If there is one thing Trump actually understands, it’s the utility of the “firehose” championed by Steve Bannon–the tactic of spraying the country with so much excrement each day that the body politic misses behaviors that would, in ordinary times, be scandalous.
Permit me an example.
While we have been distracted by “little things” like an illegal war on Iran, Pam Bondi’s transparent efforts to keep the lid on Trump’s multiple and damning appearances in the Epstein files, and the re-emergence of measles thanks to RNK, Jr.’s war on medical science, the goofball who is currently in charge of the Pentagon has been in a standoff with Anthropic, a tech company opposed to unregulated and unethical use of its AI product, Claude.
As the Atlantic has reported, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued an ultimatum to Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei. He ordered the company to strip the ethical guardrails from its AI models “or face the full weight of the state.” Hegseth accompanied that order with a threat that, unless Anthropic allowed the Pentagon “all lawful uses” of its Claude models, he would designate Anthropic “a supply-chain risk,” effectively blacklisting the company from doing business with “any entity that touches the Department of Defense.”
To his eternal credit, Amodei refused, explaining that while he believed “deeply in the existential importance of using AI to defend the United States and other democracies, and to defeat our autocratic adversaries,” there is a narrow set of cases in which AI can “undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.” He concluded that the Pentagon’s “threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.”
As the linked article argues, the company’s stance represents a principled objection to the use of its AI for mass surveillance.
It is not opposed to autonomous weapons per se and has already carved out exemptions for missile defense and cyber operations. The company’s hesitation regarding autonomy is technical: Large language models are simply not yet reliable enough to operate without a human in the loop. Pushing them too far, too quickly, invites a mistake that could prove disastrous. Anthropic is asking for an exclusion on autonomous weapons not out of an ideological refusal to fight, but to allow for the research and development necessary to make such systems safe.
People in the Trump administration, however, are impervious to both logic and ethics. Not long after the Atlantic published its article about the dispute, the Washington Post reported that Anthropic had been cut off from all government contracts. The Post reported that the action “shook the tech industry” and hardened the political and cultural battle lines across Silicon Valley over military use of artificial intelligence.
As the article noted, Trump has now put all of Silicon Valley on notice: if tech companies want to do business with the Pentagon they should be prepared to accede to any and all administration policies and hand over control of how their technology is used.
Less ethical rivals of Anthropic (including–surprise!– Elon Musk) have rushed in to pledge that their own companies would not question Pentagon policies, styling themselves as “loyal patriots.”
It isn’t surprising that Trump’s transactional administration would favor companies willing to trade their ethical concerns for lucrative contracts. Last fall, the administration characterized Anthropic’s ethical concerns as attempts to manipulate the government with “fear mongering” about AI technology. Media outlets reported that the White House was “displeased” when Anthropic raised ethical objections to the ways in which the administration wanted to use its technology–especially its intent to use the company’s product for surveillance.
The Atlantic article called this ethical quandary over domestic surveillance an “unbridgeable divide.”
Under an administration that invoked the Insurrection Act, or that sought to map domestic dissent, the Pentagon’s demand for “all lawful uses” of Anthropic’s models could become a skeleton key. Amodei articulated this danger in a recent interview with Ross Douthat, noting that, although it isn’t illegal to record conversations in public spaces, the sheer scale of AI changes the nature of the act. As Amodei put it, AI could transcribe speech and correlate it in a way that would not only identify one member of the opposition but “make a map of all 100 million. And so, are you going to make a mockery of the Fourth Amendment by the technology finding technical ways around it?”
The answer to that question is obvious. The fascist regime that currently controls America’s federal government–and the Silicon Valley “bros” who are rushing to ignore those pesky ethical concerns–will be happy to make a mockery of the Fourth Amendment.
I’ll have to do some research later, but I thought Trump had invested billions into a public AI system that ran parallel to that in the private space. That would alleviate reliance on Anthropic for military surveillance. Besides, Palantir handles surveillance, so not sure why they needed Claude.
They can have Grok, but they won’t like Elon’s product. It is barely a good fact-checker. Claude is one of the best, and so is Manus from Meta.
Ethics in the Trump administration? LOL Surely you jest. With Kristi axed, maybe Hegseth will be next for his ass-whooping in the ME. I wonder if the Saudi prince will yank the $2 billion slush fund he gave to Jared Kushner? 😉 I hear MbS isn’t very happy right now.
The appointment of Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security Department was an oxymoron from the start; after publishing her book admitting to shooting her puppy and her “bad goat”. It should have been expected that she would not hesitate to escalate to humans in her position of power.
AI is a misnomer at best and a possible internal source of terrorism at its worst. Both are added distractions to the entire Epstein Files global situation but Trump’s war on Iran trumps both if we are to override the Republican Congress, the Supreme Court and Donald Trump’s Executive Orders trifecta. All three branches of government are in the hands of our home-grown terrorists who also happen to be in control of the majority of financial conditions within the government and in our home to keep up with the imposed cost of their Trump tariffs.
“It isn’t surprising that Trump’s transactional administration would favor companies willing to trade their ethical concerns for lucrative contracts.”
While I haven’t read everything associated with those in the billionaire, or even millionaire, levels of wealth in this country; I can remember only three who have openly admitted they should be paying higher taxes than this government has set. They were Warren Buffett, President Barack Obama and Stephen King. A study in ethics on those sitting in Trump’s front row of his private inauguration may hold answers as to how and why we a now living in a Fascist dictatorship, sans all ethics, and in fear of foreign attacks directly on America…which Trump cannot say is impossible at this point.
An important and scary column today. It seems like Big Brother time is here. It’s just a matter of the unethicals to squabble over the details. This time, however, the clown car is full to overflowing with incompetence. If we thought Noem was bad, wait until you see this Okie that Trump immediately picked is unleashed.
What struck me in a gut-churning way was the smirking bullshit machine, aka, Pete Hegseth yesterday during a “press” conference. The utter glee he showed over how wonderful and powerful we are was not just chilling, but sickening. It was like watching a bad monster movie.
God, I’m tired of these wretches …
Hegseth thinks he is playing Call of Duty, but with real people doing the dying for his entertainment. This is why he is so intent on unfettered use of AI, so he an amass a body count and get to put his initials at the top of what is nothing more than a computer game.
The saddest thing in all of this is that with all of the money and power at their disposal, they could make the choice to create policy that would help people live better lives, but instead they are making the choice, every day, to increase suffering for the world, all in order to line their pockets with as much as they possibly can.
mark mullins, head goon for a goon squad.im suprise dhs didnt use him for training humans (without any hope for fairness)for ice interventions. noem in brass knucles and blackjack.
Politico “”””friday read:Nancy Scola.
the campaign totake down Alex Bores,is just the begining.
theres a word of why we shouldnt trust AI and its founders,any of them and why.
To quote William Faulkner, “The past is never dead; in fact, the past is never past.” We are currently in the midst of an internal Revolutionary War, a Civil War with the addition of a global war with Iran and their allies against us and our allies. There are no ethics in any war; we have progressed from muskets to drones but the end results remain the piling up of the dead on all sides and we are now in the position of a global circular firing squad no matter which way we look.
Damn the ethics; it’s full speed ahead.
James, helping “people live better lives, is not their interest. Trump’s interest is just in making more money, and Hegseth’s, for all his Christianing noise is interested in looking powerful, in my view.
So, what we have is Putin sitting deepen the Kremlin, with a huge smile/grin on his face, as Bibi and Trump do their best to destroy the Western world. And, Bibi, and Trump, are avoiding prison, each in his own way.
Vern and James,
Hegseth and Rubio did nothing in advance to get our people out of harm’s way in advance. They offered them “buses and chartered planes” AFTER the fighting started. Every serious account I’ve heard is saying US bases are getting destroyed and there is a media blackout.
None of this is surprising since T is amoral and trickles down like……
Be assured that while dump does his sphere of influence things in the western hemisphere, China will continue its own efforts in Asia. Kim is fully loaded with nuclear weapons and is tolerated as a distraction by Xi.
There is no question that Cuba is next on the list for takeover. Rubio touts himself as from a family of refugees when in fact his parents left Cuba as immigrants well before Castro took over.
Imperialism is nothing new, just changing its name to suit the goals of those in power.
How much of what is happening in the ME is a reflection of the bombing last year that exposed our strategic weaponry placement and capabilities to Iran/Russia as well as Israel? Our supply of weapons is not inexhaustible and is very expensive.
In the meantime, we have military commanders committing war crimes, bombing schools and leaving people to drown after torpedoing their ship in direct defiance of our signing of the Geneva Convention of 1949.
With that kind of compliance by our military, does anyone really believe that using AI for internal oppression of us all would not proceed immediately?
Ethics, like a dying language, must be protected. Chalk this up to the complete disregard for ethics in our current government, but not to them alone. We the people have sat back and allowed it. We have to demand better. Sadly, too few will be willing to make the effort.
VOTE!!!
Nothing says ethics like the speech from Noem yesterday. She is in the middle of a speech unaware she is getting fired via twitter. She quotes a line from 1984 that basically says people sleep well at night unaware that rough people have to do the dirty work of government. She is completely clueless that 1984 is an anti-government, anti-facist story set in some dystopian future and that if you can pull quotes from the book to justify what you are doing, you might be doing something wrong.
Now that I have re-read my post, it should have started out “Nothing says ignorance like…”