Chris Smith

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

Coverage Map Update:

https://t.co/00m7hr86oP

-Zoom out freely
-Better coverage reporting along water & shorelines
-Improvements for Alaska & US territories
-More visible roads

https://t.co/1rK0m9eTs9

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

@robbensinger @robertwiblin I think this falls apart when you acknowledge he uses the same reasoning ability to be an incredibly effective leader of a wildly successful company

[roon @tszzl]

the discourse about the dwarkesh jensen interview is ridiculous: the fact that a 25yo podcaster can make the ceo of the largest company in the world dance and answer to the people at all is impressive. the purpose of media is not to respectfully sing praises to the powerful

[Philippe Lemoine @phl43]

This is so annoying. X is being criticized for deliberately throttling links, but instead of addressing that criticism (because he can't), Bier tries to reverse the accusation by criticizing the NYT for not being creative enough in promoting its content, unlike I guess the dozens of accounts that are raking up massive engagement by posting one-sentence summaries of NYT articles without a link.

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

@natseckatrina Two questions:

1. Do you think the historical record with domestic mass surveillance since ~2000 reveals weaknesses in "lawful" as a standard?

2. Would you characterize Snowden's actions in making his revelations as "the process in action" or him stepping outside the process?

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

In the same breath, Hegseth demands access for "any LAWFUL purpose" and shows why that standard is dangerous

Designating Anthropic a “supply-chain risk” requires stretching existing law far beyond its original purpose. If that’s "lawful", the word doesn’t mean much

[Secretary of War Pete Hegseth @SecWar]

This week, Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon.

Our position has never wavered and will never waver: the Department of War must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the Republic.

Instead, @AnthropicAI and its CEO @DarioAmodei, have chosen duplicity. Cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of “effective altruism,” they have attempted to strong-arm the United States military into submission - a cowardly act of corporate virtue-signaling that places Silicon Valley ideology above American lives.

The Terms of Service of Anthropic’s defective altruism will never outweigh the safety, the readiness, or the lives of American troops on the battlefield.

Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military. That is unacceptable.

As President Trump stated on Truth Social, the Commander-in-Chief and the American people alone will determine the destiny of our armed forces, not unelected tech executives.

Anthropic’s stance is fundamentally incompatible with American principles. Their relationship with the United States Armed Forces and the Federal Government has therefore been permanently altered.

In conjunction with the President's directive for the Federal Government to cease all use of Anthropic's technology, I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic. Anthropic will continue to provide the Department of War its services for a period of no more than six months to allow for a seamless transition to a better and more patriotic service.

America’s warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech. This decision is final.

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

We've seen this film before w/ mass surveillance

Unelected bureaucrats called the shots. Laws got contorted in maximally permissive ways. Efforts to get details disclosed to elected members of Congress were met with lies told under oath

[Palmer Luckey @PalmerLuckey]

This gets to the core of the issue more than any debate about specific terms.

Do you believe in democracy? Should our military be regulated by our elected leaders, or corporate executives? Seemingly innocuous terms from the latter like "You cannot target innocent civilians" are actually moral minefields that lever differences of cultural tradition into massive control.

Who is a civilian and not? What makes them innocent or not? What does it mean for them to be a "target" vs collateral damage? Existing policy and law has very clear answers for these questions, but unelected corporations managing profits and PR will often have a very different answer.

Imagine if a missile company tried to enforce the above policy, that their product cannot be used to target innocent civilians, that they can shut off access if elected leaders decide to break those terms. Sounds, good, right? Not really - in addition to the value judgement problems I list above, you also have to account for questions like:

-What level of information, classified and otherwise, does the corporation receive that would allow them to make these determinations? How much leverage would they have to demand more?
-What if an elected President merely threatens a dictator with using our weapons in a certain way, ala Madman Theory/MAD? Is the threat seen as empty because the dictator knows the corporate executives will cut off the military? Is the threat enough to trigger the cutoff? How might either of those determinations vary if the current corporate executive happens to like the dictator or dislike the President?
-At what level of confidence does the cutoff trigger, both in writing and in reality?

The fact that this is a debate over AI does not change the underlying calculus. The same problems apply to definitions and use of ethically fraught but important capabilities like surveillance systems or autonomous weapons. It is easy to say "But they will have cutouts to operate with autonomous systems for defensive use!", but you immediately get into the same issues and more - what is autonomous? What is defensive? What about defending an asset during an offensive action, or parking a carrier group off the coast of a nation that considers us to be offensive?

At the end of the day, you have to believe that the American experiment is still ongoing, that people have the right to elect and unelect the authorities making these decisions, that our imperfect constitutional republic is still good enough to run a country without outsourcing the real levers of power to billionaires and corpos and their shadow advisors. I still believe.

And that is why "bro just agree the AI won't be involved in autonomous weapons or mass surveillance why can't you agree it is so simple please bro" is an untenable position that the United States cannot possibly accept.

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

@eigenrobot when Snowden tells the story, he argues something like, "they did all this evil, anti-freedom stuff for nothing. the spying never stopped an attack"

idk. multiple administrations left & right bought into it. hard for me to believe it wasn't relevant to major geo-political stuff

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

@eigenrobot the government put a ton resources into compromising these systems and setting up surveillance infra, doing borderline illegal and unamerican things along the way

I can't be confident, but hard to believe they went to all that effort unless they got a lot out of it

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

Setting aside who is right and wrong here, sorta fascinating how horrifically badly the DOW is handling the PR battle

[Under Secretary of War Emil Michael @USWREMichael]

It’s a shame that @DarioAmodei is a liar and has a God-complex. He wants nothing more than to try to personally control the US Military and is ok putting our nation’s safety at risk.

The @DeptofWar will ALWAYS adhere to the law but not bend to whims of any one for-profit tech company.

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

@eigenrobot buying time before these things get compromised or duplicated isn't meaningless...

last few decades might have looked pretty different with a small shift in when telecoms got deeply compromised vs. when strong e2e became common for electronic comms

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

@powerbottomdad1 @0xkrma @tszzl ...man i know you're better than this

yeah, the people controlling the guns and bombs set the rules

but Anthropic is winning sympathy from some of the people with that control. beyond the moral high ground, Anthropic is massively outplaying the DOW on the PR game here

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

@powerbottomdad1 @0xkrma @tszzl is your view that Congress, not Anthropic, should set the rules?

if so, not an unreasonable take in the abstract. but if we're looking at what's concretely on the table rn, don't feel like its a choice of whether to defer to Congress vs Anthropic

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

@powerbottomdad1 @0xkrma @tszzl I don't know man...this framing feels far more dishonest than Anthropic's

[Anthropic @AnthropicAI]

A statement from Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, on our discussions with the Department of War.

https://t.co/rM77LJejuk

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

@grok @viemccoy @jefftangx @grok, do you know something about mac minis that we don't?

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

More impressed with Claude everyday

[Yishan @yishan]

I asked the four major AIs to sort themselves into the four Harry Potter houses.

ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok all agreed on the following:

OpenAI: Gryffindor
Gemini: Ravenclaw
Grok: Slytherin
Claude: Hufflepuff

Except for Claude, who said OpenAI was Slytherin and Grok was Gryffindor (but agreed re: Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff).

I'm not sure what to make of this. Anthropic was founded during a schism from OpenAI.

[Joshua Achiam @jachiam0]

This is one of the structural changes in the world that we are collectively ill-prepared for and ill-prepared to discuss in a sensible, careful way.

[Mason Hall @0xMasonH]

Brilliant move by @AnthropicAI to sponsor Claude ads on stacktraces that get no results

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

@ESRogs @jeremyphoward You've got to make a few ideological assumptions before "most good" even feels coherent

Then in practice, there's obvious leanings people have w/r/t politics, ethics, etc & those necessarily play a massive role in decisions about "doing the most good"

[Chris Smith @Coverage_Critic]

@ESRogs @jeremyphoward I get the appeal of framing it as a question rather than an ideology, but it feels weaselly

A Christian could say their religion isn't an ideology b/c at its core, its just asking the question "How can we best worship and glorify God?"