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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

#231

Post by abustamam »

esrauch wrote: post #164
malfist wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DoW is newspeak. Thats not it's name.

They do a lot more war than defense don't they?

That may be true but changing the department's name can only be done with an act of congress, which has not been done yet. Thus, the name is still officially and legally Dept of Defense.

Just because a name is more accurate doesn't mean that it's its new name. Otherwise we wouldn't be the United States of America (we are literally not united bc Hawaii and Alaska are not contiguous, and we are figuratively not united because... Well, you know)

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#232

Post by qsera »

gonzalohm wrote: post #215
qsera wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>refuse to let their systems be used for war.. I don't want wars. But tell me, what would you like your country to do when conflicts arise due to want of natural resources? Would you want your country to just give up that resource your people depend on, like may be 50/50? Do you believe it will always be possible to settle on a solution in a peaceful way that works for everyone?

Isn't the point of technology and engineering to find alternatives with the resources that one has?

Yes, but it takes time.

Like we have solar now. People talk about how it saves environment. But I think another similar win would be reduction in dependency on oil, and countries won't have to go to war over oil. But it takes time...

But it seems what technology gives, technology takes away. Because new technologies comes with its own resource requirements. And the cycle looks like it will go on...

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#234

Post by xdennis »

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…

> 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,

In 2007 the US was the sole world hegemon. It could afford to let the smartest people work on ad delivery systems.

In 2026, in certain fields, China has a stronger economy and military. Russia is taking over Europe. India and Brazil are going their own way. China is economically colonizing Africa.

The US can't afford to let it's enemies develop strong AI weapons first because of the naive thinking that Russia/China/others will also have naive thinkers that will demand the same.

---

People were just as naive with respect to Ukraine. They were saying that mines and depleted uranium shells are evil. But when Russia attacked, many changed their minds because they realized you can't kill Russians with grandstanding on noble principle. You kill them with mines and depleted uranium shells.

Hopefully people here will change their minds before a hot war. As the saying goes, America always picks the right solution after trying all the wrong ones.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#235

Post by singron »

randerson wrote: post #88
jmward01 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and even their two exceptions, only one is on moral grounds. They don't want to provide tools for autonomous killing machines because the technology isn't good enough, yet. Once that 'yet' is passed they will be fine supplying that capability. Anthropic is clearly the better company over OpenAI, but that doesn't mean they are good. 'lesser evil' is the correct term here for sure.

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…

It's sort of like the opposite of this idea:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Fisher_(academic)#Preven...

> Fisher [...] suggested implanting the nuclear launch codes in a volunteer. If the President of the United States wanted to activate nuclear weapons, he would be required to kill the volunteer to retrieve the codes.

>> [...] The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being. [...]

>> When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, "My God, that's terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President's judgment. He might never push the button."

> — Roger Fisher, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 1981[10]

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#236

Post by [deleted] »

jltsiren wrote: post #167
tedd4u wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s a “warfighter?” Do they come from the “Gulf of America?” We used to call them servicemen or service members. Emphasizing they served the people. I guess that’s too effeminate for our roided up and ironically hyper-insecure Secretary of Defense.

A new term was needed some decades ago. "man" titles have not been politically correct for a while, "member" sounds awkward and bureaucratic. In some other languages, "soldier" can be used for all military personnel, while English ended up with a more narrow meaning.

[deleted]

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#237

Post by arttaboi »

To state the obvious, I think when corruption and power in government go unchecked, companies eventually end up facing situations like this. It’s almost like making a deal with the devil.

At the beginning, they’re usually doing it for the money — and maybe some level of patriotism. Eventually they find themselves involved in things so ugly that they can’t really stomach it anymore. At the same time, they can’t easily back out either.

Then a new CEO comes in and thinks the previous guy was too soft, "He couldn’t handle it, but I can."

And the cycle continues.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#238

Post by zarzavat »

randerson wrote: post #88
jmward01 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and even their two exceptions, only one is on moral grounds. They don't want to provide tools for autonomous killing machines because the technology isn't good enough, yet. Once that 'yet' is passed they will be fine supplying that capability. Anthropic is clearly the better company over OpenAI, but that doesn't mean they are good. 'lesser evil' is the correct term here for sure.

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…

This is exactly how all other weapons of mass destruction were rationalised.

"If we develop we can save so many lives of our soldiers". It always ends up being used to murder civilians.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#239

Post by rounce »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #66
brookst wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a mistake to conflate “wants to spend money on the most ethical option available” with “ think the most ethical option available is perfect” Why wouldn’t you move your dollars to someplace incrementally better?

There are so many inference providers not working for Department of War. Even Alibaba and sure China has lots of issues but they are not bombing anyone now if that's your first priority. Or else, smaller US / European / Asian companies with pure civilian focus. SOTA open weights models they serve are perfectly suitable for coding and chat. I run a local Qwen3.5-122B-A10B-NVFP4 instance and it writes entire Android ap…

Sorry for the off-topic but what hardware are you running Qwen3.5-122B-A10B-NVFP4 on? Is it physically local or just self-administered? Thanks in advance.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#240

Post by [deleted] »

tedd4u wrote: post #102
6thbit wrote: post #22

> Our most important priority right now is making sure that our warfighters and national security experts are not deprived of important tools in the middle of major combat operations. > we had been having productive conversations with the Department of War over the last several days, both about ways we could serve the Department that adhere to our two narrow exceptions, and ways for us to ensure a smooth transition i…

What’s a “warfighter?” Do they come from the “Gulf of America?” We used to call them servicemen or service members. Emphasizing they served the people. I guess that’s too effeminate for our roided up and ironically hyper-insecure Secretary of Defense.

[deleted]
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