Trump admins censorship is just as bad as Bidens. We need an administration that doesn't abuse the power of the government in the free market
Where things stand with the Department of War
301–310 of 862 posts
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'…
> 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.
The flaw in this logic is maddening
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it frustrating that apparently we just gave up on Trump giving up his tax returns, or putting his businesses into a blind trust. This was a big deal in 2016~2019, but I guess the entire world just decided it wasn't worth it. Now we have a president who doesn't even hide his bribes, and instead starts multiple cryptocurrencies and has a publicly traded company in order to optimize the bribery. Maybe this is thi…
> I find it frustrating that apparently we just gave up on Trump giving up his tax returns, or putting his businesses into a blind trust. This was a big deal in 2016~2019, but I guess the entire world just decided it wasn't worth it. When you give a guy who started a coup the keys to the kingdom, instead of a life-long prison sentence, arguing over what his taxes were a decade ago is... Splitting hairs.
I at least personally think it's a fight worth fighting for.
Well I say that, it's not like I'm doing anything about it outside of complaining on the internet, which is nothing.
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#304> 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.
Warfighter is not a new term and has been used in the military since at least the 1990s and was used by Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump.
Service members are anyone serving in the military.
Warfighter is used to describe combat roles.
If useful to distinguish between the two, warfighter is the correct term.
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#305BTW, this deal went south when Anthropic argued that AI systems should never make kill decisions without meaningful human oversight. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/26/anthropic-pe...
We deserve to know if Claude was involved with targeting the girls’ school that was bombed in the first hours of the attack on Iran. 50-100+ girls are reported to have been killed.
Claude is integrated into Palantir’s Project Maven targeting system. The Pentagon has touted how many more targets they were able to attack with this system (1,000’s).
NY Times: Analysis Suggests School Was Hit Amid U.S. Strikes on Iranian Naval Base
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/world/middleeast/iran-sch...
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
Attitude towards war depends on context. In 2007 "war" meant "Iraq" which was extremely unpopular, pointless, and had an imperialist flavor. Today "war" means Gaza, Iran, and Venezuela, but it also means Ukraine and Chinese aggression, possibly ramping up to an invasion of Taiwan. I suspect Amodei and many Anthropic employees are thinking of the latter.
> Chinese aggression, possibly ramping up to an invasion of Taiwan. It's amusing amidst the US bombing Iran, incarceration the president of Venezuela and his wife after slaughtering everyone who was in the room with him, seizing oil tankers off Cuba, continuing the siege of Gaza and on and on to start getting sanctimonious about China. Taiwan is Kinmen island in Xiamen harbor, so a mainland invasion of Taiwan would b…
> Taiwan does not consider Taiwan and mainland China to be separate countries.
This is false. Both the government of Taiwan, and the people here, obviously consider the two countries separate, and neither have made any overtures challenging the sovereignty of the CPC in nearly fifty years. Not to mention the fact that the last government to do so has been overthrown in the 90s (the overthrow of the KMT settler colonial dictatorship).
You will now vaguely refer to the ROC constitution, but I'll preempt that by saying the constitution makes no claims to PRC territory, full stop. And the constitutional reforms in the 90s explicitly recognize PRC sovereignty over its territory - because Taiwanese people aren't the KMT and want nothing to do with the KMT's now 8 decade old fight.
> I'm not sure what the invasion would be, a country invading itself?
I know exactly what it would be: tens of thousands of PLA dead at the order of Xi in service of his old man's ego, and economic disaster for both countries, followed up by the most riotously uncontrolled occupied territory in the PRC. Taiwanese people in living memory bled to overthrow a military dictatorship, you think they won't fight to do so again?
PRC invasion of Taiwan would be imperialism.
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#307Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
Attitude towards war depends on context. In 2007 "war" meant "Iraq" which was extremely unpopular, pointless, and had an imperialist flavor. Today "war" means Gaza, Iran, and Venezuela, but it also means Ukraine and Chinese aggression, possibly ramping up to an invasion of Taiwan. I suspect Amodei and many Anthropic employees are thinking of the latter.
> Chinese aggression, possibly ramping up to an invasion of Taiwan. It's amusing amidst the US bombing Iran, incarceration the president of Venezuela and his wife after slaughtering everyone who was in the room with him, seizing oil tankers off Cuba, continuing the siege of Gaza and on and on to start getting sanctimonious about China. Taiwan is Kinmen island in Xiamen harbor, so a mainland invasion of Taiwan would b…
>there's absolutely nothing those western powers can do about it
the USA can drop a JDAM down the chimney of any leader who decides to do so
that’s not nothing
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Awkward and bureacratic" is literally the point of naming conventions commonly adopted by democracies. Titles like "president" or "prime minister", departments like "Department of Defense", referring to government employees as "civil servants", etc. are all intentional measures meant to strip away the prestige and egotism associated with positions of authority in an effort to avoid it going to people's heads, and to…
"Service member" is awkward, because it has too many syllables. People won't use it when shorter alternatives are available. And it's bureaucratic because it's unspecific. It doesn't tell anything the service those people are members of, and it doesn't tell what kind of work they do.
> It doesn't tell anything the service those people are members of, and it doesn't tell what kind of work they do.
I'm pretty sure that term could even work for the Pods in some of my Deployments.
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Service member" is awkward, because it has too many syllables. People won't use it when shorter alternatives are available. And it's bureaucratic because it's unspecific. It doesn't tell anything the service those people are members of, and it doesn't tell what kind of work they do.
It has one more syllable than ‘warfighter’, which also doesn’t do any of the things you said.
I'm not sure how much more clear warfighter could be. "One who fights wars."
Service member is extremely vague. "A member of a service."