Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War • Hacker News Board

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#541

Post by kalkin » Fri, Feb 27, 2026, 5:07 AM UTC

helaoban wrote: post #525

tootie wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also downstream of voters who voted in a president who promised to be dictatorial after failing at an attempted insurrection. We need to deprogram like 70M very confused people.

[flagged]

I'm curious for your understanding of why Trump won in 2024. If I'm understanding right, you think it was because American voters were rejecting Maoism ("it was called re-education"), to which you think the previous commenter likely subscribes, and which voters associated with Harris/Walz? But I suspect I'm not getting it quite right, and it would be helpful if you would spell out what you mean, rather than just relying on allusion.

(I myself don't have a clear answer to why Trump won, but I don't think it speaks well to the decision-making of the median voter on their own terms, whatever those were, that Trump's now so unpopular despite governing in pretty much the way he said he would.)

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#542

Post by arduanika » Fri, Feb 27, 2026, 5:11 AM UTC

bahmboo wrote: post #535

neom wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had so much abuse thrown at me on here for saying this very thing over the last few years. I used to be friends with Jack back in the day, before this AI stuff even all kicked off, once you know who people really are inside, it's easy to know how they will act when the going gets rough. I'm glad they are doing the right thing, but I'm not at all surprised, nor should anyone be. Personally I believe they would go…

Not all of us know who Dario, Jared, Sam and Jack are. Some clarification is helpful. That's all, no hidden agenda!

I almost downvoted you, because this is a pretty classic LMGTFY (or now, LMLLMTFY), but on second thought, you're right. The "Dario" is clear, he's the author of TFA, but for other execs, Anthropic's fans on here should spell out their full names. Dropping all these first names feel like "inside baseball" at best, mildly culty at worst, and here outside the walls of Anthropic, we're going to see those names and think of Kushner(??), Altman, and maybe Dorsey, and get confused.

FWIW, I agree strongly w/ lebovic's toplevel take above, that Anthropic's leaders are guided by their values. Many of the responses are roughly saying, "That can't be true, because Anthropic's values aren't my values!" This misses the point completely, and I'm astounded that so many commenters are making such a basic error of mentalization.

For my part, I'm skeptical of a lot of Anthropic's values as I perceive them. I find a lot of the AI mysticism silly or even harmful, and many of my comments on this site reflect that. Also, like any real-world company, Anthropic has values that are, shall we say, compatible with surviving under capitalism -- even permitting them to steal a boatload of IP when they scanned those books!

Nonetheless, I can clearly see that it's a company that tries to stand by what it believes, and in the case of this spat with Dep't of War, I happen to agree with them.

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#543

Post by creatonez » Fri, Feb 27, 2026, 5:31 AM UTC

> Our strong preference is to continue to serve the Department and our warfighters—with our two requested safeguards in place.

It's absolutely disgusting that they would even consider working with the US government after the Gaza genocide started. These are modern day holocaust tabulation machine companies, and this time randomly they are selecting victims using a highly unpredictable black-box algorithm. The proper recourse here is to impeach the current administration, dissolve the companies that were complicit, and send their leadership to the hague for war crimes trials.

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#544

Post by neom » Fri, Feb 27, 2026, 5:32 AM UTC

bahmboo wrote: post #535

neom wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had so much abuse thrown at me on here for saying this very thing over the last few years. I used to be friends with Jack back in the day, before this AI stuff even all kicked off, once you know who people really are inside, it's easy to know how they will act when the going gets rough. I'm glad they are doing the right thing, but I'm not at all surprised, nor should anyone be. Personally I believe they would go…

Not all of us know who Dario, Jared, Sam and Jack are. Some clarification is helpful. That's all, no hidden agenda!

Well I can only speak to Jack Clark. Jack was a reporter who covered my startup and then became my friend. Over the last.. I dunno, 13 year or something, we've had long deep talks about lots of things, pre-ai world: what it takes to build a big business, will QC ever become a thing, universal basic human love, kids, life, family. He is brilliant. The business I worked on that he covered went through a lot of shit that he knew about. We talked about power in business, internal politics, how things actually get built...all that stuff. Then... attention is all you need, bunch of folks grok it, he got interested... got to talking to these folks starting some little research lab to see how NN scales, so joined that lab, first 5/10 or so iirc...to head AI policy. That little lab grew, stuff happened, the next part isn't mine to share but so much as to say: Anthropic was basically born out of the expectation that this moment would come and more...extremely human focused...voices should be at the table, that is Anthropic, that idea, they left their jobs at the aforementioned lab - and started their own startup to make sure a certain tone/voice/idea was always represented. Around the summer 2024, although at this point we didn't discuss any specifics of the work at his "startup", I said to him: what comes next is going to be super hard and I know this is going to sound really stupid, but you're all going to need to be Jesus for real. I'm a Buddhist and it wasn't a literal religious comment about Christianity as a denomination, so much as... the very basics of the stuff the dude Jesus Christ espoused. He knew, they knew, that I suppose, was always the plan? So it was never unexpected to me they would act this way, that is what Anthropic is all about. Here we are.

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#545

Post by mandeepj » Fri, Feb 27, 2026, 5:34 AM UTC

_kst_ wrote: post #507

mandeepj wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, there's no such thing as "Department of War". A department name change is legal/binding only after it's approved by the Senate. Senator Kelly is still calling it DoD (Department of Defense). > Mass domestic surveillance. Since when has DoD started getting involved with the internal affairs of the country? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_De...

The Senate?? Any law changing the name of the Defense Department would have to be passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President (or by 2/3 of both Houses overriding a Presidential veto). The Senate has no such authority on its own.

Right! I meant to write ‘Congress’, but mistakenly wrote Senate.

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#546

Post by neom » Fri, Feb 27, 2026, 5:37 AM UTC

bobsomers wrote: post #513

neom wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had so much abuse thrown at me on here for saying this very thing over the last few years. I used to be friends with Jack back in the day, before this AI stuff even all kicked off, once you know who people really are inside, it's easy to know how they will act when the going gets rough. I'm glad they are doing the right thing, but I'm not at all surprised, nor should anyone be. Personally I believe they would go…

> I used to be friends with Jack back in the day, before this AI stuff even all kicked off, once you know who people really are inside, it's easy to know how they will act when the going gets rough. This sounds quite backwards to me. It's been abundantly clear in today's times that, in fact, you only really know who somebody really is when they're under stress. Most people, it seems, prefer a different facade when th…

I don't know most people, so I can't speak to that. I do know Jack, and I knew how he was under stress long before any of this AI stuff. Jack Clark might very well be the most steady hand in the valley right now to be quite frank.

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#547

Post by klodolph » Fri, Feb 27, 2026, 5:39 AM UTC

bobsomers wrote: post #513

neom wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had so much abuse thrown at me on here for saying this very thing over the last few years. I used to be friends with Jack back in the day, before this AI stuff even all kicked off, once you know who people really are inside, it's easy to know how they will act when the going gets rough. I'm glad they are doing the right thing, but I'm not at all surprised, nor should anyone be. Personally I believe they would go…

> I used to be friends with Jack back in the day, before this AI stuff even all kicked off, once you know who people really are inside, it's easy to know how they will act when the going gets rough. This sounds quite backwards to me. It's been abundantly clear in today's times that, in fact, you only really know who somebody really is when they're under stress. Most people, it seems, prefer a different facade when th…

Hm, I think you kinda know what people are like by seeing what they do when they’re under no stress and feel like they are free from consequences. When they have total power in a situation. The façade drops because it’s not necessary.

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#548

Post by MattDamonSpace » Fri, Feb 27, 2026, 5:39 AM UTC

qaid wrote: post #62

I was reading halfway thru and one line struck a nerve with me: > But today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons. So not today, but the door is open for this after AI systems have gathered enough "training data"? Then I re-read the previous paragraph and realized it's specifically only criticizing > AI-driven domestic mass surveillance And neither denounces partially a…

The sentence prior explicitly says this. There’s no dishonesty here.

“Even fully autonomous weapons (…) may prove critical for our national defense”

FWIW there’s simply no way around this in the end. If your even attempts to create such weapons, the only possible defensive counter is weapons of a similar nature.

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#549

Post by reasonableklout » Fri, Feb 27, 2026, 5:41 AM UTC

RyanShook wrote: post #378

nkoren wrote: post #57

This makes me a very happy Claude Max subscriber. Finally, someone of consequence not kissing the ring. I hope this gives others courage to do the same.

The whole article reads as virtue signaling to me. Anthropic already has large defense contracts. Their models are already being used by the military. There's really no statement here.

How is it virtue signalling when sticking by these principles risks their entire business being destroyed by either being declared a supply chain risk or nationalized?

Re: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

#550

Post by lebovic » Fri, Feb 27, 2026, 5:41 AM UTC

bahmboo wrote: post #535

neom wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had so much abuse thrown at me on here for saying this very thing over the last few years. I used to be friends with Jack back in the day, before this AI stuff even all kicked off, once you know who people really are inside, it's easy to know how they will act when the going gets rough. I'm glad they are doing the right thing, but I'm not at all surprised, nor should anyone be. Personally I believe they would go…

Not all of us know who Dario, Jared, Sam and Jack are. Some clarification is helpful. That's all, no hidden agenda!

Hah, you're right, I meant Dario Amodei, Jared Kaplan, and Sam McCandlish.

They're all cofounders of Anthropic. Dario is the CEO, Jared leads research, and Sam leads infra. Both Jared and Sam were the "responsible scaling officer", meaning they were responsible for Anthropic meeting the obligations of its commitments to building safeguards.

I think neom is referring to Jack Clark, another one of the seven cofounders.