'I'm the new Oppenheimer ': Palantir's first-ever AI warfare conference
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Can the quote be taken “entirely out of context” if the context itself isn’t “entirely clear”? Or does your interpretation of the quote and its meaning differ from the author’s?
- Many hold the notion that the threat of AI is similar to that of nuclear weapons.
- Gen. Mark Milley is one of the key “characters” in the author's account of their time at Palantir’s conference showcasing its warfare AI.
- Milley works in Nuclear research at Los Alamos, like Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was the lab’s director. Milley’s exact role with the lab isn’t mentioned and I couldn’t verify his exact position, but the present day iteration of the lab is ran by someone else.
- A key theme of the story is how oblivious some key attendants and organizers are of the potential damage that warfare AI will have.
- It can be argued that those in attendance are primarily interested in developing the means to victory on the battlefield at any cost that can be rationalized by credentialed minds. A parallel can be made between warfare AI today and the development of nuclear weapons during WWII.
- Milley is comparing himself to Oppenheimer. He probably does not mean the he is the present director of the Los Alamos laboratory. It’s arguable that he is saying so in an attempt to amuse the author, much to the author's distaste. Note the pop culture references, the author's internal and external jabs in response, and the offering of state department swag (the pens and stickers).
> “Have you seen Oppenheimer?” he asked. > > No, I said, but I’d read The Making of the Atomic Bomb. > > I thought he was going to talk about the hubris of people who build weapons of war. > > Instead, he told me he works in nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos laboratory. Reaching into his backpack, he handed me a few Los Alamos pens and stickers.
These paragraphs and another half paragraph before the actual quote appears in the body of the article set the stage well enough to suffice for context.
A bystander may or may not make the same connections if they were to overhear this conversation as it happened, but an attentive reader can due to the privilege of having intimate knowledge of everything that took place before the exchange and a few details outside of it.
Whether it's conveyed via the actual conversation, or against the backdrop of the author’s publicized impressions during the conference and other elements that exist beyond it, the quote is not positioned inappropriately.
We have to remember that this article is not a traditional “news story”, it is a subjective account. The connections that make the quote noteworthy may not be found by all and sundry, but I’m confident that the Guardian has a feel for its readership and the sentiment that they and others will have about their stance on AI, Palantir, warfare, etc. prior to reading the piece.
I think the literary element at play is something like irony.
Milley actually didn't even say the quote that we're discussing. An unidentified man did.
The meaning of the quote in the context of the exchange where it was made is not entirely clear, I agree with you on that. The headline exploits this uncertainty. The reader's (i.e., me) biases fill in the blanks.
For all we know, the guy was just trying to impress a woman. He could be nothing more than a researcher manning a both, making a bizarre claim at a bizarre conference. His reference to "Oppenheimer" could even be about the film and not the actual man.
Pardon me for your time. I can see why this story is getting so much criticism.
> Short answer, no. “The end user makes the decision,” the woman said.
It seems to me that the author of this piece doesn't understand that any system that claimed to be able to predict civilian's and combatant's locations better than someone with boots on the ground or eyes in the air on the target would be lying.
Look at something like Healthcare charts. Nurses and doctors don't have time to keep systems updated or do data entry because they are busy triaging patients and saving lives. The first thing to go when you have ten things you're supposed to do but only have time for five is data entry. This is the bog standard complaint against all the technology being inserted into healthcare.
War is the same but inverse (serving out death not serving out life), there isn't time to sit around filling in info.
Armed conflicts are dynamic environments with a need for fast decisions on limited information and unfortunately it isn't really possible to have a Google maps interface with neatly labeled bounding boxes of "don't worry the bad guys aren't allowed to go inside these buildings, only the civilians".
But if anyone would be able to keep a grasp on that information in order to limit civilian targets it would likely be those on the ground who wouldn't have time to enter their latest civilian vs non-civilian intel into a GUI for updating some targeting system, so you'd want that ultimate decision to be exactly where they've placed it, in the hands of the final end user.
Anything else would be exactly the sort of "AI controls the guns/bombs/nukes" nightmare that we all want to avoid. Imagine the end user knows that the GUI is exactly wrong, the area marked in the system to contain civilians actually contains combatants and the building next door is marked in the system as containing combatants but really contains civilians (they have had camera on both or someone with binoculars observing or something) - and the system doesn't let them 'nominate the target' that they need to. At that point you can either nominate the civilian containing building and select a munition that will destroy both targets or you can do nothing.
They didn't claim this. The claim was that someone on the ground can better discriminate a combatant from a civilian than someone in the air. Modern warfare makes all of this less relevant, unfortunately, since infantry's work is less about shooting the enemy than protecting assets and calling in air and artillery strikes.
This is literally what the US supposedly did for some limited circumstances (churches) during the Gaza genocide and Israel chose to bomb those targets instead.
But you are more correct. There is no need to shift liability when there is absolutely no recourse for military mistakes.
They are literally saying, "War is Peace".
Better example is nuclear deterrence, which has effectively ended direct great power state-on-state conflict. War is never peace. But preparing for war protects an existing one.
"If you wish for peace, prepare for war" is an old way of phrasing this. It's not a new thought.
War is real.
This is the generous parsing of what Luckey et al were saying. The "war is illegitimate" crowd the ones they were mocking as disconnected from reality. (Albeit, in a nice way.)
Do you have a historical example?
As often, the solution lies in the middle. We do need strength as deterrent, but over-focus on this leads to an infinitely escalating need for more strength.
But let's be clear: war is illegitimate. That we have not found a better way to resolve conflict does not legitimize it. Killing people with whom you disagree at-scale is insane on its face.
Note well: I am not saying that all claims of "we're fighting in self-defense" are legitimate.
And, of course, the self-defense bit wouldn't be necessary if not for war.
Most of the push-back I've gotten on my comment that war is illegitimate is essentially some form of, "yes, but war happens". This is circular.
My point was not to deny the current reality of war or the need to reckon with it. It's that if "war is peace" is accepted as the unchallengeable law, then we will naturally have more war.
It's not the only way. It's just the current way.
Everybody knows that nobody looks favorable at aggressors but they still want land / resources / whatever so they wage an information war to make themselves look better.
No doubt. And, I've personally become more hawkish in these times. You'll see me arguing elsewhere that the West needs to be more aggressive in supporting Ukraine. I understand that we can't just lay down arms now. It's more about whether we want this to be the status quo for conflict resolution. It's just not an aspirational worldview.
So, my superficial point was that the full reasoning rests on itself. It's circular and self-serving, so it's not surprising who most often repeats it. And, if that's the footing you accept, then it will always be your footing.
The slightly deeper point was that these little memetic sayings (and the posture they support) become a self-perpetuating construction that exaggerate the effectiveness of raw might, while short-circuiting the legitimacy of other options. We see around the World effective resistance to great power.
So, it's the promotion of a kind of persistent war-footing wherein perceived military strength becomes the only lens through which all conflict is sorted. Hence, it de-emphasizes the complexity of the world and the search for solutions that can persist because they rest on more sustainable solutions beyond subjugation.
TLDR; if we emphasize peace through war above all else then we will continue to have more war than peace.
I do not accept that just rolling over and being conquered is better than fighting a war.
Countries attack other countries. "Legitimacy" has nothing to do about it. The question is, what are you going to do when you're on the receiving end?
I'm not suggesting that we just declare it illegitimate and lay down our arms. I'm suggesting that the mantra, "if you want peace then prepare for war" rests on the premise that war is a legitimate way to resolve conflict. And, once you've made that decision, it becomes effectively the only way, and guarantees more war.
OTOH, if you consider that it is not, then it leaves space for prioritizing other approaches.
This does not deny the current reality of war. Think of it as aspirational.
(A great phrase and book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Desolation_Called_Peace)
So war isn't peace but being 10x stronger than everyone can be.
Just as the US doesn't invest in infrastructure the way other countries do or have an efficient nationalized healthcare system.
Why? We burn trillions on military and weapons. The military-industrial complex must be fed, and it is always hungry.
Think about retirement, healthcare costs, and the greedflation by corporations, as well as the government taxing your Social Security. It is intentional cruelty."
The irony is that this is a good reminder of the harsh realities that Oppenheimer himself clearly grappled with - if you refuse to build it, someone with less scruples will.
Think of the complete lack of agency, the powerlessness, of that perspective. 'If we do nothing, maybe they'll shoot themselves in the foot.' It's 'freeze' in the fight/flight/freeze response to danger.
In fairness, the parent didn't say that's all we'll do, but few talk about actual actions, solutions, with full agency and responsibility.
The solution isn't a silver lining to a cloud, it's what we will do to make a better world. If we don't make one, who will?
Every time you see an argument for the inevitability of X - especially something frightening - know that it's just an old rhetorical tactic, even cheap playground trash talk. It's comic book lingo. They want you to quit; they are afraid of what you will do.
Pretty lame excuse. If I don't sell drugs, some else will.
If you're doing it, you are already the one with less scruples.
Do you think the victims care about the scruples of the perpetrator?
That's like saying, I kill people with a clean knife, I don't want them to get an infection from a dirty blade.
That said, I don't think most of what Palantir actually delivers on fits this mold. They're just generally cruddy.
There's this ideal human sociology, and then there's the reality of what we really are. It takes a unique person to accept it, and do the wrong thing for the right reason, and also be able to steer things in the eventual right direction.
In part by firebombing them indiscriminately. The way we won WWII would later be technically outlawed by the Geneva Conventions.
And do you think dropping the bomb on Germany would have humbled them or would they seek revenge in the long term?
The bombs brought as MAD and that only works as long all parties try to stay alive and don't there is a paradise in the afterlife if they die for a holy cause.
It didn't. The fear was that the Nazis might develop nuclear weapons and use them to end the war on its own terms [1].
> do you think dropping the bomb on Germany would have humbled them or would they seek revenge in the long term?
Yes, our eternal enemy the Japanese.
> bombs brought as MAD and that only works as long all parties try to stay alive and don't there is a paradise in the afterlife if they die for a holy cause
Fair enough.
If you refuse to deal with drug addiction, you shouldn't be surprised when drug dealers do.
Anyone who would intentionally choose to be compared to Oppenheimer should sooner be scrutinised for his own ethical dubiousness rather than his competitors.
Basically just boring IBM-type shit, except maybe even less honest and professional.
The dilemma was quite different: if you don't do it, your enemy will beat you to it and will kill you and the people you love. It was a very utilitarian, wartime calculation.
The soft variant you're quoting is just a license to misbehave because others also misbehave - and I don't think that was Oppenheimer's qualm.
Some ideas from me circa 2011 on how security agencies can actually build a more secure world once they recognize the irony of their current approach: "The need for FOSS intelligence tools for sensemaking etc." https://web.archive.org/web/20130514103318/http://pcast.idea... "This suggestion is about how civilians could benefit by have access to the sorts of "sensemaking" tools the intelligence community (as well as corporations) aspire to have, in order to design more joyful, secure, and healthy civilian communities (including through creating a more sustainable and resilient open manufacturing infrastructure for such communities). It outlines (including at a linked elaboration) why the intelligence community should consider funding the creation of such free and open source software (FOSS) "dual use" intelligence applications as a way to reduce global tensions through increased local prosperity, health, and with intrinsic mutual security. I feel open source tools for collaborative structured arguments, multiple perspective analysis, agent-based simulation, and so on, used together for making sense of what is going on in the world, are important to our democracy, security, and prosperity. Imagine if, instead of blog posts and comments on topics, we had searchable structured arguments about simulations and their results all with assumptions defined from different perspectives, where one could see at a glance how different subsets of the community felt about the progress or completeness of different arguments or action plans (somewhat like a debate flow diagram), where even a year of two later one could go back to an existing debate and expand on it with new ideas. As good as, say, Slashdot [or Hacker News] is, such a comprehensive open source sensemaking system would be to Slashdot as Slashdot is to a static webpage. It might help prevent so much rehashing the same old arguments because one could easily find and build on previous ones. ... As with that notion of "mutual security", the US intelligence community needs to look beyond seeing an intelligence tool as just something proprietary that gives a "friendly" analyst some advantage over an "unfriendly" analyst. Instead, the intelligence community could begin to see the potential for a free and open source intelligence tool as a way to promote "friendship" across the planet by dispelling some of the gloom of "want and ignorance" (see the scene in "A Christmas Carol" with Scrooge and a Christmas Spirit) that we still have all too much of around the planet. So, beyond supporting legitimate US intelligence needs (useful with their own closed sources of data), supporting a free and open source intelligence tool (and related open datasets) could become a strategic part of US (or other nation's) "diplomacy" and constructive outreach. ..."
Practically we know working in companies "leadership" only has a vague capability to steer the sheep, and that control becomes more and more vague every day. It seems to be a direct result of the complexity of the modern world. Systems operate by a zeitgeist made up of their component parts. "Culture eats Strategy for breakfast" etc etc.
The military industrial complex's defining culture is "we do the dirty work no one else is willing to do to keep western democracy safe" whether you agree thats true or not. I think its something to be noted if the powers and capabilities of this group are being expanded into tech corporations, who don't seem to have any defining culture other than make cash and retire.
Yes, there are many questions.
Cultures emerge in any organization, and the U.S. government is known to be bureaucratic. But, acknowledging this is a far cry from sowing blanket distrust via facile allusions to some vague, vast, unseemly conspiracy that has still not been defined.
These charges side-step important questions, such as: who specifically are these people? How are they organized and who leads them? What are they actually doing? What are their objectives? And, most importantly, are their supposed aims and activities in contravention with stated U.S. interests? For instance, are they aiding adversaries, like Russia, to the detriment of U.S. policy/security?
It's reckless and irresponsible to lob these vague conspiratorial charges: "Systems! Control becomes more vague! Zeitgeist! Culture!".
Point to something tangible or it's all dangerous FUD and nonsense.
OTOH, the former president who manufactured the charges you're repeating, does so in an effort to undermine the U.S. government and justify supplanting it with a regime of his own making. And, that proposed regime's stated goals do directly contravene U.S. policy and democratic principles. The would-be regime is openly declaring that they'll replace the entire bureaucracy with loyalists, use the DOJ to prosecute opponents, etc.
And instead of being concerned about that, you have people mindlessly repeating, "Destroy the deep state!".
>its not appropriate to mock.
Needless to say, I disagree. It's as appropriate to mock as Flat Earth theory and anything else as equally non-substantive.
> the former president who manufactured the charges you're repeating
Trump complained that the "deep state" was thwarting his efforts. I don't think he manufactured that in the least, and I don't think him being frustrated by the rank and file of the government was a bad thing.
> who specifically are these people?
I think when you look at who the intelligence community is staffed by (high number of mormons for instance), life long diplomats and civil servants, I think you're looking at people who get a frustrating and thankless job for often lower pay than the corporate world, and they do so out of a sense of duty, out of a true belief in the trappings and history of the American experiment. I think you have a group who cares about democracy, who cares about the longevity of this nation. More than average anyway.
Just because I think there is something we can refer to as the "deep state", something most definitely not FUD or nonsense, doesn't mean I agree with the cheeto. I think it did a damn good job trying to limit the damage that kleptocratic traitor could do in his 4 year term.
There was some useful stuff in the article itself.
As the moderator asked general questions about the panelists’ views on the future of war, Schmidt and Cohen answered cautiously. But Karp, who’s known as a provocateur, aggressively condoned violence, often peering into the audience with hungry eyes, palpably desperate for claps, boos or shock.
He began by saying that the US has to “scare our adversaries to death” in war. Referring to Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, he said: “If what happened to them happened to us, there’d be a hole in the ground somewhere.” Members of the audience laughed when he mocked fresh graduates of Columbia University, which had some of the earliest encampment protests in the country. He said they’d have a hard time on the job market and described their views as a “pagan religion infecting our universities” and “an infection inside of our society”.
Really sounds like something right out of the mouth of a certain dead fascist
> He began by saying that the US has to “scare our adversaries to death” in war. Referring to Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, he said: “If what happened to them happened to us, there’d be a hole in the ground somewhere.
You cited this as an example of an extreme opinion, but this is bog-standard MAD that’s been a big part of the US strategy since the Cold War.
We don’t want to go to war -> Enemies won’t attack us if they think they can’t accomplish their goals by doing so -> Make sure they understand they will die if they attack us -> no war! (At least, in theory.)
You may disagree with that opinion but it’s not at all extreme, that’s the mindset most of the military has. And it is rooted in the desire to prevent large scale conflict.
Except it's not "standard MAD". In fact MAD doesn't apply at all to the Oct 7 attack (which was evil and awful and all that -- but objectively not at scale sufficient to trigger a MAD response).
Instead he's calling for an unhinged, completely disproportionate response (nukes). That's simply not what MAD is or how it's supposed to work. In any case it's objectively not (contrary to what he claims) how the U.S. responds to such situations.
It's just bluster, meant to push people's buttons. And he's doing to push his product, basically (yes in part for ideological reasons -- but at the end of the day, as a sales tactic).
Enemies won’t attack us if they think they can’t accomplish their goals by doing so
What you're referring to is general deterrence strategy. That's not what MAD is. It has a very specific meaning and you're getting it completely wrong.
That's not MAD as I understand it: The essential challenge of international relations is to create non-escalatory situations - situations where parties won't be compelled or tempted to engage in a escalatory cycle that lead to warfare, which is often unwanted by all parties to it but unavoidable. Obviously, that can't be allowed to happen with strategic nuclear weapons.
Parties that are 'scared to death' tend to escalate; they are human; they panic, they imagine things and act on their fears. It's the warmongers and basement generals who imagine 'scared to death' tactics.
MAD was designed to create a stable, non-escalatory, trusted situation. There were treaties limiting weapons and their deployment, hotlines, verification. Weapons were spread out, including in the triad (at sea, in air, and on land), to reduce the ability of the enemy to knock them all out, and thus to disincentivize a surprise attack.
MAD is only used with nuclear weapons afaik, and only with Russia and now, probably, with China.
And what keeps on happening to Palestinians, had that happened to them, what will it be? But I get it, pretty standard for a war monger and profiteer to invoke false narratives on the mission to sell more weapons.
> “Before we get self-righteous,” [former Chair of the Joint Chief's of Staff, retired General Mark] Milley said, in the second world war, “we, the US, killed 12,000 innocent French civilians. We destroyed 69 Japanese cities. We slaughtered people in massive numbers – men, women, and children.”
I think to a great degree, with nobody standing up to this force and few barely acknowledging it, people have capitulated to it - what else can they do? - just accept what it says and does. And they have jumped on the bandwagon.
From an article on domestic politics in Israel [0]:
> It was the pictures of Palestinians swimming and sunning at a Gaza beach that rubbed Yehuda Shlezinger, an Israeli journalist, the wrong way. Stylish in round red glasses and a faint scruff of beard, Mr. Shlezinger unloaded his revulsion at the “disturbing” pictures while appearing on Israel’s Channel 12.
> “These people there deserve death, a hard death, an agonizing death, and instead we see them enjoying on the beach and having fun,” complained Mr. Shlezinger, the religious affairs correspondent for the widely circulated right-wing Israel Hayom newspaper. “We should have seen a lot more revenge there,” Mr. Shlezinger unrepentantly added. “A lot more rivers of Gazans’ blood.”
It's not the content of the words - to engage in and debate the content is to play their fool - it's the power, the effect. They want to push the envelope as far as possible, open things up for extremism. It's a well-known strategy, well-used for propaganda, but people seem to have forgotten every lesson of the 20th century. From the OP:
> But Karp [Alex Karp, Palantir CEO], who’s known as a provocateur, aggressively condoned violence, often peering into the audience with hungry eyes, palpably desperate for claps, boos or shock.
It's a demonstration of power, a show of force; it's an attempt at intimidation, and many have abandoned even the extremely successful, powerful fundamentals of freedom, democracy, and the Enlightenment. In the US, even moderate Democrats jump on the bandwagon; look at many of them parroting the ridicule of even the idea of protest. I have little compassion for leaders; it's their job to stand up and IMHO they are effectively cowards responding to bullying; they are aligning themselves with the bullies instead of standing up to them.
Sadly, even ordinary people are infected and parrot those things, without even examining the dynamics or content, much less the power. The world desperately needs a leader - a Churchill, a Lincoln, just about anyone - to stand up to it, to show people there are other, much better ways. Despite the BS propaganda, I think people are yearning for it, and that leader would find a world ready to embrace a good way to live.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/opinion/israeli-palestine...
The Churchill who authorized the bombing of Berlin? The Churchill who authorized the bombing of Dresden?
The Lincoln that authorized Sherman's march to the sea with its intentional destruction of civilian areas to break the will of the south to fight?
The Lincoln who suspended habeas corpus?
I think Churchill and Lincoln were far more willing to use force in the service of what they saw as right than people think they were.
I'm not certain those were flaws in forsight, or necessarily even in hindsight. Regardless, those leaders did not preach or lead on the basis of fear, hatred, an ignorance.
> More specifically, it divided attendees into two groups: those who see war as a matter of money and strategy, and those who see it as a matter of death. The vast majority of people there fell into group one.
> I walked out of the panel in a quiet daze.
> It was, frankly, jarring to hear a recent top US official defend Israel’s mass killing of Gazan civilians by invoking wartime massacres that not only preceded the Geneva Conventions, but helped justify their creation.
> On the evening on the first day, Palantir had a social event with free drinks. The only options were two IPAs, and I had one called “the Corruption”. It was, bar none, the worst beverage I’ve had in my entire life.
I stopped reading here about 2/3 of the way through but is this what passes for journalism? What hyperbolic nonsense.
Seriously. What a juvenile way to frame war. War is absolutely about contest and strategy—and yes, money—and it also causes death. It’s always horrible, more horrible than the belligerents imagined at the outset.
But it’s part of reality, like sickness and disease, and while I think we’ll eventually conquer it (as with those) it’s not something everyone can stick their heads in the sand about because it makes them uncomfortable.
This is the opposite of sticking your head in the sand about disease. It's doing something about it, even at personal cost.
That's a strawperson and you know it; IMHO that argument is sticking one's head in the sand to avoid the unconfortable issues raised in the article and by others: Many extreme warmongers are out there now; there's a powerful tide of embracing violence and hate, and we know where that leads.
Sure. But that still violates the author's dichotomy: a hateful warmonger wants death. If you're an amoral war profiteer, your fodder are folks who want death. Dividing the audience into people who care about money only and people who care about death (presumably the good guys in the author's view) makes no sense.
Note that both groups are spread pretty evenly across Israel and Palestine.
I was commenting generally. In respect of the Israel-Hamas war, I agree with your characterisation.
Or the account of how some government and industry leaders regard large-scale death as a profitable enterprise and are entirely unconcerned with ethics or the human cost?
Because the latter point seems highly relevant to good journalism. The first is a matter of style.
The fragments you chose don't sound hyperbolic, they sound like a subjective account. I'm curious how you made it so far without being able to get a feel for why the author would describe the event how they did.