Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’ • Hacker News Board

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

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Post by freakynit » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 6:38 AM UTC

hedora wrote: post #212

freakynit wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a term for such a recurring cycle in which speculative bubbles form, institutions and governments collaborate/collude to sustain them, and when the system finally reaches a breaking point the bubble collapses... leaving the public to absorb the losses while those responsible largely walk away with their pay and bonuses intact?

Usually just "bubble", since it's so common. This one is unusual in that the government started bailing out the AI companies last year. Usually, it waits until the bubble pops, and then starts the bail outs. That's standard operating procedure for Trump though. He did the same thing in 2016-19 with the zero interest rate policy + tax cuts even though the economy was strong. Any macroeconomics book (or NPR station dur…

Thank you for such a good and detailed explanation. Loved reading through it. And I like the new word: "boomcession" (not the effects of it tho).

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

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Post by neya » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 6:45 AM UTC

devinplatt wrote: post #268

neya wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Dario on the other hand seems to have an integrity that's particularly rare in this era. Anthropic actually partnered up with Palantir. They are not the saints you think they are, either. We should stop worshipping people and companies and stop putting them on pedestals. Just because one party is at fault, doesn't mean the other is automatically innocent. These are all for-profit companies at play here. https://inve…

FWIW he gives his ethical reasoning on his website: > Broadly, I am supportive of arming democracies with the tools needed to defeat autocracies in the age of AI—I simply don’t think there is any other way. But we cannot ignore the potential for abuse of these technologies by democratic governments themselves. Democracies normally have safeguards that prevent their military and intelligence apparatus from being turne…

Basically he's asking everyone to trust him that he won't cross the line himself. Whatever argument he makes for democracies applies to him as well, and he's not somehow above it. That's the flaw in his argument.

Brutally honest, to me it just sounds like a very elaborate way to say "trust me, bro"

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

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Post by dev_l1x_be » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 6:48 AM UTC

epicprogrammer wrote: post #122

It's easy to frame this purely as an ethical battle, but there's a massive financial reality here. Training frontier models requires astronomical amounts of capital, and the DOD is one of the few entities with deep enough pockets to fund the next generation of compute. Anthropic turning down this Pentagon contract over safety disagreements is a huge gamble. They are essentially betting that the enterprise market will…

Are you arguing against free market capitalism in favor of fascism? If OpenAI needs billions of taxpayers money to survive then should that project exist? Why?

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

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Post by ithkuil » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 6:49 AM UTC

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #233

throwaway290 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't that for defense during an actual war started by another country? Legit war time measures can be a thing (that's why it's fucked if president can just start a war and then use that as excuse for any war time measures they like)

"Legit war time measures" is not a thing. If Congress declares war on Cuba or Venezuale for example, people who do not support it will not see the measures as "legit". The US has a lot of precedent of bombing/invading other countries at the whim of presidents without actually calling it a war for decades. And for better or worse, it is actually good that it is like this. Otherwise, if Congress declares war on Iran or…

If Congress declared an actual war and if they declared to use war time laws to force a private company to comply with the war effort, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

What happened was different: a private company decided to enforce some terms, as they can do during peace time and they have been bullied in a way that is disgraceful precisely because it didn't happen during war time nor it has been done using the existing laws around that.

What is the purpose of having laws in the first place if we accept that the government can rule by intimidation?

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

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Post by n6hdhf » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 6:53 AM UTC

thisisit wrote: post #186

_heimdall wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd have money on OpenAI hiding behind the "all lawful use" phrasing to claim high levels of protection. He also claimed that they would build rules into the model the DoD would use, preventing misuse. Aka he claims OpenAI will quickly solve alignment and build it right in...I wouldn't hold my breath.

Most likely scenario is that if it does something “unlawful” and found out - claim that “These machines are black boxes and they don’t know what went wrong. They will set up an investigative committee and find out.”

More like they will feed machine bullshit like WMDs exist in Fiji. My gut says so. My mom always believes me. Machine will call it out. Then they want overide. Machine will log it. Then they want an erase log button etc. Institutions and rules didnt fall from the sky. It evolved to damp the damage caused by such behavior.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

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Post by vhiremath4 » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 6:58 AM UTC

solenoid0937 wrote: post #211

DesaiAshu wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "just" a $200m contract, it's the start of a lucrative relationship 1. Stargate seemed to require a dedicated press conference by the President to achieve funding targets. Why risk that level of politicization if it didn't? 2. Greg Brockman donated $25mil to Trump MAGA Super PAC last year. Why risk so much political backlash for a low leverage return of $200m on $25m spent? 3. During WW2, military spend shot…

First, I have to say I loved your thoughtful & detailed comment. You have clearly considered this from the financial side; let me add some color from the perspective of someone working with frontier researchers. > As the "alignment" folks on the AI industry are likely to learn I will push back here. Dario & co are not starry-eyed naive idealists as implied. This is a calculated decision to maximize their goal (safe A…

This is an interesting perspective. What happens if there is a large global war? Do researchers who were previously against working with the DoD end up flipping out of duty? Does the war budget go up? Does the DoD decide to lift any ban on Anthropic for the sake of getting the best model and does Anthropic warm its stance on not working with autonomous weapons systems?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but if the answer is “yes” to at least 1 or 2, then I think the equation flips quite a bit. This is what I’m seeing in the world right now, and it’s disconcerting:

1. Ukraine and Russia have been in a skirmish that has been drawn out much longer than I would guess most people would have guessed. This has created a divide in political allegiance within the United States and Europe.

2. We captured the leader of Venezuela. Cuba is now scared they are next.

3. We just bombed Iran and killed their supreme leader.

4. China and the US are, of course, in a massive economic race for world power supremacy. The tensions have been steadily rising, and they are now feeling the pressure of oil exports from Iran grinding to a halt.

5. The past couple days Macron has been trying to quell tension between Israel and Lebanon.

I really do not hope we are not headed into war. I hope the fact that we all have nukes and rely on each others’ supply chains deters one. But man does it feel like the odds are increasing in favor of one, and man does that seem to throw a wrench in this whole thing with Anthropic vs. OpenAI.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

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Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 6:59 AM UTC

jitl wrote: post #227

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is with the Pentagon directly only. Now they will lose much more because no defense contractor, subcontractor and so on can use them for anything defense related (even if they use the model to invent a new type of screw, if that screw is going to be used in anything military). So yeah, they bet a whole lot on “look at us, we have morals”.

their revenue went up 4 billion in the week since this story started.

[deleted]

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

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Post by gottorf » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 7:00 AM UTC

sixothree wrote: post #255

neya wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The weirdest part is how regular people pick sides and defend their billionaire Someone told me in another comment that it's possibly bot activity. I suspect so too, because in a tech forum like HN, a top voted comment can shift the entire focus/narrative of any given issue. I know there are a lot of mods on here to prevent this sort of thing, but given how good LLMs have gotten, I wonder if we are at a point where…

It's not only single comments, but if you surround people in a sea of opinion, they will definitely start swimming in your direction. Thought, that's probably more important on reddit.

> that's probably more important on reddit.

I don't know if you've noticed, but HN has been full of Reddit-tier comments, most especially around hot-button political topics, for a while now.

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

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Post by jrflowers » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 7:04 AM UTC

ori_b wrote: post #260

don_esteban wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the nsa's spying on everyone change between democratic and republican governments?

Did you vote in the primaries for a candidate that might change it?

I like that I can’t tell if this is some sort of admonition for not voting centrist enough in a primary that didn’t happen or for not voting left enough in a primary that did not happen. It seems like if you’re going to be so bold as to do a callout you might as well say what for (and why you either picked or specifically skipped a primary that did not happen)

Re: Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

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Post by ExoticPearTree » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 7:04 AM UTC

mcmcmc wrote: post #246

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why would they have an objection to that? They sold a product to a customer. They should have no business in how that customer uses their software.

So firearms dealers should be fine with their customers going on mass murder sprees?

Is this a rethoric question?