Comment by grey-area

Anthropic isn’t the inventor here, they are a service provider. The government can easily go find a different service provider, or if none of them will allow their service to be used for war, then the government should develop their own tech.

Saying the government can just nationalize any company purely because they want to use the tech to kill people has pretty big implications and his historically against what this country stands for.

>That’s not their call to make. Inventors of technologies that could be used for war have never had the right to deny access to those technologies to the elected civilian government.[1]

>[1] The government can make you go over to southeast Asia and kill people personally.

Is this a normative statement? In other words are you simply claiming "the government has men with guns and therefore can force people/companies do whatever they want", or are you claiming that "the government should be able to commandeer civilian resources for whatever it wants"?

Anthropic can certainly make the call to deny access this way, but then the US govt can choose not to make contracts with Anthropic. So what's the issue?

Hang on, companies dont get to have the rights of a person and not be conscripted.

I have seen a lot of your posts on here about political topics, and they are always disingenuous, misleading, and geared towards providing a thin veneer of reasonability over any form of morality.

> If Congress doesn’t want AI-powered killing machines, they’re the ones who have the right to make that call.

You have it backwards, and you know it. If Congress wants to invoke natsec concerns to force companies to sell to the federal government, then they have to explicitly say so, and any such legislation and exercise of execute power pursuant thereto would be heavily litigated.

> The government can make you go over to southeast Asia and kill people personally. It’s totally incompatible with that to say companies should be allowed to veto the use of their technologies in war.

Yes, it's legal to have drafts, but that's not relevant, and also includes certain exceptions for conscientious objectors. It doesn't matter if its paradoxical or ironic that an individual could be pressed into military service whereas a private company doesn't have to sell stuff to the federal government.

Like hanging his face on banners at the DOJ while proclaiming he'd be entitled to a third term?

Then you know and understand nothing.

Is threatening an ally business as usual? Tell me about all the times that recent presidents threatened a NATO ally...

The US has already ended. It was destroyed in 9/11/2001. America is a shadow of its former self.

> Nothing has changed

> You know what's new? This administration is doing out in the open what used to go on quietly.

So this administration has got bold and the behaviour has become overt.

And continuing to pull on that thread, when the Senate refused to vote on Supreme Court nominees for the president in 2016.

Another flawed democracy just sentenced their ex-president who attempted a insurrection (and similarly claimed broad presidential powers and immunity) to life in prison. Interesting contrast.

e: Americans seem to be surprised to learn that their democracy is indeed classified as a flawed democracy for more than a decade by The Economist due to decades of backsliding (the more rapid regression lately is not yet accounted for, but I wouldn't be surprised if the outcome of the 2026 elections results in a hybrid regime assessment in 2027).

You'd have a job arguing it's treason legally. In the US that's "levying War against [the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort".

They were going to do him for conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, re. the 2020 stuff before he got reelected.

Your take is a call for civil war. You're obviously wrong about "treason" since even larger majorities voted for Trump in 2024.

The US educational system has been manufacturing these dual career specialists that are competent in their careers and believe that makes them specialists in all other area, but they get played like fools constantly. The level of discourse, of public conversation, is like 7th graders. Until you get to politics, then it's "sports talk" with "winning" being all that matters, even if winning means the destruction of law and of completely corrupt forever future.

It’s not passivity - it’s active approval. 40% of people actively cheer everything he is doing

I was checking Trump approval ratings yesterday. I didn’t have high hopes but I thought it had to be under 35% at this point (I think in a sane country it has to be <10% or at least <20% after the nonstop madness dropping everyday). But nope, every poll places him at >40% approval or ever so slightly below 40%. To me that’s definitive confirmation that “it’s on Trump and his cronies, not the American people” is nonsense. It’s on at least 40% of American people. They weren’t blindsided by false promises, they want this.

Utter idiocy at election day is not passivity.

History will put Trumpers and Confederate at the same level of despicability.

Okay, if you have big actions to show off, then show us how it’s done.

You step up and start shooting at the heartless monsters running the first (US armed forces) and second (ICE) most well-funded militaries in the world. Go ahead. We’ll be right there behind you.

(Yeah, I’m burning some hn karma for this, I imagine.)

No one after Liz Truss fixed anything in Britain.

Yes and it stands for the Department of War now.

> But it looks like they would have spared Anthropic if they capitulated to the regime's demands and bent their back over.

Yeah dude, that's the point.

I'm not sure I fully understood your point, but about the question "how fascism if elected?": the Nazi Party won (i.e., it was the most voted party) in multiple elections in the late 20s/early 30s.