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Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

anthropic.com

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Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#131

Post by machomaster »

remarkEon wrote: post #107
freakynit wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DoD/DoW can't strong-arm these companies into unreasonable demands if they present a united front... and that's exactly why collective action (or even unionization) matters. If the government really wants to, it could try building its "Skynet" on open-source Chinese models.. which would be deeply ironic.

So your position is that the United States doesn't get to have it's own Skynet, because Skynet is bad, and that if it really wants to it should fork the Chinese Skynet so that it can have a Skynet if it wants it so much. Do you see the problem here. Genuinely don't think we would've won WWII if these people were running things back then.

Without English and German scientists and engineers, the United States would not have had a first nuclear weapon or the first successful rocket to land on the moon.

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#133

Post by dmix »

kyle-rb wrote: post #120
dmix wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just admirable it’s the obvious position to take and any alternative is head scratching. It’s clear that this is mostly a glorified loyalty test over a practical ask by the administration. Strangely reminiscent of Soviet or Chinese policies where being agreeable to authority was more important than providing value to the state.

If it's a loyalty test then you'd think the DoD would be willing to let them "fail" and simply drop the contract, but instead they're threatening to label Anthropic a supply chain risk. If we're going by Occam's razor: it's Friday so Pete probably started drinking ~10:30-11am.

This administration has repeatedly shown it will try to bully or take an outrageous negotiating position just to gain featly. Whether they get anything or whether the dispute is actually what the label says should always be treated with skepticism, especially these days with social media information wars. That’s the benefit of realpolitik when you’re a superpower, you often don’t actually need anything, you can just make an example of people to keep the flock in check.

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#134

Post by ParentiSoundSys »

Rapzid wrote: post #113
educasean wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All corporations are to an extent. It’s a question of magnitude, not absolutes. You, too, are driven by money. Yet I’m certain you maintain a set of principles and values. Let’s keep the discussion productive yeah?

Sure, where is your productive output? Cause that's drivel. Anthropic kept referring to Hegseth as "Secretary of War" and the DoD as "Department of War". Which is horseshit. This whole thing is Anthropic flailing.

Even as someone pretty staunchly opposed to this stupid "Gulf of America" Jahr Null bullshit from the Trump administration, I actually think the new labels are more honest about these institutions and their intended purpose.

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#135

Post by tokyobreakfast »

silisili wrote: post #34

Not to intentionally sidetrack the conversation, but when did we start calling service members 'warfighters?' I've been seeing it a lot lately, but don't remember ever really seeing it before. Do members of the military prefer this title?

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4339

The reason that no one involved in the game's development objected to the word "warfighter" is that the U.S. Defense Department has used "warfighter" as a standard term for military personnel since the late 1980s or early 1990s: Thus Earl L. Wiener et al., Eds. Human Factors in Aviation, 1988

Warfighter is literally the Department of War's Amazonian or Googler or any other cringe term you'd see in company PR or recruiting material.

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#136

Post by machomaster »

maxgashkov wrote: post #81
solenoid0937 wrote: post #50

The people that need to see this are the VPs and execs at Apple, Meta, Google, OAI so they can perhaps reflect on what it looks like to be a good & principled person as opposed to just a successful person.

None of them are 'good'. Execs at Anthropic just perceive the long-term damage from a potential Snowden-level leak showing how their model directed a drone strike against a bunch of civilians higher than short-term loss of revenue from the DoD contracts.

I understand why you are cynical, but you should read more about the people who founded Anthropic, and specifically why they left OpenAI.

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#137

Post by bawolff »

I'm of the opinion that anthropic's "moral" stances are bullshit, not particularly coherent when you dig deep and more about branding. If so, this is grade A marketing.

They want to present themselves as moral. What better endorsement than by being rejected by the US military under Trump? You get the people who hate trump and the people who hate the military in one swoop.

At the same time its kind of a non story. Anrhropic says it doesn't want its products used in certain ways, US military says fine, you can't be part of the project where we are going to make the AI do those things. Isn't that a win for both sides ? What's the problem?

It would be like someone part of a boycott movement being surprised the company they are boycotting doesn't want to hire them.

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#138

Post by ParentiSoundSys »

jmount wrote: post #104
lebovic wrote: post #94

I used to work at Anthropic, and I wrote a comment on a thread earlier this week about Anthropic's first response and the RSP update [1][2]. I think many people on HN have a cynical reaction to Anthropic's actions due to of their own lived experiences with tech companies. Sometimes, that holds: my part of the company looked like Meta or Stripe, and it's hard not to regress to the mean as you scale. But not every patt…

So many tech companies have the "high values" screed that it really just seems like a standard step in the money plan.

Practically the entire tech industry, including many of the higher ups currently camping out on the right, used to be firmly in a sort of centrist-with-social-justice-characteristics camp. Then many of those same people enthusiastically stood with Trump at his inauguration. It's completely reasonable that people have their doubts now.

It's also completely reasonable to expect that if Anthropic is the real deal and opposed to where the current agenda setters want to take things, they'll be destroyed for it.

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#139

Post by Rapzid »

solenoid0937 wrote: post #130
Rapzid wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, where is your productive output? Cause that's drivel. Anthropic kept referring to Hegseth as "Secretary of War" and the DoD as "Department of War". Which is horseshit. This whole thing is Anthropic flailing.

Come on. That is because this is a negotiation between Anthropic and the DoD and they understandably don't want to burn bridges. Do you just expect Anthropic to totally blow up all bridges to the government? What do you actually want them to do? Reading your comment history I'm not sure they could do anything to satisfy you.

I'm not the one claiming they have principles so.. No? I expect them to do whatever they think they need to at any given moment to enrich themselves.

Their "moat" is nothing more than momentum at this point. They are AOL on an accelerated timeline.

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#140

Post by fladrif »

arjie wrote: post #115
lebovic wrote: post #94

I used to work at Anthropic, and I wrote a comment on a thread earlier this week about Anthropic's first response and the RSP update [1][2]. I think many people on HN have a cynical reaction to Anthropic's actions due to of their own lived experiences with tech companies. Sometimes, that holds: my part of the company looked like Meta or Stripe, and it's hard not to regress to the mean as you scale. But not every patt…

This is a pretty classic mistake most people who are in high-profile companies make. They think that some degree of appealing to people who were their erstwhile opponents will win them allies. But modern popular ethics are the Grim Trigger and the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics. You cannot pass the purity test. One might even speculate that passing the purity test wouldn't do anything to get you acceptance. Pers…

> political alignment I favour was as Big Tent as Donald Trump's administration is

I'm not sure how accurate this sentiment is. Your desire is to embrace your enemy without resolving the differences, and get what you want. It's not clear here if you're advocating compromise and negotiation, or just embracing for the sake of embracing while just doing what you wanted all along.

And evaluating Trump's actions against this sentiment doesn't seem to be the negotiation and compromise interpretation. Given the situation with tariffs and ICE enforcement, there is no indication of negotiation or compromise other than complete fealty/domination.

So as grandiose and noble your sentiment is, Donald Trump is hardly the epitome of it as you seem to suggest.

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