We Will Not Be Divided • Hacker News Board

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#191

Post by moogly » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 2:31 AM UTC

We have international laws and rules of war. We have weapon treaties (well, some of them are expiring). Sure, not everyone is signatory, or even follow the conventions they have ratified, but at least having these things in place makes it even remotely possible to categorize and document violations and start processes towards rulebreakers and antihumanist actions.

So I looked into what they cooked up in 2023, plus which countries signed it (scroll down to a link to the actual text). It's an extraordinarily pathetic text. Insulting even.

https://www.state.gov/bureau-of-arms-control-deterrence-and-...

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#192

Post by dmix » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 2:31 AM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #169

dmix wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU and UK is a long way from attracting top AI talent purely from opportunity and monetary terms. Not to mention UK is arguably further down the mass surveillance pipeline than the US. They’ve always had more aggressive domestic intelligence surveillance laws which was made clear during the Snowden years, they’ve had flock style cameras forever, and they have an anti encryption law pitched seemingly yearly. I’d i…

The EU and UK is a long way from attracting top AI talent purely from opportunity and monetary terms. Which is why people are talking about this -- it's about ideology now. You may personally be motivated solely by money. Not everybody is you.

I’m not an AI engineer but it’s not hard to imagine why some bright talent would want to work at the most exciting AI companies in the US while also making 3-10x what they’d make in Europe.

Ideology is easy to throw around for internet comments but working on the cutting edge stuff next to the brightest minds in the space will always be a major personal draw. Just look at the Manhattan project, I doubt the primary draw for all of those academics was getting to work on a bomb. It was the science, huge funding, and interpersonal company.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#193

Post by kopirgan » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 2:31 AM UTC

We will not be divided! United in obeying only orders from woke governments, be it on gender ideology, "misinformation", "fact checking" or takedowns, cancellations, blackouts and bans.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#194

Post by renewiltord » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 2:31 AM UTC

medi8r wrote: post #98

renewiltord wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yeah it would need to be a union run by it's members. Maybe with a constitution. (Please edit comment to remove names incase they want to remove from OP)

The other unions are also run by their members. And they had a constitution. It's just the truth that most people who join a union are trying to kick out minorities. And when the minorities band together and the majority bands together one of these bands is bigger than the other.

And people like to flag kill the truth but it was a union who got the Koreans deported and it was a union that made it so the Chinese couldn't get citizenship. These are facts and the guys who would be their victims haven't forgotten it. Obviously the majority would like to hide this inconvenient truth using the tool this site offers to do that, but it doesn't change the truth, and these people know it.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#195

Post by david_shaw » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 2:32 AM UTC

I'd prefer to see board (or executive) level signatories over lay employees -- the people who can enforce enterprise policy rather than just voice their opinions -- but this is encouraging to see nonetheless.

I can't help but notice that Grok/X is not part of this initiative, though. I realize that frontier models are really coming from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, but it feels like someone is going to give in to these demands.

It's incredible how quickly we've devolved into full-blown sci-fi dystopia.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#196

Post by dataflow » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 2:33 AM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #150

Meekro wrote: post #123

I've gathered that the dispute is over Anthropic's two red lines: mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Is there any information (or rumors even) about what the specific request was? I can't believe the government would be escalating this hard over "we might want to do autonomous weapons in the vague, distant future" without a concrete, immediate request that Anthropic was denying. Even if there was a desir…

My understanding is that it’s about the contract allowing Anthropic to refuse service when they deem a red line has been crossed. Hegseth and friends probably don’t want any discussions to even start, about whether a red line may be in the process of being crossed, and having to answer to that. They don’t want the legality or ethicality of any operation to be under Anthropic’s purview at all.

> My understanding is that it’s about

What is "it" in your comment?

The refusal to sign a contract with Anthropic, or their designation as a supply chain risk?

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#197

Post by ripped_britches » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 2:33 AM UTC

No surprise to have not heard anything from xAI

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#198

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 2:34 AM UTC

bottlepalm wrote: post #140

We all knew AI had the potential to be extremely powerful, and we all perused it anyways. What did we think would happen? The government/military always takes control of the most powerful/dangerous systems. If you work for a defense contractor or under ITAR then you already know this. The right way to deal with this is political - corporate campaign contributions and lobbying. You're not going to be able to fight the…

[deleted]

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#199

Post by timr » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 2:34 AM UTC

inkysigma wrote: post #181

timr wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how public policy is being "forced" on anyone here? It seems like the system is working as intended: government wants to do X; company A says "I won't allow my product to be used for X"; government refuses to do business with company A. One side thinks the government should be allowed to dictate terms to a private supplier, the other side thinks the private supplier should be allowed to dictate terms to t…

I think the bigger insanity here is the labeling of a supply chain risk. It prohibits DoD agencies and contractors from using Anthropic services. It'd be one thing if the DoD simply didn't use Anthropic. It's another when it actively attempts to isolate Anthropic for political reasons.

> It prohibits DoD agencies and contractors from using Anthropic services. It'd be one thing if the DoD simply didn't use Anthropic.

This is literally the mechanism by which the DoD does what you're suggesting.

Generally speaking, the DoD has to do procurement via competitive bidding. They can't just arbitrarily exclude vendors from a bid, and playing a game of "mother may I use Anthropic?" for every potential government contract is hugely inefficient (and possibly illegal). So they have a pre-defined mechanism to exclude vendors for pre-defined reasons.

Everyone is fixated on the name of the rule (and to be fair: the administration is emphasizing that name for irritating rhetorical reasons), but if they called it the "DoD vendor exclusion list", it would be more accurate.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#200

Post by jefftk » Sat, Feb 28, 2026, 2:34 AM UTC

txrx0000 wrote: post #171

jefftk wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "world where millions of AGIs run on millions of gaming PCs, where each AI is aligned with an individual human" would be a world in which people could easily create humanity-ending bioweapons. I would love to live in a less vulnerable world, and am working full time to bring about such a world, but in the meantime what you describe would likely be a disaster.

There are plenty of physical and legal barriers to creating a bioweapon and that's not going to change if everyone becomes smarter with AI. And even if we really somehow end up in a world where everyone has a lab at home and people can easily create viruses, they can also easily create vaccines and anti-virals. The advancements in medicine will outpace bioweapons by a lot because most people are afraid of bioweapons.…

There mostly aren't physical barriers. Unlike nukes, where you need specific materials and equipment that we can try to keep tabs on, bioweapons can be made entirely with materials and equipment that would not be out of place in an academic or commercial lab. The largest limitation is knowledge, and the barriers there are falling quickly.

On your second point, see my response to oceanplexian below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189385