Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 303 posts

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#161

Post by nkrisc »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #142
nkrisc wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step up, throw down some numbers and sources.

Let's do a thought exercise on your loaded question, considering government waste and corruption has been thoroughly covered by journalists since the invention of the free press and are a Google search away for you. If I don't post sources, then you just accept government corruption doesn't exist, simply because nobody Googled for you? If I do post sources, then what? Do you just suddenly change your mind and accept…

> If I do post sources, then what? Do you just suddenly change your mind and accept that stuff documented by the press it does exist?

Then I can read them, find similar sources, judge how much I trust them, and get a better idea of how much corruption and waste you are claiming exists.

While I am sure corruption and waste occurs, if it’s such a serious problem, there ought to be some evidence of it, direct or indirect.

What’s the alternative, I just accept your claim as fact? Or I “google” it until.. what? I find sources that support your claims?

Why should I believe you?

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#162

Post by vannevar »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #142
nkrisc wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step up, throw down some numbers and sources.

Let's do a thought exercise on your loaded question, considering government waste and corruption has been thoroughly covered by journalists since the invention of the free press and are a Google search away for you. If I don't post sources, then you just accept government corruption doesn't exist, simply because nobody Googled for you? If I do post sources, then what? Do you just suddenly change your mind and accept…

I think the point is that while people have indeed groused about government waste since the dawn of government, when people actually study it, they find that the rate of fraud and waste is comparable to the private sector. See, e.g., https://www.epsu.org/sites/default/files/article/files/EN_EF... for web.pdf and https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844....

It's not that there's any more fraud or waste in government than in private business, it's that it's less tolerated. I think the main reason for this misperception is that in the private sector, people pay a la carte for particular goods and services, while in the public sector, people pay for shared infrastructure even if they rarely use it themselves. So they are left with the feeling that they aren't getting their money's worth. But of course everyone benefits economically and socially from a stable and prosperous society, even if they can't put their finger on discrete services they use. The reality is that it simply costs a lot of money to maintain a large, modern society. Indeed, it actually costs more than we are paying here in the US, as evidenced by a growing debt that has been a bipartisan creation.

Believing in the mantra of waste, fraud and abuse is comforting, because it implies we could be getting all the same benefits for less money. But there really is no such thing as a free lunch.

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#164

Post by jmsdnns »

ungreased0675 wrote: post #30

Judging from how the DoD currently buys software, lots of money will be spent, many headlines will be written, awards will be handed out, and zero software will make it on to user workstations. End users will continue to use Excel for everything.

Where did TCP/IP come from? It's on every computer.

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#165

Post by jmsdnns »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #94

Despite what every AI exec will say publicly, I'm pretty sure they're salivating at the prospect of war/defense related applications of AI. There's just too much money floating around in the military industrial complex for them to ignore. This is doubly so if the "business" part of your AI company is about as solid as a fart in the wind.

If you say "china" to any of them, you'll see how very true your words are.

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#166

Post by Ylpertnodi »

ZeroTalent wrote: post #116
ringeryless wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and LLMs are the opposite of automation, the opposite of a human intention amplifier like CAD CAM, or chef puppet ansible terraform whatever, aka non deterministic

LLMs enable amplified automation. Example: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.13.25329541v... At my company, we use LLMs for financial analysis that previously required hundreds of employees, and that work would have been inferior anyway because it's so hard to make so many people to communicate well to identify correlations.

"[H]undreds of employees". All of them extremely well-trained, i presume.

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#167

Post by TZubiri »

0_____0 wrote: post #65
TZubiri wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all software is made public and used in workstations, especially not in military

Would you mind elaborating a bit?

For example: OAI could offer api access and consulting for the DoD to build a network of honeypot fake personas for flooding or infiltrating recruiting operations of the enemy.

That would be back end only, not all software has a gui.

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#168

Post by sorcerer-mar »

transcriptase wrote: post #145
zimpenfish wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "waste and corruption" Well, "waste" is often defined by conservatives as "anything spent on the poors and/or not given to the rich" - by that standard, yeah, there's a lot of "waste" in the US government.

What do you call it when the government pays for tens of thousands of annual licenses for software and only a few hundred are ever activated?

Oh oh I know this one!

A rounding error!

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#169

Post by NHQ »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #46
ungreased0675 wrote: post #30

Judging from how the DoD currently buys software, lots of money will be spent, many headlines will be written, awards will be handed out, and zero software will make it on to user workstations. End users will continue to use Excel for everything.

200 mil is chump change for them, if prototype turned to be good then good for them but if its not then they are not worry

That 200 Million is chump change only to people who think like chumps. In reality it is total waste, unproductive taxation that doubles as a counter balance to inflation, so doubly wasteful.

Chump together all the 100s of millions in waste year over year; the change to your chumping is not good change, its inflation and general impoverishment. Every penny of that 200 is a note in the bank of inflation and degradation.

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#170

Post by sorcerer-mar »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #156
sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has there been value delivered proportional to the money spent at reasonable market rates? If not, then money was wasted via incompetence, pocketed via corruption, or both. I'm going to unpack this a little. The second sentence does not actually follow from the question asked by the first sentence. "Value" is a loaded term as used here. Not all value is economic. Most value has a degree of judgement involved. I may…

>"Value" is a loaded term as used here. Not all value is economic. Most value has a degree of judgement involved. No it isn't. Most value CAN be objectively measured. I'll give you examples. US outspends all the other developed nations at healthcare, education, childcare and yet is behind them all in actual results with poor education, high infant motility and lower life expectancy. That's what waste and corruption d…

> That's what waste and corruption does.

Assuming the goal of said systems are the same between countries: but they're not.

In the US, the goal of the healthcare system is to produce profit. So the simpler explanation is that the healthcare system consumes more money and produces less healthcare because it spends more to produce profit.

Post reply on HN