Strengthening partnerships with our government certainly doesn't make me mistrust OpenAI.
I can only surmise that Silicon Valley has a sizeable contingent raised by hippie Vietnam protestors that produced a generational vibe of "military bad".
Go live as a civilian in a country that our military has decimated with bombs and then say again that "military bad" is just a vibe.
As for their aims, you can believe it’s about Palestine but that seems more pretextual. Historically the Houthi’s have been extremely anti Saudia Arabia and the normalization talks with Israel pose a substantial threat to them and Iranians (not to mention the US historically is allied with Saudia Arabia). It’s possible that this is just retaliation for all of that but some believe that this is their attempt to draw in the US and UK into another middle eastern war which works further weaken them which is beneficial for the Iranian/Russia/China interests to establish a new world order.
Moving a step away from facts towards analysis: the Houthis are widely considered to be an arm of the IRGC (the IRGC counts them in their "axis of resistance"). The Houthi/Saudi war seems to have been instigated in large part by Iran, whose long term conflict with Saudi Arabia is probably the most salient in MENA.
It probably doesn't make much sense to talk about what set of concessions would get the Houthis to stop; they've attacked ships indiscriminately, and have been doing so long before October 7.
The only thing I’ll note is that groups can have multiple goals. While destruction of Jews/Israel may be a rallying call and was a founding principle, Houthis can want other things and do have other enemies (Saudia Arabia is disliked by Houthis independently of Iran’s conflict with them).
When all those leaders gather in one place how can our angry pitbull not froth at the mouth? Not saying it’s ethical, just that it’s purely rational.
TBF if the US military don't have modern rifles/equipments they will certainly not invade Iraq. So yes, having significantly better weapons does increase the chance of war because it increase your chance of winning (thus make it more politically feasible for politicians to push for it).
The military is a gun. It shoots what the President wants dead. In that case, it was Cambodia.
You really don’t want a USA where the military decides it doesn’t want to listen to civilian government anymore.
Also wish Congress wasn't a clown car perpetually headed off a cliff.
But the Department of War became the Department of Defense, so I guess all these gun shots aren't war anymore.
And as for the gun analogy, I'm reminded of the "production for use"[0] defense from Howard Hawks's His Girl Friday:
"And so, into this little tortured mind came the idea that that gun had been produced for use. And use it he did."
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I hear you on the need for a declaration of war, but as I'm sure you realize, it's not practical for most of the modern conflicts we find ourselves in. Congress has also explicitly given the Executive the power to conduct limited engagements because conflict develops much more quickly in many cases than Congress can act and we need to be able to respond quickly.
Now of course one might argue something such as that we shouldn't be in areas or be doing things that could instantly cause a conflict and of course that sounds great to me, but then after a second glance you realize that, well, for example Americans must get oil and gas from the Middle East and so here we are without a formal declaration of war protecting shipping lanes.
Is that argument wrong? Over the past few decades US military adventurism has been, on the whole, harmful to both the US and the rest of the world. Having "expanded military capabilities" seems to have done the US more harm than good, even ignoring the opportunity costs of spending on those military capabilities rather than more productive things.
You really think that's the only and most likely explanation?
This criticism is coming from the people being asked to make the weapons. Just because one isn't against the military having expanded capabilities, doesn't mean that one wants to spend their time creating things used to kill people.
Or perhaps they're aware of the history of militaries / intelligence agencies.
>Strengthening partnerships with our government certainly doesn't make me mistrust OpenAI.
This strikes me as bewilderingly naive.
I think yor phrase "our national defense organizations" summarizes the counterargument: a lot of readers/commenters on HN live in other countries.
Nice try, but no. Iraq was bullshit, and even we protested it ourselves, but Afghanistan had the support of basically the entire world. Many of those allies you claim don't value our military anymore pee themselves a little at the thought of being left to fend for themselves by us leaving NATO and ceasing to massively subsidize their defense (e.g., the wailing and gnashing when Donald Trump was threatening to take us out of NATO).
Europe is now in its second, third? year of seeing what life without Uncle Sam would be like. Peaceful Lithuanian and Polish villages filled with the corpses of raped girls.
The military is important and software engineers need to read more of the news from the last 2 years in detail to understand that we’re still the good guys.
wat?
I just don't have faith in US political and cultural stability anymore, and as such I don't have faith that the constitution will be upheld, or even that the US will remain allied to Europe, where I live(though I wouldn't go as far as saying it's unlikely. Just wouldn't bet on it).
Also, the US constitution clearly has very little direct say on the actions of the US military abroad, as history has demonstrated.
You can have faith or lack thereof in whatever you want, but I would like you to provide one single example in history where the President decided to give the military unconstitutional orders (as in legally acknowledged at the time to be unconstitutional, not "I don't like it so it's unconstitutional") and the US military sided with him instead of the Constitution.
Asshole isn't some objective designation. A huge portion of military members support the current strong man vying for power. Always have, always will.
The world is gearing up for WWIII, I can smell it in the air. Maybe GPT5 has figured out there’s some serious dosh to be made!
The PATRIOT act will make it unstoppable. You all have already put enough online to deserve to be purged (murdered) in the eyes of some 2025 Cultural Revolutionary Red Guards.
Also, we know that the US military frequently uses its powers to maintain its global hegemony and the influence of US corporations abroad. This can be beneficial (more stable world order with fewer conflicts) but can be harmful (if the US decides to overthrow your government to protect its interests or the interests of the powerful within the US, bye bye)
I am guessing none of your friends or family have been a victim of aggression directed by the Pentagon?
The incentives switch from making good and useful stuff to getting more military contracts
10+ years ago I was working for a company acquired by Boeing (Jeppesen) and it was already a massive shitshow. Cost cutting everywhere but weirdly enough there were always money for some dumb initiative some highly placed and connected VP/Director had. None of those in my opinion led to an improvement in products, working efficiency, or any meaningful metric.
Sorry for being salty. Nowadays I feel I am going through the same st my current company and so this hits closer than I like.
The thing we all dread is AI-driven drones carrying out extra-judicial killings to promote US commercial interests in other countries. So far there seems to be nothing preventing this except the unwillingness of AI companies to co-operate with the "defense" industry. That apparently is no longer the case.