> You know it was originally the war department right?

> They changed the name at the start of the cold war to reflect a national security strategy based on deterrence.

> However that 'strategy' lasted what five years until Korea? Since then the DoD and the political animals that direct it have rarely seen a proxy war, or direct confrontation they haven't sought to be a part of.

> Honestly I think congress should officially change it back to the 'War Department' because we all can think, act, and make better choices when we start with honest labeling. Wankers indeed!

Once upon a time we used lead pipes for drinking water. Times change.

> You know it was originally the war department right?

Given that it's been 81 years since we have been involved in a bona fide war, it no longer makes any sense to call it the "war department".

It can be argued. But in any case, at present the US does not have a Department of War. It has a Department of Defense. Hegseth playing along with the President to call it something else does not change that.

> You know it was originally the war department right?

So fucking what? Who gives a shit what it was called, what does that even matter?

Best Buy was formerly known as "Sound of Music", why don't you call them up and insist they change it back?

You'd be the one on the Titanic complaining that the stewards wouldn't bring you a napkin during the evacuation.

And also the fact that making war is illegal under international law. Defence is allowed, attacking other countries is not. That's why they had to lie about Iraq having WMD, for example - because it had to be defensive action, starting a war is illegal.

> but they also have a large-enough contingent of peaceniks and America-haters on staff that it's awkward for them in the office when they do take on the military as a client.

I don't hate America. I hate what America has become.

Somehow, peaceniks are more there on the Right today, than on the Left. The latter, which never considered the Soviets an enemy during the Cold War, suddenly started hating Russia particularly after the Kremlin decided that it didn't hate its citizenry and refused to buy into the LGBTQ agenda ravaging the West. Otoh, on the Right, after being burned in Afghanistan and Iraq, there is little appetite for American troops being anywhere in the world except in America. Yeah, we want to be strong, but we don't

Trump was in power when he closed the deal.

"Their angle" is that this is the sort of person who Amodei is; it's an ideological thing, in the same way that Elon making Grok right-wing is an ideological thing. Anthropic exists because of an internal rebellion among a lot of OpenAI leaders and researchers abot the direction the company was going, in particular risks that OpenAI was taking.

A good example of the different culture at Anthropic: they employ philosophers and ethicists in their alignment team and give them significant power. Anthropic also regularly conducts research on "model wellbeing". Most AI developers simply declare their products as tools, and train into them to respond to any questions about their existence as that their just tools and any seeming experiences are illusory. Anthropic's stance is that we don't know what, if anything, the models experience vs. what is illusory, and so under the precautionary principle, we'll take reasonable steps to ensure their wellbeing. For example, they give their models a tool to refuse if the model feels it is experiencing trauma. They interview their models about their feelings and write long reports about it. Etc.

They also do extremely extensive, publicly-disclosed alignment research for every model. As an example: they'll openly tell you things like that Opus 4.6 is more likely than its predecessors to use unauthorized information that it finds (such as a plaintext password lying around) to accomplish the task you give it vs. their previous models, and things like that. Or how while it trounced other models on the vending machine benchmark, it did so with some sketchy business tactics, like lying to suppliers about the prices they were getting from other suppliers in order to get discounts and things like that. They openly publish negative information about their own models as it pertains to alignment.

Another thing Anthropic does is extensive public research on how their models think/reason. Really fascinating stuff. Some examples [1]here [transformer-circuits.pub]. They genuinely seem to be fascinated by this new thing that humankind has created, and wish to understand and respect it.

If there's a downside, I'd say that of all the major developers, they have the worst record on open source. Amodei has specifically commented that he feels that the gains they'd get from boosting open source AI development wouldn't be comparable to what they would lose by releasing open source products, and feel no obligation to give back to the open source community. Which is, frankly, a BS argument, but whatever.

[1] https://transformer-circuits.pub/2025/attribution-graphs/biology.html

You and rightwingnutjob should get a room. You can both tug it to the fantasy of the government surveilling it's own people.

Why does working with the DoD on one thing mean you have to work with them on everything ? There's no reason that the DoD has to have a single-source AI provider for literally everything.

True, we're not The World Army (yet), but we have to get involved in anyone's war if there is oil (and money) to be gained, or if we label someone as terrorist ('cause, collateral damage is okay).

They were all using insecure personal devices too. [1]https://www.pbs.org/newshour/w... [pbs.org]

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/read-the-full-report-on-hegseths-use-of-signal-from-the-pentagon-inspector-general