I believe what we are looking at is the outcome of Sam Altman’s scheme.
Over the past week, Pete Hegseth and the DoD has repeatedly said things that were simple misconceptions about what Anthropic asked for, which were plainly contradicted by Anthropic’s contract and Anthropic’s public statements. At the same time, OpenAI was in ongoing talks to take Anthropic’s business.
So, where did the misconceptions come from? Presumably, Altman. He had the positioning, the motive, and a well established history of executing similar political schemes.
Relatedly, two months ago OpenAI became Trump’s top donor with a $25M donation to Trump’s PAC. So, Hegseth and Trump didn’t need to actually believe the lie, they just needed the lie to be good enough for a pretext.
And, I can’t help but notice that Greg Brockman has been set up as a fall guy, here. If we live long enough for a change in administration, and the next administration decides to punish the people who most blatantly paid illegal bribes to Trump, it is Brockman’s name on the headlines about the donation, not Altman’s. But the money came out of the same pot, and it was presumably Altman who chose what those headlines would say.
I think this is conspiratorial and uncalibrated[1]
Your prior that a given DoD action is secretly due to the work of Sam Altman, or Palantir, or an Oracle lobbyist, or a Raytheon lobbyist, or Microsoft, or Israel, or one particular anti-woke DoD compliance lawyer with a crusade, or one particular DoW office politics tiff, or anyone else, should be low
The cause célèbre is not that the DoD canceled its contract with Anthropic and switched to its rival OpenAI, with whom it had ongoing negotiations. The cause célèbre is that the DoD did not just switch to a rival defense contractor. The DoD insisted that Anthropic remain a contractor. Not “F you, we’re going to Sam Altman”, but “F you, we’re not hiring someone else, we tell you what to do you don’t tell use what to do, do this work or we will nuke you”.
Your prior that in a meeting between someone like Pete Hegseth and Dario Amodei, with Hegseth repeatedly yelling orders and Amodei not standing down, that Hegseth might come away pissed and with (or reporting) misconceptions about the Dario’s insubordinate position, should be high.
(Independently, the fact that OpenAI siphoned donations through Greg Brockman and not Sam Altman is a good point I had not considered. I’d ascribe that to optics, internal and external, rather than Brockman being a future fall guy)
And LessWrong should do better than bandwagon on “Bad thing was secretly caused by outgroup leader”. I’m not saying this was a bad comment to proffer this hypothesis -- I’m saying there should not have been so much agreement to it. EDIT agreement was at +35 or +45 when I wrote this comment
Your prior that a given DoD action is secretly due to the work of Sam Altman, or Palentir, or an Oracle lobbyist, or a Raytheon lobbyist, or Microsoft, or Israel, or one particular anti-woke DoD compliance lawyer with a crusade, or one particular DoW office politics tiff, or anyone else, should be low
Are you saying this as a political insider with knowledge of how such decisions are usually made? What do you think you know about the political process and how do you think you know it?
I am not saying this as a political insider. I’m saying “consider other hypotheses” and “avoid the base rate fallacy”. Here, let me generate another hypothesis:
“It’s been a decades long truism: NSA is drowning in data, but can’t to turn it into intelligence. LLMs are the magic solution NSA’s dreamt for for decades. But the only licensed classified LLM provider is stymieing progress because of the inclusion of domestic surveillance data. NSA has recently gained clout at the Pentagon: the success of Maduro, and Iran’s top 40 military leaders killed the first day of the war, were only possible because of NSA and cell phones. NSA’s newfound opportunities to lobby the Pentagon about this roadblock at the highest level due close collaborations for recent military actions is what lit this fire.”
There you go. Somewhat plausible sounding. I think you could generate scores of other somewhat plausible sounding hypotheses like this. Therefore, your prior for any particular somewhat plausible hypothesis should be small.
You say there was too much agreement with OP, but it looks to me like there wasn’t much. 10 net agree votes and ten 10% likely or 25% likely reacts at time of writing.
Mr. Michael, who was on a call with Anthropic executives at the time, said the Pentagon wanted the company to allow for the collection and analysis of unclassified, commercial bulk data on Americans, such as geolocation and web browsing data, people briefed on the negotiations said.
Anthropic told the Pentagon that it was willing to let its technology be used by the National Security Agency for classified material collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But the company wanted a legally binding promise from the Pentagon not to use its technology on unclassified commercial data.
At that point, Mr. Michael asked to speak with Dr. Amodei, who was not on the call. Mr. Michael was turned down. Shortly after, Mr. Hegseth said the talks were over.
Anthropic’s contract is a classified document that’s not public. Anthropic has made no commitments about revealing the contents of the contract with the public. Given that it’s a classified contract revealing contract details might even be subject to penalties. Why do you believe you know what’s in it?
If we do believe Anthropic’s public commitments they require “agency’s willingness to engage in ongoing dialogue with Anthropic” about how the agency they are contract with when it comes to them getting expectations to violate the normal Usage Policy. That’s quite different of just having red lines around domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.
Do you believe that the contracts that Anthropic has with the DoD are already in violation of the public promises Anthropic made in that regard?
I believe what we are looking at is the outcome of Sam Altman’s scheme.
Over the past week, Pete Hegseth and the DoD has repeatedly said things that were simple misconceptions about what Anthropic asked for, which were plainly contradicted by Anthropic’s contract and Anthropic’s public statements. At the same time, OpenAI was in ongoing talks to take Anthropic’s business.
So, where did the misconceptions come from? Presumably, Altman. He had the positioning, the motive, and a well established history of executing similar political schemes.
Relatedly, two months ago OpenAI became Trump’s top donor with a $25M donation to Trump’s PAC. So, Hegseth and Trump didn’t need to actually believe the lie, they just needed the lie to be good enough for a pretext.
And, I can’t help but notice that Greg Brockman has been set up as a fall guy, here. If we live long enough for a change in administration, and the next administration decides to punish the people who most blatantly paid illegal bribes to Trump, it is Brockman’s name on the headlines about the donation, not Altman’s. But the money came out of the same pot, and it was presumably Altman who chose what those headlines would say.
I think this is conspiratorial and uncalibrated[1]
Your prior that a given DoD action is secretly due to the work of Sam Altman, or Palantir, or an Oracle lobbyist, or a Raytheon lobbyist, or Microsoft, or Israel, or one particular anti-woke DoD compliance lawyer with a crusade, or one particular DoW office politics tiff, or anyone else, should be low
The cause célèbre is not that the DoD canceled its contract with Anthropic and switched to its rival OpenAI, with whom it had ongoing negotiations. The cause célèbre is that the DoD did not just switch to a rival defense contractor. The DoD insisted that Anthropic remain a contractor. Not “F you, we’re going to Sam Altman”, but “F you, we’re not hiring someone else, we tell you what to do you don’t tell use what to do, do this work or we will nuke you”.
Your prior that in a meeting between someone like Pete Hegseth and Dario Amodei, with Hegseth repeatedly yelling orders and Amodei not standing down, that Hegseth might come away pissed and with (or reporting) misconceptions about the Dario’s insubordinate position, should be high.
(Independently, the fact that OpenAI siphoned donations through Greg Brockman and not Sam Altman is a good point I had not considered. I’d ascribe that to optics, internal and external, rather than Brockman being a future fall guy)
And LessWrong should do better than bandwagon on “Bad thing was secretly caused by outgroup leader”. I’m not saying this was a bad comment to proffer this hypothesis -- I’m saying there should not have been so much agreement to it. EDIT agreement was at +35 or +45 when I wrote this comment
Are you saying this as a political insider with knowledge of how such decisions are usually made? What do you think you know about the political process and how do you think you know it?
I am not saying this as a political insider. I’m saying “consider other hypotheses” and “avoid the base rate fallacy”. Here, let me generate another hypothesis:
“It’s been a decades long truism: NSA is drowning in data, but can’t to turn it into intelligence. LLMs are the magic solution NSA’s dreamt for for decades. But the only licensed classified LLM provider is stymieing progress because of the inclusion of domestic surveillance data. NSA has recently gained clout at the Pentagon: the success of Maduro, and Iran’s top 40 military leaders killed the first day of the war, were only possible because of NSA and cell phones. NSA’s newfound opportunities to lobby the Pentagon about this roadblock at the highest level due close collaborations for recent military actions is what lit this fire.”
There you go. Somewhat plausible sounding. I think you could generate scores of other somewhat plausible sounding hypotheses like this. Therefore, your prior for any particular somewhat plausible hypothesis should be small.
You say there was too much agreement with OP, but it looks to me like there wasn’t much. 10 net agree votes and ten 10% likely or 25% likely reacts at time of writing.
It was +35 when I made the comment
I seriously doubt that they were under misconceptions as to what Anthropic’s position was.
Source (NYT)
Anthropic’s contract is a classified document that’s not public. Anthropic has made no commitments about revealing the contents of the contract with the public. Given that it’s a classified contract revealing contract details might even be subject to penalties. Why do you believe you know what’s in it?
If we do believe Anthropic’s public commitments they require “agency’s willingness to engage in ongoing dialogue with Anthropic” about how the agency they are contract with when it comes to them getting expectations to violate the normal Usage Policy. That’s quite different of just having red lines around domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.
Do you believe that the contracts that Anthropic has with the DoD are already in violation of the public promises Anthropic made in that regard?
I wrote to Coffeezilla asking to cover this story, and I encourage all the readers to do the same.
Fork out a prediction market!