Where things stand with the Department of War
anthropic.com541 points by surprisetalk 14 hours ago
541 points by surprisetalk 14 hours ago
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 and not moral grounds. To do so, they have to couch it in language clarifying that they would love to support war, actually, except for these two narrow exceptions. And their careful word choice suggests that they are either navigating or expect to navigate significant blowback for asking for two narrow exceptions.
My, the world has changed.
There's an old German short film called Nicht löschbares Feuer (Inextinguishable Fire, 1969)[1] that I'm fond of. It was a protest film against Napalm and how some companies wouldn't really let their employees know what they were actually working on.
"I am a worker and I work in a vacuum cleaner factory. My wife could use a vacuum cleaner. That's why everyday I pick up a piece. At home I try to assemble the vacuum cleaner. But however I try, it always becomes a sub-machine gun.
...
This vacuum cleaner can become a useful weapon. This sub-machine gun can become a useful household appliance.
What we produce it depends on the workers, students, and engineers."
That last line is still very relevant today.
Fun fact:
DOW Chemical was producing Agent Orange, but was getting a ton of public pushback - so bad it decided to stop production, forcing the Pentagon to look for an alternative supplier.
That supplier? A German privately owned pharmaco called Boehringer-Ingelheim. It's Chairman at the time? Richard von Weizsäcker, future President of Germany.
The production site was in Hamburg, is contaminated for the next thousand years. Boehringer is legally forced to operate pumps to prevent the dioxins in that site from reaching the water table. If those did, it would wipe out the full population.
Oh those righteous Germans.
Disclosure - Boehringer denies the above: https://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com/boehringer-ingelheim-di...
Judge for yourself.
NIH on Exposure, AO and BI: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK230789/
Deeper dive on that BI Hamburg site: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/consumer-health/diox...
This question has been boiling in my brain for quite a long time.
Consider a hypothetical scenario where one spy chinese or russian programmer working in Google or Meta might have siphoned off (copied and uploaded) all the important code (Monorepo) to the Mothership and all of us are now sitting ducks.
I am sure, this question might have crossed your minds. I have no idea. if blueprints for the TPU chip design could get leaked, imagine what might have already happened?
Minor point but this doesn't only have to be russian/chinese spies but rather this can be anybody including say the UK/Israel or even countries which can be considered "allies"
I'd also be surprised if this code isn't already available with the US forces too and sometimes the enemy can be from within too.
That kinda happened already in 2009. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora
Industrial espionage also was publicly disclosed around the plans for the joint strike fighter. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017/july/chinas-...
I’m sure in the classified arena there are a lot more examples.
> 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.
(spoiler alert)
Wasn't this one of the plot points of the Val Kilmer movie Real Genius? They had to trick the students into creating a weapon by siloing them off from each other and having them build individual but related components? How far we've fallen! Nobody has to take ethics during undergrad anymore I guess...
>I’m going to tell you about how I took a job building software to kill people.
>But don’t get distracted by that; I didn’t know at the time.
Caleb Hearth: "Don't Get Distracted" https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted
But he did know he was going to work for the military.
"I’d be joining a contracting company for the Department of Defense."
(But interesting article otherwise)
Yeah but this itself doesn't necessarily have to mean anything, e.g. DARPA sponsored half of the nice things we're using every day.
"DARPA sponsored half of the nice things we're using every day"
That's a very bold claim. (And I am aware of the history of the Internet)
"Half" is obviously an exaggeration but apart from time-sharing operating systems, the Internet, what is now CSAIL and (partially) GPS, they sponsored a ton of open source projects. They used to maintain a catalog[0]. The Web Archive version[1] contains a partial list (e.g. OpenBSD was sponsored only for a few years and is not included there).
[0] https://www.darpa.mil/opencatalog
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140301185004/https://www.darpa...
The bigger issue with your perspective is that you do not realize that the underlying purpose of the things you do not attribute to the military or equate as bad, is still groundwork or “capacity building” deliberately for militaristic purposes and objectives, usually very intentionally so that you don’t realize it. You would likely not support things if you were overly told what the underlying objective was.
Let me put it this way, if you wanted a populace that will willingly enter the military to serve your purposes of world domination through constant warfare, would you promote TV and movies, rather than reading classical literature and philosophy; and fund and press movie houses to make films that put joining the military to go to war and templating being a “warrior” as a positive thing instead of a negative, murderous thing?
Fallen far, or maybe we are just more aware now, but anyway, I don't think that a lecture in ethics at university will fix things. That's:
(A) way too late, and
(B) without a strong character to begin with, this lecture will simply become a "necessary chore" for students, and basically go in one ear, and out the other ear. (Does that saying/phrase translate to English?)
By the time people start their undergrad, if they are not already at least trying to act ethically, that ship has sailed for most. Their upbringing and education did not manage to drill that into them before. I see it as more of an early childhood and parenting topic. If the parents are not leading by example and teaching their children ethics, then the children are often just going with the flow, not swimming against the current to uphold ideals. Why would they, if the other way is easier. I think it is rare, that people adopt ethics that they have not grown up with / raised according to.
So I would advocate ethics as a mandatory subject at school, if not primary school already.
Also in Good Will Hunting, when Will (Matt Damon) delivers a scathing job rejection to the NSA.
1997. The War on Terror has a lot to answer for.
The late 90s were full of media that questioned reality and authority - like X-Files, The Matrix, Dark City, all sorts of websites about conspiracy theories and UFOs, etc. The zeitgeist was full of speculation about hidden truths. The cultural mood was defiant and sardonic. There was rap, rap-rock, Beavis and Butthead, Fight Club, Office Space... One of the most popular pro wrestlers in the world played a character who beat up his boss and gave him the middle finger. Then after 9/11 it kinda seemed like suddenly the TV shows were all about cops and soldiers. Admittedly, my memories might be somewhat deceiving me. But I do feel that the mood suddenly shifted, much more than the actual damage done to America by the attack should have justified.
The late 90s were also a time of Law & Order, The West Wing, Apollo 13, and Saving Private Ryan.
And today is a time of Andor and Succession....
> Then after 9/11 it kinda seemed like suddenly the TV shows were all about cops and soldiers.
There were some rare exceptions like Veep
Gen-X was making the popular new art at the time. It was a strong reflection of the feelings of our generation. We were (maybe still are?) known for not liking authority.
> Gen-X was making the popular new art at the time. It was a strong reflection of the feelings of our generation.
I posted this in a thread about the 90's film 'Hackers'.....
In the 1990's and for us Gen-X'ers, the worst thing you could do was to sell out; to take the mans money instead of keeping your integrity. Calling people and bands 'sell outs' (sometimes without justification!) was to insult them.
With the rise of 'influencers' the opposite appears to be the case; people go out of their way to sell out and are praised for doing so. This is a massive change in the cultural landscape which perhaps many born in the 2000's aren't aware of. (Being aware of this helps give some perspective to Gen-X media and films like Hackers).
BTW: Remember the 'product scene' in the film Waynes World?
Reality Bites captures the zeitgeist well.
I think the money craze that came with dot.com, War on Terror spending, housing bubble, really flipped people into money at all costs.
As Gen-Xer I fully agree, I don't get the way things are with obedience, the rediculous situation that American families can lose their kids by having them playing alone in the garden, how everyone sells out for money (Punk would not happen today), the always smile and say no negatives at work being rediculous false (this one really drives me crazy),....
And yet Gen X is the demographic that fell hardest for Trump.
This is not true:
I'm confused. The poll shows ages 45-64 had the highest percentage of Trump voters (54%).
Is that not confirming that Gen X (1965-1980, so ages 44-59 in 2024) was the most pro-Trump?
Was it? I am not on US.
If anything it is all about boomers, gen z and rednecks on YT and TikTok when going over MAGA and Project 2025 videos.
As far as I am aware, the people that didn't gave a damm to elections and ignored their right to vote, are the main reason.
this isn’t true either, 2024 election saw the highest number of people voting - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...