It's why I think "software engineer" is a misnomer. We don't have a license, we don't have an ethics code, we don't sign off on stuff. In other disciplines, an engineer could topple a project they feel is unsafe or against code, and be backed by their union if replaced. A software engineer just says yes if their stocks aren't vested, and will be replaced if not.

OpenAI is already doing mass surveillance, so nothing changes

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/21/tumbler-ridge-...

Yes, what is implied in this episode is that all big companies that do AI development or provide computing for Ai are now signing for these very shady uses of their technologies.

For all I know Sam Altman orchestrated this via well timed donations and whatever the hell contacts he has in government, Trump specifically seems to have taken the man

So using Anthropic’s own words to cover a power play or pulling relationships to see if they could get anthropic to balk at it.

A union?

This, honestly. Seeing all those billionaires on inauguration day lined up to kiss the ring was utterly pathetic. Like what is the fucking point of having billions of dollars if you're just going to be someone else's bitch. And for what? A couple more billion dollars. Oof

Another plausible explanation that is familiar to a lot of people in other countries is banal corruption. Kick out one competitor on bogus allegations, then on the next day invite another one… what else that could be?

I'm an OpenAI employee and I'll go out on a limb with a public comment. I agree AI shouldn't be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons. I also think Anthropic has been treated terribly and has acted admirably. My understanding is that the OpenAI deal disallows domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, and that OpenAI is asking for the same terms for other AI companies (so that we can continue competing on the basis of differing services and not differing scruples). Given this understanding, I don't see why I should quit. If it turns out that the deal is being misdescribed or that it won't be enforced, I can see why I should quit, but so far I haven't seen any evidence that's the case.

Didn't the safety-conscious employees already leave when OpenAI fired Sam Altman and then re-hired him?

In my mind the only people left are those who are there for the stocks.

> Surely if OpenAI had insisted upon the same things that Anthropic had, the government would not have signed this agreement.

But they did.

"Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement."

I think it is like a loyalty test to an authority above the law (executive immunity) in order to do business. “If we tell you to do so, you may do something you thought was right or wrong.” It is like an induction into a faction and the way the decisions could be made. Doesn’t necessarily mean anything about “in practice in the future”, just that the cybernetic override is there tacitly. If the authority thinks they can get away with something, they will provide protection for consequences too. Some people more equal than others when it comes to justice for all, etc. There are probably alternative styles for group decision making…

> I don't see how OpenAI employees who have signed the We Will Not Be Divided letter can continue their employment there in light of this

Well some may voluntarily leave, some will be actively poached by Anthropic perhaps and some I suppose will stay in their jobs because leaving isn't an easy decision to make.

>Surely if OpenAI had insisted upon the same things that Anthropic had, the government would not have signed this agreement.

Have we been watching the same Trump admin for the last year? That sound exactly like something the government would do: pointlessly throw a fit and end up signing a worse deal after blowing up all political capital.

I think Altman probably rationalised it to himself by thinking that if he doesn’t do it, Musk/xAI will, and they give zero fucks about safety. So maybe he told himself that it’s better if OpenAI does it.

Not a group per se but I maintain an index of 'good' people in tech here, and their contraries - https://goodindex.org

Yeah some new banner to organise around- the hard part is easily communicating you're an ethical technologist and finding others.

Just deleted OpenAI account, F these guys

Yep I’m pulling the plug on my OIA account on Monday morning and switching to Anthropic.

Exactly. Stop using OpenAI. Don’t design it into your software at work. Use Claude. Screw these guys.

"AI shouldn't be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons". The statement from OpenAI virtually guarantees that the intention is to use it for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. If this wasn't the intention them the qualifier "domestic" wouldn't be used, and they would be talking about "human in the loop" control of autonomous weapons, not "human responsibility" which just means there's someone willing to stand up and say, "yep I take responsibility for the autonomous weapon systems actions", which lets be honest is the thinnest of thin safety guarantees.

You should quit because the only reasonable thing for your leadership to have done is to refuse to sign any agreement with DoW whatsoever while it's attempting to strongarm Anthropic in this fashion.

It doesn't even matter if OpenAI is offered the same terms that Anthropic refused. It's absurd to accept them and do business with the Pentagon in that situation.

If you take the government at its word, it's killing Anthropic because Anthropic wanted to assert the ability to draw _some_ sort of redline. If OpenAI's position is "well sucks to be them", there's nothing stopping Hegseth from doing the same to OpenAI.

It doesn't matter at all if OpenAI gets the deal at the same redline Anthropic was trying to assert. If at the end of this the government has succeeded in cutting Anthropic off from the economy, what's next for OpenAI? What happens next time when OpenAI tries to assert some sort of redline?

What's the point of any talk of "AI Safety" if you sign on to a regime where Hegseth (of all people) can just demand the keys and you hand them right over?

Assuming this is real: Why do you think anthropic was put on what is essentially an "enemy of the state" list and openai didn't?

The two things anthropic refused to do is mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, so why do _you_ think openai refused and still did not get placed on the exact same list.

It's fine to say "I'm not going to resign. I didn't even sign that letter", but thinking that openai can get away with not developing autonomous weapons or mass surveillance is naive at the very best.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming [1] does not play a role in your thinking:

I don't mean this in any way rude and I apologize if this comes accross as such but believing it won't be used in exactly this way is just naive. History has taught us this lesson again and again and again.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189650#47189970

And h1 slaves

Why do you suppose OpenAI's deal led to a contract, while Anthropic's deal (ostensibly containing identical terms) gets it not only booted but declared a supply chain risk?

Review the signers https://notdivided.org

Anthropic has safeguards baked in the model, this is the only way to make sur it's harder for the DOJ to misuse it. A pinky swear from the DoD means nothing

While that thought crossed my mind, someone in a sub thread of parent comment made a point: OpenAI made a statement about how "We insisted this be not be used in those ways and DoD totally says they won't". Which sounds to me like they ceded any hard terms oand conditions and are letting the DoD use it in "any lawful means" which is what Anthropic didn't stand for.

They seem moderately competent at doing blatant corruption ( https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/official-trump/ , Qatari jet, etc...). See jeffbee's comment below.

Knowing Sam, that's exactly what happened -- and the echo chamber inside OpenAI wouldnt dare to disagree

I cancelled and deleted my account and I got an email immediately with a pro-rata refund. You can get that money back.

  It is a great day for both America’s national security and AI leadership that two of our leading labs, OAI and xAI have reached the patriotic and correct answer here

He's an administration official openly cheerleading his team. This should be characterized as the insider perspective/spin, not a neutral analysis of the relevant facts.

Even this most-charitable-possible (to DoW) explanation does not even come close to justifying the supply chain risk designation. It is absolutely enough (and honestly more than enough) for a contract cancellation and a switch to a competitor. DoW could have done that for any reason at all, or no reason at all. If they had issues with Anthropics terms, they 100% should have done that.

Nothing in the quoted text comes anywhere close to the realm of justifying the retaliatory actions.

Look more carefully at what sam altman satd : he did not say he won't remove technical safeguards against surveilance and autonomous killing, instead he said "We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should"

deals are based on personal relationships, not abstract logic

israel controls us govt, israel has a deal with openai, sam's mentor is thiel, who was close with epstein+ehud barak and the whole israeli pedophilia ring

OpenAI employees revolted for their millions worth of stock, not for principle.

Anyone thinking they have any virtue is naive.

I don't even think Anthropic balked at being used to assist, as long as a human has the final say.

Well you know how it goes... you need to read between the lines. I can agree with you on your "principles", but not enforce them myself.

It makes sense if you imagine the real motivation is “make sure the AI contracts go to my good friend Sam”, and all the red line stuff is just a way to pick a fight with Anthropic.

No, the difference is that the government agrees to no "unlawful" use as determined by the government.

Anthropic said that mass surveillance was per se prohibited even if the government self-certified that it was lawful.

Follow the money. There is a UAE sheik who bought 49% of Trump's World Liberty and is involved in OpenAI's Project Stargate:

https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/35909013656801

I'm sure more will drop in the coming months.

I can totally see why you should quit, but we see different things apparently.

Respectfully, it's very hard to see how anyone could look at what just happened and come to the conclusion that one company ends up classed a "supply chain risk" while another agrees the the same terms that led to that. Either the terms are looser, they're not going to be enforced, or there's another reason for the loud attempt to blacklist Anthropic. It's very difficult to see how you could take this at face value in any case. If it is loose terms or a wink agreement to not check in on enforcement you're never going to be told that. We can imagine other scenerios where the terms stated were not the real reason for the blacklisting, but it's a real struggle (at least for me) to find an explanation for this deal that doesn't paint OpenAI in a very ethically questionable light.

(Disclosure, I'm a former OpenAI employee and current shareholder.)

I have two qualms with this deal.

First, Sam's tweet [0] reads as if this deal does not disallow autonomous weapons, but rather requires "human responsibility" for them. I don't think this is much of an assurance at all - obviously at some level a human must be responsible, but this is vague enough that I worry the responsible human could be very far out of the loop.

Second, Jeremy Lewin's tweet [1] indicates that the definitions of these guardrails are now maintained by DoW, not OpenAI. I'm currently unclear on those definitions and the process for changing them. But I worry that e.g. "mass surveillance" may be defined too narrowly for that limitation to be compatible with democratic values, or that DoW could unilaterally make it that narrow in the future. Evidently Anthropic insisted on defining these limits itself, and that was a sticking point.

Of course, it's possible that OpenAI leadership thoughtfully considered both of these points and that there are reasonable explanations for each of them. That's not clear from anything I've seen so far, but things are moving quickly so that may change in the coming days.

[0] https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175

[1] https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230

Did Sam Altman say that he wouldn't allow ChatGPT to be used for fully autonomous weapons? (Not quite the same as "human responsibility for use of force".)

I don't want to overanalyze things but I also noticed his statement didn't say "our agreement specifically says chatgpt will never be used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance." It said something that kind of gestured towards that, but it didn't quite come out and say it. It says "The DoW agrees with these principles, and we put them in our agreement." Could the principles have been outlined in a nonbinding preamble, or been a statement of the DoW's current intentions rather than binding their future behavior? You should be very suspicious when a corporate person says something vague that somewhat implies what you want to hear - if they could have told you explicitly what you wanted to hear, they would have.

But anyway, it doesn't matter. You said you don't think it should be used for autonomous weapons. I'd be willing to bet you 10:1 that you'll never find altman saying anything like "our agreement specifically says chatgpt will never be used for fully autonomous weapons", now or any point in the future.

Why would you believe that? If that were the case what was the issue with Anthropic even about?

You, and your colleagues, should resign.

In all seriousness, what’s the average tenure at OpenAI and how much of the company in March 2026 was even around for that?

The difference is that Anthropic wanted to reserve the right to judge when the red lines are crossed, while OpenAI will defer to the DoD and its policies for that. In both cases, the two parties can claim to agree on the principles, but when push comes to shove, who decides on whether the principles are violated differs.

I'm sure it's a matter of interpretation. Anthropic thinks the DoW's demands will lead to mass surveillance and auto-kill bots. The DoW probably disagrees with that interpretation, and all OpenAI needs to do is agree with the DoW.

My bet is that what the DoW wants is pretty clearly tied to mass surveillance and kill-bots. Altman is a snake.

Human responsibility is not the same as human decision making.

And they are crossing the picket line, which honestly I was sure they would do, though I did expect it to take a bit longer.

This is too transparent even for sama.

Good ole Sammy has never lied

Unrelated, but want to buy a bridge?

You could recoup your investment in a year by collecting toll. Expedited financing available on good credit!

> some I suppose will stay in their jobs because leaving isn't an easy decision to make.

Anyone who chooses to stay shouldn’t have signed the letter. What’s the point of doing it off you’re not going to follow through? If you sign the letter and don’t leave after the demands aren’t met, you’re a liar and a coward and are actively harming every signatory of every future letter.

Is there a name for this phenomenon? I've taken to calling it "the nihilist's excuse"

Thinking that Scam Altman cares about anyone besides himself is crazy. The guy raped his own sister.

Unless you're using an enterprise plan or pay per token, you're not hurting their business at all by cancelling. The consumer plans are heavily subsidised.

As people have repeatedly mentioned, if the War Department was unhappy with Anthropic's terms, they could have refused to sign the contract. But they didn't: they were fine with it for over a year. And if they changed their mind, they could've ended the contract and both sides could've walked away. Anthropic said that would've been fine. But that's not what happened either: they threatened Anthropic with both SCR designation and a DPA takeover if Anthropic didn't agree to unilateral renegotiation of terms that the War Department had already agreed were fine.

It's absurd, and doubly so if OAI's deal includes the same or even similar redlines to what Anthropic had.

A government promise that they'll only do lawful things is not reassuring at all:

1. We've seen government lawyers write memos explaining why such-and-such obviously illegal act is legal (see: torture memo). Until challenged, this is basically law.

2. We've seen government change the law to make whatever they want legal (see: patriot act)

3. We've seen courts just interpret laws to make things legal

A contractor doesn't realistically have the power to push back against any of these avenues if they agree to allow anything legal.

(At the risk of triggering Godwin's Law, remember that for the most part the Holocaust was entirely legal - the Nazi's established the necessary authorization. Just to illustrate that when it comes to certain government crimes, the law alone is an insufficient shield.)

The DoW wants to only be beholden to the laws, and not to Anthropics TOS.

So the question is: do you trust the government to effectively govern its own use of AI? or do you trust Anthropic's enforcement of its TOS?

You're quoting social media posts from a regime official who says he didn't participate in these negotiations and doesn't work for the relevant department.

If his characterization of the agreement is correct, which I will not believe and you should not believe until a trustworthy news outlet publishes the text, I suppose this would convince me that Hegseth does not literally plan to build a Terminator for democracy-ending purposes. There's a lot of inexcusable stuff here regardless, but perhaps merely boycotting OpenAI and the US military would be a sufficient response if this all checks out.

You're expecting logic from the Trump administration and that's not really how they do things. Maybe it was never about the redlines? Maybe they decided Anthropic was their enemy, and that was their excuse.

I bet Sam secretly pledged to DoD that the red lines were only temporary, for optics and to calm employees at the all hands meeting.

A few months down the line, OpenAI will quietly decide that their next model is safe enough for autonomous weapons, and remove their safeguard layer. The mass surveillance enablement might be an indirect deal through Palantir.

Sam saw Anthropic was getting too competitive. So he called his buddies in the gov to knock them down a peg.

I don't trust Sam to be telling the truth. It would be to his benefit to lie about this and make Anthropic look bad, so he of course would, even if it's not actually the case.

I think their consumer plans are gross margin positive but OpenAI has ~50M paying subscribers driving >$10B in revenue.

Realistically, you need at least ~1M subscribers to cancel to make this painful.

But I suspect this will get drowned out in the face of other news.

Cancelling is the only language these companies understand.

Even Disney couldn't ignore the mass cancellations after dropping Kimmel and Disney+ bearly turns over a profit.

Does it matter? These AI companies need to be able to prove that users are willing to pay at all, even if they're not paying a profitable amount of money. If investors see that they're dumping money into something that's not selling, why continue to do so?

It will hurt in future funding rounds if their subscriber metric is stalling or going backwards, regardless of how many of those subscriptions are profitable.

it seems like oai deal does include the same red lines, plus some more, and the ability for oai to deploy safety systems to limit the use cases of the model via technical means

this seems strictly better than what anthropic had. anthropic has ruined their relationship with the US govt, giving oai a good negotiating hand

the oai folks are good at making deals, just look at all the complex funding arrangements they have

This is it exactly.

Anthropic was too public about being “good”. And if there is one thing the Trump admin cannot abide it’s morality.

Very possible, double speaking is Sam Altman's specialty.

That's very possible! In the last few days Anthropic was getting a lot of attention, and OpenAI was looking weaker in comparison. It seems like a politically coordinated job to remove competition.

For sure, he's been pissed that OpenAI no longer has the Mandate of Heaven and Claude is all anyone has been talking about since December. (And it's not just an ego thing: because OAI isn't profitable yet, they need the hype to keep going to raise money on favorable terms, so loss of buzz is an existential threat). I absolutely believe that he started making calls to try and get buddies in the White House to take Anthropic down.

Hell, I would have thought it likely that anthropic was doing the same thing. Of course that was proven wrong, but for OAI I wouldn't even be guessing. This has always been what sama does.

There is definitely a muddle on so many levels about signaling and agreeing on ethics in technology.

But as innovation slows globally, it is implementation, ethics, and ideology that will once again be the dominant metrics of progress, so there's a new window emerging to push for this social/moral change in technology once again.

So it's still critically important that we actively work towards finding a meaningful, socially contagious differentiator other than "ethical technologist" even if it's difficult- look at what OpenAI gets away with under that flimsy banner.

I considered that comparison, but in all seriousness, I’m not sure it’s apt.

Are he and his peers Hitler or they the naive oligarchs who think they can keep populist leaders and their constituencies under their thumb? Only to be out maneuvered by the people who the masses think have their back.

I know many folks who think their political leaders have the best interest at heart (rightly or wrongly). I know nobody who thinks tech leaders do. At best they want to be them.

I'd apply to work for Anthropic in a heartbeat if it was a European company.

If you want privacy the only option that reasonably delivers is Moxie's https://confer.to

But tbh I just switched to Anthropic, they need all the support they can get. Claude is great for question/answer.

They DoW doesn't care about laws, that's the whole point. Anthropic did not believe the most law breaking administration in history when their drunkard incompetent leader said "lol trust us bro"

> which I will not believe and you should not believe

It seems like you chose to immediately disbelieve it.

> until a trustworthy news outlet publishes the text

If you've found one of these, let me know. I'm still looking...

Is the big donor among us?

Are you saying that everything so far in this administration has been 100% rational?

> one company ends up classed a "supply chain risk" while another agrees the the same terms that led to that

Never discount the possibility of Hegseth being petty and doing the OpenAI deal with the same terms to imply to the world that Anthropic is being unreasonable because another company signed a deal with him.

You're not overanalyzing anything, you're using critical thinking dissecting company communications. Kudos

Does he do employee town halls where they could ask?

You tell me why an employee would believe something convenient to them continuing to receive their paycheck

Imo the more ethical thing is obstructionism. Twitter's takeover showed it's pretty easy to find True Believer sycophants to hire. Better to play the part while secretly finding ways to sabotage.

This. Sam is going to pretend they aren’t going to use it for that because his company is collapsing in losses. He will never audit.

Probably also got assurances about a bailout when OpenAI collapses.

> The DoW probably disagrees with that interpretation

Or perhaps, maybe, just a little maybe, DoW is getting absolutely excited about mass surveillance and kill-bots?

Not that this will matter on any individual level, but I canceled my ChatGPT subscription after this.

I didn't have much of an opinion of Altman before but now I think he's a grifting douche.

Please don’t do this here.

Similar to false dichotomy. "If we won't do it, <other evil guy> will".

I call it race to the moral bottom.

Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNqozQ8uaV8

It doesn’t have to be genuine concern, it may just be his internal narrative.

He allegedly raped his own sister. No charges have been brought against him.

I think your theory might be missing an extremely relevant and timely counterexample?

Oh look! https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-whole-thing-was-scam

The part about money

I did choose to immediately disbelieve it. If a Trump regime official tells me something, and they could plausibly benefit from lying to me about it, I assume until proven otherwise that they're lying. They've earned this reputation through a large number of consequential and later disproven lies; my apologies to Mr. Lewin if he personally is an honest man, although I might encourage him to think about whether the good he's doing in his role is so important that it outweighs the lies he's providing cover for and the gradual erosion of his integrity.

> If you've found one of these, let me know. I'm still looking...

I do not assume, and I would recommend that you do not assume, that there is such a thing as a text of the contract. It's much easier to lie about contents of documents that don't actually exist yet. Then you can craft the text in response to public feedback, writing it down in early March and telling people that it's totally a copy of what was agreed to on February 27.

As a corollary, you should be skeptical of any purported text that is not widely published soon. If there is indeed such a contract, and it says what Altman claims, he will desperately want to ensure that his employees have read a "leak" of the text by Monday morning.

Now that OpenAI is going to be used for mass domestic surveillance you can assume Sam Altman is always in the room.

As I understand it, Sam's cofounder at OpenAI donated $25 million to the Trump 2024 campaign.

As Trump himself likes to say, "Promises made, promises kept."

> it's very hard to see how anyone could look at what just happened

I think what you are missing is their annual comp with two commas in it.

I agree with your assessment, but given the past behaviour of this administration I wouldn't be shocked to discover that the real reason is "petulance".

One explanation is that this is effectively a quid pro quo, given Brockman’s enormous financial support of the current president.

I agree it makes little sense, and I think if all players were rational it never would have played out this way. My understanding is that there are other reasons (i.e., beyond differing red lines) that made the OpenAI deal more palatable, but unfortunately the information shared with me has not been made public so I won't comment on specifics. I know that's unsatisfying, but I hope it serves as some very mild evidence that it's not all a big fat lie.

anthropic has nothing but a contract to enforce what is appropriate usage of their models. there are no safety rails, they disabled their standard safety systems

openai can deploy safety systems of their own making

from the military perspective this is preferable because they just use the tool -- if it works, it works, and if it doesn't, they'll use another one. with the anthropic model the military needs a legal opinion before they can use the tool, or they might misuse it by accident

this is also preferable if you think the government is untrustworthy. an untrustworthy government may not obey the contract, but they will have a hard time subverting safety systems that openai builds or trains into the model

I agree with what you're saying, but given the egos involved in the current admin there's a practical interpretation:

1. Department of War broadly uses Anthropic for general purposes

2. Minority interests in the Department of War would like to apply it to mass surveillance and/or autonomous weapons

3. Anthropic disagrees and it escalates

4. Anthropic goes public criticizing the whole Department of War

5. Trump sees a political reason to make an example of Anthropic and bans them

6. The entirety of the Department of War now has no AI for anything

7. Department of War makes agreement with another organization

If there was only a minority interest at the department of war to develop mass surveillance / autonomous weapons or it was seen as an unproven use case / unknown value compared to the more proven value from the rest of their organizational use of it, it would make sense that they'd be 1) in practice willing to agree to compromise on this, 2) now unable to do so with Anthropic in specific because of the political kerfuffle.

I imagine they'd rather not compromise, but if none of the AI companies are going to offer them it then there's only so much you can do as a short term strategy.

And Sam is a habitual liar.

Jeremy Lewin's tweet referenced that "all lawful use" is the particular term that seems to be a particular sticking point.

While I don't live in the US, I could imagine the US government arguing that third party doctrine[0] means that aggregation and bulk-analysis of say; phone record metadata is "lawful use" in that it isn't /technically/ unlawful, although it would be unethical.

Another avenue might also be purchasing data from ad brokers for mass-analysis with LLMs which was written about in Byron Tau's Means of Control[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

[1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706321/means-of-con...

> you'll never find altman saying anything like "our agreement specifically says chatgpt will never be used for fully autonomous weapons"

To be fair, Anthropic didn't say that either. Merely that autonomous weapons without a HITL aren't currently within Claude's capabilities; it isn't a moral stance so much as a pragmatic one. (The domestic surveillance point, on the other hand, is an ethical stance.)

It's comforting to know that some of the brightest minds of our generation are going to work at OpenAI, then quitting a few months later horrified, only to post a short mysterious tweet warning everyone of the dangers ahead. So much for alignment and serving humanity.

Seems Anthropic did not understand the questions they were asked. From the WaPo:

>A defense official said the Pentagon’s technology chief whittled the debate down to a life-and-death nuclear scenario at a meeting last month: If an intercontinental ballistic missile was launched at the United States, could the military use Anthropic’s Claude AI system to help shoot it down?

>It’s the kind of situation where technological might and speed could be critical to detection and counterstrike, with the time to make a decision measured in minutes and seconds. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei’s answer rankled the Pentagon, according to the official, who characterized the CEO’s reply as: You could call us and we’d work it out.

>An Anthropic spokesperson denied Amodei gave that response, calling the account “patently false,” and saying the company has agreed to allow Claude to be used for missile defense. But officials have cited this and another incident involving Claude’s use in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as flashpoints in a spiraling standoff between the company and the Pentagon in recent days. The meeting was previously reported by Semafor.

I have a hunch that Anthropic interpreted this question to be on the dimension of authority, when the Pentagon was very likely asking about capability, and they then followed up to clarify that for missile defense they would, I guess, allow an exception. I get the (at times overwhelming) skepticism that people have about these tools and this administration but this is not a reasonable position to hold, even if Anthropic held it accidentally because they initially misunderstood what they were being asked.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260227182412/https://www.washi...

> The difference is that Anthropic wanted to reserve the right to judge when the red lines are crossed, while OpenAI will defer to the DoD and its policies for that.

You learned this where?

Why do you choose to call it the "DoW"? Its official name is the Department of Defense, it was titled that way by Congress and only Congress can change it. What is your motivation in using a term that the current administration has started to use? Do you also use the Gulf of America when referrring to the body of water that defines the southern edge of the USA?

>Human responsibility is not the same as human decision making.

this is going to end up being interpreted as "well, the president signed off on the operation. see - there's a human in the loop!" - is it?

If your starting position is already that Sam Altman lies about everything that doesn't fit your preconceived positions, that doesn't seem like a very useful meaningful position to update.

This, for that check theyll be building the autonomous robots themselves, saying "theyre food delivery robots, thats not a gun that a drink dispenser!"

It’s obvious retaliation, and will be struck down by the courts.

Yep, theoretically it could just be oligarchic corruption and not institutional insanity at the highest levels of the government. What a reassuring relief it would be to believe that.

OpenAI should not be agreeing to any contract with DOD under these circumstances of Anthropic being falsely labeled a supply chain risk.

Source?

Well at least we know now that the department of war is less capable than before. All because the big man shit his pants while Anthropic was in view.

He literally just got community noted for lying. So much for a non-profit CEO or whatever it is now.

The term lawful use is a joke to the current administration when they go after senators for sedition when reminding government employees to not carry out unlawful orders. It’s all so twisted.

Your ballooned unvested equity package is preventing you from seeing the difference between “our offering/deal is better” and “designated supply chain risk and threatening all companies who do business with the government to stop using Anthropic or will be similarly dropped” (which is well past what the designation limits). It’s easier being honest.

Friend, this reads like that situation where your paycheck prevents you from seeing clearly - I forget the exact quote. Sam doesn't play a straight game and neither does the administration - there are more than a few examples.

The supply chain risk stuff is bogus. Anthropic is a great, trustworthy company, and no enemy of America. I genuinely root for Anthropic, because its success benefits consumers and all the charities that Anthropic employees have pledged equity toward.

Whether Anthropic’s clear mistreatment means that all other companies should refrain from doing business with the US government isn’t as clear to me. I can see arguments on both sides and I acknowledge it’s probably impossible to eliminate all possible bias within myself.

One thing I hope we can agree on is that it would be good if the contract (or its relevant portions) is made public so that people can judge for themselves, without having to speculate about who’s being honest and who’s lying.

Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”

Never try to convince someone of something they're paid to not believe.

They specifically said they never agreed to let the DoD use anthropic for fully autonomous weapons. They said "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 [...] Fully autonomous weapons"

Their rational was pragmatic. But they specifically said that they didn't agree to let the DoD create fully automatic weapons using their technology. I'll bet 10:1 you won't ever hear Sam Altman say that. He doesn't even imply it today.

And they will continue to work for Google / Meta et al to use novel AI techniques to sell us more and better ads, only to quit a few years later to do more soul searching where everything went wrong /s

"It’s the kind of situation where technological might and speed could be critical to detection and counterstrike"

Missile detection and decision to make a (nuclear) counterstrike are 2 different things to me but apparently the department of war wants both, so it seems not "just" about missile detection.

The only more fitting name currently would be Department of Peace

Don't you think it is more to-the-point to call it what it is and what the people running it with, i'll bet everything i have, absolute immunity, are doing and intend to do with it?

It's like the one honest thing they've done

Exactly this! Just like the Gulf of Mexico is still called the Gulf of Mexico, if we just ignore his ramblings and continue calling the department of defense, we undermine his whole point. If we fall for all their crap and just accept it, then we loose in the end. Any resistance to a Fascist government is good resistance. Anything that makes their life's a little shittier is good. Better that they go around having tantrums about how they renamed it but no one is paying attention.

It's the term used by Sam Altman in the announcement. Maybe aim your anger there, to someone knowingly helping them in their attempt to turn the department into one of aggression.

The president changed it back to its original name with an executive order. The administration did not just start spontaneously using it.

If someone is calling themselves a warmonger, they should be called a warmonger.

That's precisely how I read it. They're weasel words delivered by the master weasel himself.

The company started with a lie, it's in the name.

Are you serious? This is the kind of thing you'd ask a clarifying question on and get information back immediately. Further, the huge overreaction from Hegseth shows this is a fundamental disagreement.

I’m reading between the lines of the involved parties’ various statements, but there’s also this: https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230

The flip side of "Hegseth is an unqualified drunk", a position which I've always held and still maintain, is that he very well might crash out over nothing instead of asking clarifying questions or suggesting obvious compromises. This is the same guy who recalled the entire general staff to yell at them about the warrior mindset. Not an excuse for any of this, but I do think the precise nature of the badness matters.

> I’m reading between the lines of the involved parties’ various statements

You should have said this.

> https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230

Thank you.

It was pretty clear from Anthropic’s and Hegseth’s statements that they didn’t disagree on the two exclusions, but on who would be the arbiter on those. And Sam’s wording all but confirms that OpenAI’s agreement defers to DoD policies and laws (which a defense contract cannot prescribe), and effectively only pays lip service to the two exclusions.

From the referenced tweet;

who decides these weighty questions? Approach (1), accepted by OAI, references laws and thus appropriately vests those questions in our democratic system. Approach (2) unacceptably vests those questions in a single unaccountable CEO who would usurp sovereign control of our most sensitive systems.

Amodei is the type of person who thinks he can tell the US government what they can and can’t do.

And the US government should have precisely none of that, regardless of whether they’re red or blue.

> It was pretty clear from Anthropic’s and Hegseth’s statements that they didn’t disagree on the two exclusions, but on who would be the arbiter on those.

No. Altman said human responsibility. Anthropic said human in the loop.

> And Sam’s wording all but confirms that OpenAI’s agreement defers to DoD policies and laws (which a defense contract cannot prescribe), and effectively only pays lip service to the two exclusions.

All but confirmed was not confirmed.

And that’s where the authoritarian in you is shining through.

You see, Obama droned more combatants than anyone else before or after him but always followed a legal paper trail and following the book (except perhaps in some cases, search for Anwar al-Awlaki).

One can argue whether the rules and laws (secret courts, proceedings, asymmetries in court processes that severely compress civil liberties… to the point they might violate other constitutional rights) are legitimate, but he operated within the limits of the law.

You folks just blurt “me ne frego” like a random Mussolini and think you’re being patriotic.

SMH

> Amodei is the type of person who thinks he can tell the US government what they can and can’t do.

> And the US government should have precisely none of that, regardless of whether they’re red or blue.

This is a pretty hot take. "You can't break the law and kill people or do mass surveillance with our technology." fuck that, the government should break whatever laws and kill whoever they please

I hope you A: aren't a U.S. citizen, and B: don't vote.

If I'm selling widgets to the government and come to find out they are using those widgets unconstitutionally and to violate my neighbors rights you can be damn sure I'm going to stop selling the gov my widgets. Amodei said that Anthropic was willing to step away if they and the government couldn't come to terms, and instead of the government acting like adults and letting them they decided to double down on being the dumbest people in the room and act like toddlers and throw a massive fit about the whole thing.

I don’t understand your first comment. At that point, Altman’s tweet didn’t exist yet, and is immaterial to the reading of Anthropic’s and Hegseth’s statements.

To your second comment, it was clear enough to me to be the most plausible reading of the situation by far.

We state what we think the situation is all the time, without explicitly writing “I think the situation is…”.