Where things stand with the Department of War

vldszn

I built a website that shows a timeline of recent events involving Anthropic, OpenAI, and the U.S. government. Posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195085

intrasight

It'll be very interesting to see how this case gets resolved - in court and in the court of public opinion. I believe it's incredibly important and I hope they prevail.

nickvec

Not sure why Dario apologized for the internal memo leak. Seems like an odd thing to backtrack on.

simonw

Raised an eyebrow a little at this sentence: "Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences."

jazzyjackson

DoD still has not meaningfully moved to the DoW moniker, to me it represents the most fascist tendency, to make announcements and presume that’s enough to change the truth on the ground. The legal entity one contracts with is DoD. Going along with “DoW” is signal to me that a party has capitulated to the most absurd form of governance.

hglaser

It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue. When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds. Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic and not moral grounds. To do so, they have to couch it in language clarifying that they would love to support war, actually, except for these two narrow exceptions. And their careful word choice suggests that they are either navigating or expect to navigate significant blowback for asking for two narrow exceptions. My, the world has changed.

abujazar

What's next, bribing Trump with gold bars and donations to "charity"?

mempko

Long time ago I worked for a company that I learned was selling it's software to help target people during the Iraq war. I quit because I cannot support building software that kills people. This is a message to people working for that line of business at Anthropic. You don't have to do it, you can quit. If you are helping this insane administration to conduct war on Iran quit. You don't need to have that kind of blood on your hands. I saw a someone's hypothesis that a generative model was used to help classify buildings to decide what to bomb and that the Girls school was misclassified. If this was an Anthropic model, I can imagine what it feels like being a worker there in that line of business.

6thbit

> Our most important priority right now is making sure that our warfighters and national security experts are not deprived of important tools in the middle of major combat operations. > we had been having productive conversations with the Department of War over the last several days, both about ways we could serve the Department that adhere to our two narrow exceptions, and ways for us to ensure a smooth transition if that is not possible. Why are people leaving openAI when this is Anthropic's stance? Are their two narrow requirements enough to draw the ethical boundary people are comfortable with?

Computer0

"As we wrote on Thursday, we are very proud of the work we have done together with the Department, supporting frontline warfighters with applications such as intelligence analysis, modeling and simulation, operational planning, cyber operations, and more."

CurtHagenlocher

Nothing brings home the Orwellian nature of USA 2026 more for me than the word "warfighter".

zmmmmm

> I apologize for the tone of the post What a world we live in now where private companies are apologising for the "tone" of their speech while official representatives of the government daily express blatant lies and misrepresentations without the slightest fear of consequence. It really is incredibly sad that what was one of the most respected countries in the world has descended to this - an utter mockery of a functioning democracy.

just_once

This is turning into just another reality show. There are no adults anymore.

zb3

Nowhere, because there's no such department..

pinnochio

The OpenAI astroturfers jumped on this one. Their only interest is in trying to spin Anthropic as not meaningfully better to dissuade people from switching, not to get people to drop both companies altogether.

skeledrew

Cringing every time I see the word "warfighter", and disappointed that they're still pushing to keep that contract.

mrcwinn

The internal memo did read as fairly unhinged and political, which is not the message Dario likes to present. I'm glad he addressed this. It was unprofessional and unhelpful - even if Sam Altman is, in fact, a disgusting lunatic.

jghn

Could they please start using the correct name? Department of Defense?

iandanforth

I don't think we won't get AGI if Anthropic were to implode, and frankly, right now, I'd rather have someone say clearly, "They cannot stomach the existence of someone telling them 'No' or adhering to moral principles. Like spoiled children they can't hear the former and are terrified by later because it might expose them to the condemnation they deserve."