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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

It's this simple: Trump is a criminal. Larry Ellison is his pal. Sam Altman has a huge deal for cloud services from Oracle. Trump is using the DoD budget to backstop Ellison's business.

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This is pretty much on the right take on it, although it's much more than that. It's very clear at this point, especially the first conclusion, but people insist in looking to the other side.

Interesting thesis.

But regardless of the moral implications, will this improve America’s position on the global stage or further undermine it?

Only if you think that crime will somehow improve America. My opinion is that this is leading to its collapse, no matter how "powerful" they look.

Attempting to kneecap the breakout front runner of the major American AI companies to ensure the shittier, politically compliant one wins in the short term? Gee I wonder.

Anthropic is great but not the undisputed front runner.

I can also interpret this as Sam and the administration supporting accelerationism while Dario is more measured and wishes to slow things down.

For better or worse, outright nationalization of military related companies is common on a global scale. I plan to do my best to ensure this is a domestic catastrophe, and I hope we'll succeed, but I don't expect other countries to care much about varying levels of regime alignment between two billionaire American defense contractors.

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