Where things stand with the Department of War • Hacker News Board

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#201

Post by atmavatar » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 3:12 AM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #98

hglaser wrote: post #18

It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue. When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and 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. Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic an…

The Overton window has not shifted, at least not among rank-and-file tech workers. There was very loud and vocal internal opposition to building and selling weapons[0]. They all lost the argument in the boardrooms because the US government writes very big checks. But I am told they are very much still around. CEOs are bound to sociopathically amoral behavior - not by the law, but by the Pareto-optimal behavior of the…

Complaining loudly about working with the government to build weapons and then continuing to build them isn't the same as people refusing to work for companies that handle weapons contracts. The window has indeed shifted, with tech workers now merely virtue signaling on social media.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#202

Post by felipeerias » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 3:12 AM UTC

simonw wrote: post #12

Raised an eyebrow a little at this sentence: "Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences."

As someone looking at this from outside the US, the whole sequence of events is frankly terrifying.

I fear that frontier AI is going to be nationalised for military purposes, not just in the US but across the globe.

At the same time, I really don’t know what Anthropic were expecting when they described their technology as potentially more dangerous than an atom bomb while agreeing to integrate purpose-built models with Palantir to be deployed in high-security networks for classified military tasks.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#203

Post by Rohunyyy » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 3:12 AM UTC

agigao wrote: post #140

Around 10 years ago, in college, in Calculus class I had a very ambitious classmate, wanted to go to DARPA and work on Robotics. I asked if he was thinking it through solely from technical perspective or considering ethics side as well. Clearly, he didn't understand the question and I directly inquired - what if the code you write or autonomous machine you contribute to used for killing? His response - that's not my…

See in your case with the military you can directly say, hey my code will be used to bomb other people possibly. But in today's times it isn't (I am sure even then) so cut and dry. I worked in AdTech industry (like 60% of the bay area techies). So the ad tech I write gets shown to millions/billions. What about ads influencing elections and then politicians waging wars? Anti-vax ads which influence people and then kill them. Scam ads. Insurance ads and then people not getting cancer meds from the same insurance. Am I responsible for those deaths? I would say Yes.

But what is the option? I feel each of us wants to draw a line based off of our morality but the circumstances don't allow us to stick to it (still gotta pay rent)

We are all on a Titanic the way I see it. It's just the DARPA guy is gonna sink first. Rest of us are just pretending to be Jack trying to be the last ones to go.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#204

Post by EMIRELADERO » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 3:13 AM UTC

agigao wrote: post #140

Around 10 years ago, in college, in Calculus class I had a very ambitious classmate, wanted to go to DARPA and work on Robotics. I asked if he was thinking it through solely from technical perspective or considering ethics side as well. Clearly, he didn't understand the question and I directly inquired - what if the code you write or autonomous machine you contribute to used for killing? His response - that's not my…

My pet theory is that this has been accelerated due to the cultural rejection of the humanities as worthy of study.

Orwell wrote about this: https://orwell.ru/library/articles/science/english/e_scien

> "The fact is that a mere training in one or more of the exact sciences, even combined with very high gifts, is no guarantee of a humane or sceptical outlook."

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#205

Post by FpUser » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 3:14 AM UTC

lp4v4n wrote: post #192

jmyeet wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people (myself included FWIW) warn about the dangers of American imperialism, it's because: 1. As President Eisenhower said in his farewell address in 1961 [1], every dollar spent on the military-industrial complex is a dollar not spent on schools or houses or hospitals or bridges; 2. Every American company with sufficient size eventually becomes a defense contractor. That's really what's happened with the tech…

>1. As President Eisenhower said in his farewell address in 1961 [1], every dollar spent on the military-industrial complex is a dollar not spent on schools or houses or hospitals or bridges; This humanist view unfortunately doesn’t hold anymore in the modern world. Boomers will be happy as long as not a single dollar is spent on housing, so that their own homes can appreciate in value. Republicans would rather burn…

>"Boomers will be happy as long as not a single dollar is spent on housing"

Not sure what boomers you are talking about. I for one am disgusted at what is happening with the things in general and with the housing in particular. I do not want my house to appreciate Ad infinitum. I do not want to have ever growing class of have-not's so that few jerks can own the governments and half of the world.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#206

Post by bfung » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 3:14 AM UTC

I don’t feel that old, but I guess being 45 is ancient in tech.

The Silicon Valley tech jobs we have now has a history rooted in World War 2 and funding of it by the US gov.

https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo?si=gGza5eIv485xEKLS

I’m not saying war is good or anything, but also don't ride a high horse cause none of it would be here w/o WW2.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#207

Post by pinnochio » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 3:14 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #45

mempko wrote: post #21

Long time ago I worked for a company that I learned was selling it's software to help target people during the Iraq war. I quit because I cannot support building software that kills people. This is a message to people working for that line of business at Anthropic. You don't have to do it, you can quit. If you are helping this insane administration to conduct war on Iran quit. You don't need to have that kind of bloo…

I've also quit a job where the products I was working were meant to be deployed to CBP to hunt down immigrants. It's a nice gesture, but it won't stop these companies. They just hired someone else without an ethical backbone, and continued the project like nothing happened. Tech leadership is rotten to the core, and that can't be fixed by individuals making a stand.

I agree it won't fix the problem, but marginal drops in labor supply and skill can still have an impact.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#208

Post by maxlybbert » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 3:14 AM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #59

hglaser wrote: post #18

It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue. When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and 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. Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic an…

I'm a decade older so maybe I missed the memo but I think you'll have a hard time naming tech companies that actually refused to work with the military, which were large enough and important enough to be in danger of selling something to the military (i.e. not Be Inc. or Beenz.com) Clearly, all of the traditional big leagues were lined up to take the Army's money. IBM, Control Data, Cray, SGI, and HP all viewed weapo…

Well, they made a big deal about saying that while they sold their software to the Defense Department, it wasn't actually being used to kill people. Except for well-known military contractors (e.g., Raytheon), who have sold plenty of software specifically to kill people.

I guess there's a reason we saw plenty of articles about software used somewhat defensively -- such as distinguishing whether a particular "bang" was a gunshot, and where it likely came from -- instead of offensively -- such as improvements to targeting software.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#209

Post by Fricken » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 3:15 AM UTC

fwip wrote: post #101

randerson wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically if we had a choice between sending in humans to war or sending in fully autonomous drones that make decisions on par with humans, the moral choice might well be the drones - because it doesn't put our service members at risk. Obviously anyone who has used LLMs know they are not on par with humans. There also needs to be an accountability framework for when software makes the wrong decision. Who gets fi…

I think it's the opposite. The human cost of war is part of what keeps the USA from getting into wars more than it already is - no politician wants a second Vietnam. If war is safe to wage, then it just means we'll do it more and kill more people around the globe.

The troops were told they're headed for Armageddon this go round

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#210

Post by esafak » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 3:15 AM UTC

metalcrow wrote: post #139

hglaser wrote: post #18

It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue. When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and 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. Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic an…

What tech companies were these? I was younger in 2007 but i feel like i would remember if companies were openly refusing to participate in war.

Such protests are commonplace at Google: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-...