Or they received a classified briefing showing how far ahead China or other adversaries are in terms of AI for military use and felt obligated to not let the US fall further behind.
Is it because it's speculative?
Further, many employees at OpenAI may not even be US citizens, and even if they are, many others aren’t super enthusiastic about giving the Pentagon new toys to use.
https://macropolo2.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/20...
In theory there is no reason why an individual soldier shouldn't be able to order an air strike, or be informed about inbound strikes on their position and how to react to those. Today, this is not possible due to the complex decisioning process for whether a target is worth a strike by X munition vs. Y munition and when. AI could simplify this process.
On the other hand, well funded open source and commercial companies may deliver faster and with higher quality. The DoD doesn't use bespoke databases, and microchips for a reason (except when they do).
Why assume they have loyalty to the CCP? They’re in California, presumably they like hot dogs, monster trucks, and bikinis.
Because that's American NatSec for you. They rather train a white kid from Iowa to read Chinese poorly and do even worse analysis than risk giving advantage to adversaries. The domestic politics of latter is more unforgiving. Also see China Initiative persecuting PRC scholars. Pentagon contracts will come with strings attached, hidden or otherwise.
Doing a quick search, I found several articles detailing how this is becoming more common, with this story being the first one I recalled as the video is nauseating: https://www.voanews.com/a/east-asia-pacific_china-tries-muff... "Editor’s Note: China’s government is expanding its censorship controls by targeting Chinese citizens overseas who criticize Beijing on social media. The pressure tactic is called “zhulian” – an ancient punishment meaning “guilt by association.” It usually involves police threatening family members in China for the actions of their relatives overseas.
This happened to “Zoo” (short for @HorrorZoo, her main handle on Twitter), a Chinese student pursuing graduate studies in Australia, whose father has been repeatedly summoned to the police station because of her criticism of Chinese Communist Party leaders on social media.
But instead of censoring her Twitter account, “Zoo” has become more outspoken, providing multiple videos of police intimidating her via video chat. Her story provides a rare look at how China tries to use the families of dissidents to silence them."
Another instance: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/overseas-chinese-1021... "Police in Beijing have contacted the family of a Chinese student studying in the United States after he expressed support online for the "Bridge Man" protester, who unfurled banners on a Beijing bridge calling on ruling Chinese leader Xi Jinping to step down on the eve of the 20th Communist party’s congress."
I'm sure I could find hundreds of these - it has nothing to do with loyalty, and everything to do with external sources of pressure and coercion.
You answered
> They’re in California