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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

#711

Post by ryandrake »

bdangubic wrote: post #663
pjmlp wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what happened to those 34.7% voters that had better things to do than cast a vote? https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/2024-pre...

The exercised their rights not to vote. The “losing” side always thinks that higher turnout would have led to them “winning” which of course is a cry of a sore loser. The fact remains, 2024 election had the highest voter turnout ever and people have spoken (till the next one when we might get a chance to elect some adults to fix this shit)

When you don't vote, you're really just voting for "whoever happens to win". So I count the non-voters among (R) supporters, or at least as "OK with Trump". Otherwise, they would have voted.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#712

Post by codethief »

danielsamuels wrote: post #563
vldszn wrote: post #559

Under Secretary of War Emil Michael: I want to end all speculation: there is no active DeptofWar negotiation with AnthropicAI https://x.com/uswremichael/status/2029754965778907493?s=46&t...

It's worth reading his recent comments on this whole affair: https://www.a16z.news/p/emil-michaels-holy-cow-moment-with

> But if we don’t trust that process and we’re like, ‘Well, the laws are behind the tech, so I’m going to make a decision that impacts 3 million people in the department and then 350 million people in the country’, you don’t get to do that, if you believe in the system. And if you don’t believe in the system, as imperfect as it is, what do you believe in? You’re taking upon yourself to, kind of, be God. And that’s not something that I want, even though I’m a small government free market person. The government has to have a monopoly on violence to protect the country.

What a weird (and false) dichotomy. If I don't want the government to use AI for fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance, I'm taking upon myself to be God?! Also, "monopoly on violence" never meant unregulated violence.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#713

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

quirk wrote: post #648
CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #34

Nothing brings home the Orwellian nature of USA 2026 more for me than the word "warfighter".

[flagged]

> Also the original commenter does not understand the word "Orwellian"

Seems they understood it well: George Orwell wrote a book named "1984", in which a central plot point was that distortion of language ("Newspeak") causes distortion of thought, which causes distortion of reality. Newspeak is a means of engineering reality.

This is an example of that: by distorting, say, "servicemember" into "warfighter", you distort the reality that people at the DoD are there to serve the people as their primary goal, not "fight wars". This means building bridges, levees, aiding disaster-struck friends overseas, etc.

Even if a war actually needs to be fought, it should not be the goal, and thus the job description. It should be in service of the actual primary goal, which is serving the people.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#714

Post by deburo »

elil17 wrote: post #687
greybcg wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since I was young I was fairly divided on the subject. I've dealt with some highschool students affected by the downed aircraft MH17 and that lead to lots of grief among students. It usually lead to strong anti-war sentiments but some also felt a need to "do" something with it. If no one works on defence systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized, perhaps not this week but in 5 years. Therefore…

> If no one works on defense systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized The reality is that the US government has not historically been engaged in defense. They have been engaged in offense. If you live in the united states and work on "defense," you are working on offense. If even if you are designing something like missile interceptors, they have historically been used primarily to protect US asse…

Perhaps you'd like to know how well interceptor missiles fare today. They are rapidly being made obsolete. Offense is still the best defense.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#716

Post by watwut »

greybcg wrote: post #553
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…

Ever since I was young I was fairly divided on the subject. I've dealt with some highschool students affected by the downed aircraft MH17 and that lead to lots of grief among students. It usually lead to strong anti-war sentiments but some also felt a need to "do" something with it. If no one works on defence systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized, perhaps not this week but in 5 years. Therefore…

> If no one works on defence systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized, perhaps not this week but in 5 years

All the things we have are jeopardized because those systems are actually attack systems and were just used to start a war. We will be lucky if it wont grow into WWIII.

And I just read an article about how those defense systems are used to bomb hospitals with double tap tactic - meaning you bomb rescuers when they come. Literally the first day of that no-defense war, they were used to bomb a school. And before that, they were used to execute fishermen and maybe smugglers with no judicial review. Just to make someone feel manly.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#717

Post by the_af »

qsera wrote: post #638
the_af wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but it takes time. So be it. This doesn't excuse going to war with neighbors because you want to steal their stuff. Learn to live with yours.

Learn? Can you learn to live without eating? Do you know what happens when an economy collapse?

> Can you learn to live without eating?

Would you murder your neighbor to steal their food? Especially if you weren't really starving, just preemptively stealing their supplies?

All this talk of hoarding and taking resources by force used to be the stuff of villains. When did it become normalized?

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#718

Post by micromacrofoot »

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…

When I was a kid just the rumor of "selling out" could kill the popularity of something, now it's often the goal.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#719

Post by the_af »

dotancohen wrote: post #623
the_af wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When war becomes inevitable, we are forced to choose between morality and survival. The kind of modern wars we're discussing now are often not about survival. Often, the initiator of the war wants dominance rather than survival. This completely changes the equation. I do pass judgement on those who would wage war to ensure their dominance and access to resources.

Yes, agreed 100%. Some groups see it as their mission to dominate Eastern Europe, or the entire Middle East, or the entire southern Asian continent. The smaller states in the areas are under constant threat. However in the case of Iran, who openly calls for the destruction of America and is blatantly developing technology that seriously threaten America and other Middle Eastern states, decisive military action to pre…

> Some groups see it as their mission to dominate Eastern Europe, or the entire Middle East, or the entire southern Asian continent.

Agreed that some countries seek to dominate other regions by force or threat, but you and I are not thinking of the same "groups".

> However in the case of Iran, who openly calls for the destruction of America and is blatantly developing technology that seriously threaten America and other Middle Eastern states, decisive military action to prevent the threat is important. Don't watch the bully themself and wait for him to confront you, when he is telling you the whole time his intention to destroy you.

No, Iran poses no real threat to America, and according to Trump last year suffered a 10+ year setback in their nuclear ambitions. Do you think Trump was lying back then, now, or both?

The US is asserting dominance. Even Trump occasionally says so. Iran mostly poses a danger to their own citizens and, arguably, against Israel when conflict flares up in the region, but not to the US.

By the way, the current situation in Iran is heavily influenced by actions by the UK and the US in the region, back in the 50s. So maybe meddling is not the right course of action?

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#720

Post by hmokiguess »

I’m curious to hear from the conspiracists out there what’s silently cooking while all this noise is happening.

There’s so much circular investment and connections that makes you wonder if this is a theatre in some form or another.

Say this were to be the case, what would be the end goal? Genuinely curious.

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