oversight, fully autonomous weapons cannot be relied upon to exercise the critical judgment that our highly trained, professional troops exhibit every day. They need to be deployed with proper guardrails, which don’t exist today.

To our knowledge, these two exceptions have not been a barrier to accelerating the adoption and use of our models within our armed forces to date.

The Department of War has stated they will only contract with AI companies who accede to “any lawful use” and remove safeguards in the cases mentioned above. They have threatened to remove us from their systems if we maintain these safeguards; they have also threatened to designate us a “supply chain risk”—a label reserved for US adversaries, never before applied to an American company—and to invoke the Defense Production Act to force the safeguards’ removal. These latter two threats are inherently contradictory: one labels us a security risk; the other labels Claude as essential to national security.

Regardless, these threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.

It is the Department’s prerogative to select contractors most aligned with their vision. But given the substantial value that Anthropic’s technology provides to our armed forces, we hope they reconsider. Our strong preference is to continue to serve the Department and our warfighters—with our two requested safeguards in place. Should the Department choose to offboard Anthropic, we will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider, avoiding any disruption to ongoing military planning, operations, or other critical missions. Our models will be available on the expansive terms we have proposed for as long as required.

We remain ready to continue our work to support the national security of the United States.

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xpe•about 8 hours ago

I read the articles. As far as factual reporting, I will tentatively take them at face value. But in terms of their editorializing, it is frankly weak by my standards. It would not survive scrutiny in a freshman philosophy class.

Ethics is complicated. I’m not saying this means it can’t be reasoned about and discussed. It can! But the sources you’ve cited have shown themselves to be rather shallow.

I encourage everyone to write out your ethical model and put yourself in their shoes and think about how you would weigh the factors.

There is no free lunch. For many practical decisions with high stakes, many reasonable decisions from one POV could be argued against from another. It is the synthesis that matters the most. Among those articles, I don’t see great minds doing their best work. (The constraints of their medium and funding model are a big problem I think.)

Read Brian Christian’s “The Alignment Problem”’s take on predictive policing if you want a specific example of what I mean. There are actually mathematical impossibilities at play when it comes to common sense, ethical reasoning.

Common sense ethical reasoning has never been very good at new or complicated situations. “Common sense” at its worst is often a rhetorical technique used to shut down careful thinking. At its best, it can drive us to pay attention to our conscience and to synthesize.

I suggest finding better discussions and/or allocating the time yourself to think through it. My preferred sources for AI and ethics discussions are highly curated. I don’t “trust” any of them absolutely. * They are all grist for the mill.

I get better grist from LessWrong than HN 99% of the time. I discuss here to make sure I have a sense of what more “mainstream” people are discussing. HN lags the quality of LW — and will probably never catch up — but it does move in that direction usually over time. I’m not criticizing individuals here; I’m commenting on culture.

Please don’t confuse what I’m saying as pure subjectivity. One could conduct scientific experiments about the quality of discussions of a particular forum in many senses. Which places are drawing upon better information? Which are synthesizing it more carefully? Which drill down into detail? Which participants have allocated more to think clearly? Which strive to make predictions? Which prioritize hot takes? Which prioritize mutual understanding?

It isn’t even close.

Opinions and the Overton window are moving pretty rapidly, compared to even one year ago.

* I’ve written several comments about viewing trust as a triple (who, what, why). This isn’t my idea: I stole it.

b40d-48b2-979e•about 8 hours ago

    The Saudis invest in many public US companies, does that make those companies
    less trust worthy?

Uhh.. yeah?

    we've seen a lot worse from many of their competitors

I think we should demand people do better than just being slightly above the worst.

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helaoban•about 15 hours ago

I don't want to ascribe any particular political beliefs to the commenter, the quip about re-education was somewhat of a joke given the irony of somebody arguing against dictatorship by invoking mass "deprograming". But many a true word is spoken in jest.

There are no real Maoists or true communists in the US anymore, at least not enough to constitute meaningful political forces. To the extent they exist they are irrelevant, and one can argue further that no true left remains in the US at all.

As for my analysis of the Trump phenomenon, I only have intuitions and biases to offer, so caveat lector.

I don't think it's particularly mysterious. The general perception is that the American left has made identity politics and social justice its main political and social programs, to the detriment of basic governance, most importantly the economy and security, thereby breaking the social contract.

You cannot be a party that aggressively defends and promotes the interests of minority classes at the expense of the majority without loosing the support of the majority. In some cases, these minorities are so small as to border on the absurd.

Something like 0.6% of people identify as transgender in the United States(1). They are vastly over-represented in the media, in left wing political programs, and in the general zeitgeist at large relative to their population size. The same goes for the LGBT population, which represents maybe 10% of the US population (and that's a liberal estimate).

Try as you might, you cannot escape the cold, hard fact that 60% the US population is white, with something closer to 70% identifying as white or partly white. 90% percent of that group is going to be straight.

The US middle and working classes still really haven't recovered from the financial crisis of 2008, the aftermath of which precipitated a huge transfer of wealth from these classes to the upper class, a trend that accelerated during the pandemic.

So you have a majority of the population who are reeling from a devastating loss of wealth, station, and status, unable to keep pace with inflation, watching one of the two main political parties aggressively promote the interests of a tiny minority at their expense, or at least that is the perception.

Putting aside the nature of the minorities in question, the subservience of the political class to a minority of the population has another name: elitism. The natural response to elitism is populism, which is what we are seeing.

The protection of minority rights is a noble cause, but it's primarily a civil rights issue, and the focus should be on making sure those classes are treated equally under the law. The goal should not be the elevation of their social and cultural station above the majority.

Biden, and then Harris/Waltz, are the kind of the ultimate expression of this left-wing, elitist decadence. Biden appointed a man who wears stilettos and dresses to work in charge of nuclear waste as the Department of Energy. People can rage at me all they want for that description, but that is what the majority of Americans perceive. Again, putting aside any questions of morality, it is political suicide.

Tolerance of mass border crossings was probably a more directly fatal error, representing a final decoupling of the democratic party from their ideological roots in the labor movement which was always militantly against illegal immigration. Again, the perception is that interest of minorities (in this case migrants) are primary to the interests of the majority. In this case the minority are not even American citizens.

There's a lot more to say on this topic, and I'm sure you can find more persuasive analyses from better sources, but these are some of my intuitions.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

1. https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-ad...

kalkin•about 6 hours ago

> Biden, and then Harris/Waltz, are the kind of the ultimate expression of this left-wing, elitist decadence. Biden appointed a man who wears stilettos and dresses to work in charge of nuclear waste as the Department of Energy... Tolerance of mass border crossings was probably a more directly fatal error...

This is just totally disconnected from policy reality. Biden did not tolerate mass border crossings. (I _wish_ he'd dismantled ICE, but he very clearly did not.) A relatively minor DoE appointment going to a member of an unpopular minority both has nothing to do with policy and is the kind of thing that must necessarily be acceptable if minorities are actually going to be "treated equally under the law". This is a ludicrous basis to infer "the subservience of the political class" to transgender people.

On the other hand, Trump is a billionaire with Epstein connections and entirely unabashed about making money for his businesses and family using his government position. If this isn't "decadence", or "elitism", what meaning could the words possibly have?

"Deprogramming" might be an unfriendly word but it's hard for me to imagine how you have a functional democracy when a plurality of voters are making decisions on the basis of straightforward falsehoods, or even inversions of reality, just because "at least that is the perception". This isn't a sustainable situation, and it will end with either re-connecting these people to reality or disenfranchising them (really, them disenfranchising themselves along with the rest of us, e.g. by re-empowering someone who tried to steal an election). The former seems vastly preferable.

Speaking of unfriendly words - I also broadly have very little sympathy for a demand that people on the left speak respectfully of Trump voters given the total lack of any reciprocation. Even if it is the right way to do politics, the asymmetry between the way Democratic politicians talk about rural areas and the way Republican politicians talk about cities is another thing that's totally unsustainable.

pear01•about 21 hours ago

Congress is the problem, but not in the way most describe.

Congress has abdicated its powers because as an institution it is broken. Several inland states with total state wide populations less than that of major metro areas on the coasts have the same amount of senators as every other state has - two. This means voters in a lot of states are over represented. Meanwhile, they say land doesn't vote, but in the United States Senate the cities and localities with the most people that drive much of our growth and dynamism are severely underrepresented. The upper and most important chamber of the Congress is thus undemocratic. Given it's an institution deeply susceptible to minority gridlock that depends on wide margins to do anything, well now more often than not it simply does nothing. An imperial presidency thus frankly becomes the only way the country can actually get most things done.

This two senators for every state arrangement was a compromise agreed to when constitutional ratification was in doubt, when the USA was a weak, newborn country of about 3 million people confined to the Eastern seaboard at a time in our history where our most pressing concern was being recolonized by European powers. The British burned down the White House in 1812 imagine what more they could have accomplished if the constitutional compromises that strengthened the union had not been agreed to.

This compromise has outlived its usefulness. No American today fears a Spanish armada or British regulars bearing torches. These difficult compromises at the heart of America already led to one civil war.

The best we can do is create a broad political movement that entertains as many incriminations as possible (probably around corruption/Epstein, which must make pains to avoid any distinction between say a Bill Clinton or a Donald Trump) so we can get past partisan bickering to get enough of mass movement to try to usher in a new age of constitutional amendment and reform.

If it doesn't happen this cycle of Obama Trump Biden Trump will continue until this country elects someone who makes Trump look like a saint. It can happen. Think of how Trump rehabilitated Bush. We already see the trend getting worse. And if it does, then the post WWII Germany style reset being mentioned here will then become inevitable.

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soderfoo•about 13 hours ago

How do you think this would play out? Changing the apportionment of the Senate, aside from being a political and legal nightmare, would also create monumental constitutional crisis.

First, the Connecticut Compromise is a democratic underpinning of the US. It was central to the formation of the nation, and any attempt to alter it would be a foundational structural change to the constitution to say the least.

I understand the concerns about one generation binding another without recourse. Legal scholars differ on whether Article V, which implements the compromise, can be amended or not.

But for the sake of argument, let's say it can. It would be an insurmountable task requiring the following:

1. A supermajority in both houses of Congress (67% in the Senate and 66% in the House) to propose the amendment.

2. Ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures (38 out of 50 states) or by conventions in three-fourths of the states.

3. Consent of the states that would lose their equal representation in the Senate.

4. Overcome any legal challenges that would likely arise at every step of the process.

The result would be a dramatic redefinition of federalism and democratic representation. This wouldn't be a cosmetic change, it would be a fundamental alteration to the structure of the government and constitution.

Very few things were deemed "unamendable" and entrenched in the constitution before, both explicitly and implicitly, but now it would all be up for grabs. Now nothing is irrevocable.

What's to stop future generations from altering other fundamental principles? While we may complain of being bound by the decisions of our ancestors, we would be opening up a Pandora's box of constitutional instability for future generations, binding them to the whims of a (slim?) majority of the current generation's political agenda.

I think that is the best case scenario. The worst, and I think a very possible scenario, is that states losing representation would claim that such a drastic and material change to the constitution upends the root of the bargain that led to the formation of the union, and would likely seek to secede. You may have achieved your goal of changing the apportionment of the Senate, but at the cost of the union itself. There are far easier and less risky ways to achieve political change.

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lambdaphagy•about 7 hours ago

China does not consider all lethal autonomous weapons system "unacceptable" even for use, let alone to develop, and the document you linked explains this very clearly. Here's what the document actually says, formatted slightly for clarity:

``` Basic characteristics of Unacceptable Autonomous Weapons Systems should include but not limited to the following:

- Firstly, lethality, meaning sufficient lethal payload (charge) and means.

- Secondly, autonomy, meaning absence of human intervention and control during the entire process of executing a task.

- Thirdly, impossibility for termination, meaning that once started, there is no way to terminate the operation.

- Fourthly, indiscriminate killing, meaning that the device will execute the mission of killing and maiming regardless of conditions, scenarios and targets.

- Fifthly, evolution, meaning that through interaction with the environment, the device can learn autonomously, expand its functions and capabilities in a degree exceeding human expectations.

Autonomous weapons systems with all of the five characteristics clearly have anti-human characteristics and significant humanitarian risks, and the international community could consider following the example of the Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons and work to reach a legal instrument to prohibit such weapons systems. ```

Charitably, you might say that China is worried about a nightmare scenario. Less charitably, you might say that the definition of an unacceptable weapon system is so tight that it does not describe anything that anyone would ever build, or would want to build. This posture would allow China to adopt the international posture of seeming to oppose autonomous weapons without actually de facto constraining themselves at all.

This, by contrast, is what China considers acceptable:

``` Acceptable Autonomous Weapons Systems could have a high degree of autonomy, but are always under human control. It means they can be used in a secure, credible, reliable and manageable manner, can be suspended by human beings at any time and comply with basic principles of international humanitarian law in military operations, such as distinction, proportionality and precaution. ```

So as long as the system has a killswitch (something that afaik absolutely no one is proposing to dispense with?), it's Acceptable.

Meanwhile, it would certainly seem that China's defense research universities are interested in developing this tech: https://thediplomat.com/2026/02/machines-in-the-alleyways-ch....

So, I did a bit of research with my internet access-- how do my findings square with your impressions?

Fischgericht•about 10 hours ago

[I am getting downvoted all the time because the combination of German directness with autistic directness and lack of empathy combined with dark humor is not exactly compatible with societies where it is seen as offensive, rude or even aggressive not to sugar coat your messages. If one side treats this as a data exchange, and the other side processes the data but including emotions it will obviously have compatibility issues. But that's my "problem", so I accepted that typically if I post stuff, I first get upvoted massively, and after a day downvoted to hell. And that's OK. Again, my problem to be incompatible with a standard.]

And yes, it is interesting to see that on Polymarket people are betting involving a lot of emotions. No, you will not bet on getting killed by masked militia. Nobody is going to say "Hey, I'll bet $1000 that I will get cancer soon!".

But if you leave aside all the emotions, and just look at the data: No, there is no realistic scenario the US could magically recover from all checks and balances and rules and laws and regulations and decency having been destroyed. Competence, leadership and shared knowledge had been erased in all areas of society - Science, Development, Capitalism, Arts. How are you going to rebuild all of this, especially if the best case is that 60% of the people will agree to rebuild, while 40% insist they need to keep destroying stuff?

This is not a scenario looking at historical data any prior "high culture" (or whatever to call this) had been able to recover from.

Elsewhere in this thread is was mentioned that Germany still had all the Nazis in place everywhere because else the country would not have worked. But that is not the point. The reset was:

a) All is destroyed and MUST be rebuild because else we will freeze and starve to death.

b) Your Nazi neighbor is still there, but it has been made VERY clear who is the new sheriff in town: First the allies, but then pretty much the USA. Germany is still paying for having US solders in the country, providing valuable expensive land for free, and paying for most of the supply chain that is not staffed with US soldiers. And that is the accepted normal.

c) What was left on industry was physically taken as reoperations. Especially the soviets, but also the French did dismantle hole factories and machinery, moving that to their own countries (rightfully so.)

From what I know from school, reading and talking to grandparents: Germany before WW2 doesn't have much relation to pre-WW2 Germany. Suddenly it was normal that women can to "men's jobs" (due to those being more on the dead side). McDonalds. Hollywood. etc

It really makes sense to have a look at a couple of pictures of what was left of Germany after WW2. It's just someone slapping an existing brand name onto a new product. And in this case, personally I would have regarded the brand as damaged and would have picked a different name.