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Where things stand with the Department of War

anthropic.com

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Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#151

Post by AndrewKemendo »

bradleyjg wrote: post #118
asveikau wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No war since has been even close to as unpopular or frankly as salient. Iraq. Spoiler alert, a bunch of the current ones are going to be seen similarly too. Also keep in mind when making comparisons that the Vietnam war was not unpopular with Americans at the beginning, and many people justified it all throughout, using language that will be similar to observers of later wars.

> Iraq Not in same ballpark. There’s no Iraq generation the way there’s a Vietnam one. > Spoiler alert, a bunch of the current ones are going to be seen similarly too. No they won’t. The lack of a draft and mass domestic casualties dramatically changes the picture. Especially on the saliency axis.

There is an Iraq group but we’re just a much smaller group

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#152

Post by [deleted] »

jiggawatts wrote: post #48
ryandrake wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. (spoiler alert) Wasn't this one of the plot points of the Val Kilmer movie Real Genius ? They had to trick the students into creating a weapon by siloing them off from each other and having them build individual but related components? How far…

Reminds me of the story of someone's woman working for a research lab to improve the computer-controlled automatic emergency landings of planes with total power failure. ... or so she was told. She was unknowingly designing glide-bomb avionics.

[deleted]

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#153

Post by genghisjahn »

AnbdgK wrote: post #133
unethical_ban wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the moral hazard of war as it becomes more of a distance sport? That powerful governments can order the razing of cities and assassinate leaders with ease? We need to do it because our enemies are doing it, in any case.

I do not think that anyone but the US and Israel have assassinated leaders in the last 30 years. I also question their autonomous drone advancement. Russia and China did not have the means to help Venezuela and they do not have the means to help Iran.

Russia and other states have demonstrably conducted targeted killings.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#154

Post by hedora »

mrcwinn wrote: post #74

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.

The one where he accuses Trump of retaliating against Anthropic after failing to solicit a bribe?

That should be the headline here. We know Trump personally made $4B last year, and we know he's been using the full power of the US gov't to retaliate against people that don't "support" him.

Come 2029, when there's an opportunity for the corruption trials to start, this sort of behavior needs to be front of the public mind, both at the top, and throughout his network of appointees.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#155

Post by mikeyouse »

janfoeh wrote: post #70
mikeyouse wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does and yes we still can. Not sure how to describe it, but it’s not great!

Then you have my sympathy, because I can absolutely picture myself in your shoes. For what little it may be worth. May we all see better times.

I just realized what this feels like.

When I was living in SF, we had lived in the same apartment for 5 years and then our landlord sold the building. The new owner was doing a condo-conversion and so we got 'evicted' (in reality he paid us a small sum of money to move out since evictions are complex there).

My partner and I were both employed, we were going to be fine (although paying much higher rent) but there was this visceral, "The place that we thought was home is being taken and there's nothing we can do about it" unease in the pit of my stomach that stuck with me for months and months.

This really feels the same as that really unpleasant time.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#156

Post by WatchDog »

hamdingers wrote: post #69
CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #34

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

I continue to be surprised how many people haven't heard term until now, it's been in common use in the US for 20+ years. To me the most Orwellian thing is everyone using the newspeak name for the DoD.

After hearing Palmer Luckey's argument for the name change[0], I tend to think it's good change.

Some of his arguments:

It used to be called the department of war, and it had a better track record with regard to foreign conflict, under that name then it did under the DoD name.

Department of war is a more honest name, department of defense is a somewhat newspeak term, although "Department of Peace" would be worse.

It's harder to seek funding for "war", then it is to seek funding for "defense". If you ask someone, "Do you want to spend money on education or war?", you will get a different answer asking, "Do you want to spend money on education or defense?".

[0] Palmer Luckey talking to Mike Rowe about the name change: https://youtu.be/dejWbn_-gUQ?t=1007

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#157

Post by moron4hire »

reaperducer wrote: post #132
moron4hire wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like these stories are apocryphal. I mean, I can't say for certain that no US DoD research program used subterfuge to trick the performers into working on The Most Racist Bomb. But I can say that in 20 years I've never seen a dearth of people ready, willing, able, and actively participating with full knowledge that they are creating The Fastest Bomb and The Sneakiest Bom and The Biggest Bomb Without Actually G…

I feel like these stories are apocryphal. They're not. But if it makes you feel better to believe that, everyone has their own coping mechanism.

What? I'm not questioning whether the weapons research actually happened. I'm questioning the sincerity of people claiming they didn't know what they were doing. I've seen plenty of weapons programs. They aren't a secret to the people working on them. My point is, the government doesn't need to lie to researchers or even pay them very well to get them to develop weapons because there are plenty of intelligent-enough people willing to do it almost for free.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#159

Post by reaperducer »

moron4hire wrote: post #157
reaperducer wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like these stories are apocryphal. They're not. But if it makes you feel better to believe that, everyone has their own coping mechanism.

What? I'm not questioning whether the weapons research actually happened. I'm questioning the sincerity of people claiming they didn't know what they were doing. I've seen plenty of weapons programs. They aren't a secret to the people working on them . My point is, the government doesn't need to lie to researchers or even pay them very well to get them to develop weapons because there are plenty of intelligent-enough…

If "This doesn't fit into my mental model, so everyone else must be lying" is how you deal with things you didn't personally experience, do what you have to.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#160

Post by jrflowers »

bradleyjg wrote: post #118
asveikau wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No war since has been even close to as unpopular or frankly as salient. Iraq. Spoiler alert, a bunch of the current ones are going to be seen similarly too. Also keep in mind when making comparisons that the Vietnam war was not unpopular with Americans at the beginning, and many people justified it all throughout, using language that will be similar to observers of later wars.

> Iraq Not in same ballpark. There’s no Iraq generation the way there’s a Vietnam one. > Spoiler alert, a bunch of the current ones are going to be seen similarly too. No they won’t. The lack of a draft and mass domestic casualties dramatically changes the picture. Especially on the saliency axis.

The biggest protest in world history was in response to the invasion of Iraq. It’s reasonable to call it unpopular.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_Iraq_War_prot...

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