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So why would we want them setting policy for the DoD? Laws are enacted through a fundamentally democratic process defined over hundreds of years. Why wouldn’t that be the way to govern use of tools?

Why would we want to trade our constitution for, effectively, “rules Sam Altman came up with”?

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Part of the problem is that due to a combination of the electoral college, gerrymandering, voter supression, propaganda, and Citizens United; America's government is not meaningfully democratic.

Even setting that aside, I don't think that people are saying that they want corporations to make the rules. Rather, what I think they are saying is that they don't want AI to be used for mass surveilance or autonomous weapons and cutting the DoD off at the corporate level is one way to accomplish that.

Voter suppression is not a large scale problem in American (neither is voter fraud.) I would be curious why you mentioned that?

America is an indirect democracy, which isn’t a flaw it’s a design choice. Things like the electoral college still follow a process where the people choose (same with the Supreme Court) it’s just staggered as a system that prioritizes stability over big swings/rapid change.

There’s a strong push right now to mandate voter ID requirements that could block married women from voting (if their last name doesn’t match their birth certificate).

And more stringent ID requirements are discriminatory against the poor, who often don’t have the time and resources to deal with the bureaucracy necessary to do things like travel to retrieve a new copy of their birth certificate.

Recent suppression efforts are documented at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...

College kids in Texas can't vote where they go to school despite living there nine months out of the year. https://thebarbedwire.com/2024/09/06/5-ways-texas-politician...

Native Americans can't vote because they don't have a designated physical address. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-...

Millions of americans don't have the ID they need to vote: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/mill...

Voter suppression is a huge problem.

> Voter suppression is not a large scale problem in American

So you aren’t a person of color who lives in the south I assume? I could also make a couple educated guesses about where you consume news from as well but I’m refrain.

Needless to say, it absolutely is an issue exacerbated by Supreme Court actions pretending it wouldn’t quickly become one.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/its-very-much-a-racial-issue...

Democracy doesn’t work so we should let a tech oligarchy run things? No thanks. I think it works better than that would.

Use its real name, the one orange shitler renamed it to: the department of war.

Why the fuck does the department of war get to dictate anything to a private organization?

Why does the constitution say that you have to let the government murder schoolgirls with your tools?

He doesn’t actually have the authority to rename the department. That would be up to Congress.

Lol. As if a tiny thing like that would stop him. Have you heard about the tariffs? Or starting a war yesterday?

The point is, the name of the DoD is still the Department of Defense. Just like his dumb ass calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America didn't change the fact that it's still the Gulf of Mexico. All it meant is him wasting money on new letterhead to sooth his fragile ego.

The Gulf of Mexico is not a good comparison, because he can rename that with an executive order, at least within the US. No legislation required.

He can make the executive branch call it The Dumpty Bowl if he wants. That doesn't mean he has renamed it. He has zero power outside the executive branch. Fortunately the United States isn't yet ruled by decree.

The names are decided by the United States Board on Geographic Names, which is under the Department of the Interior, which is part of the executive branch. So yeah, he can make them rename it for the US. Sure, you can pedantically say that he can only force the entirety of the federal government to respect the name, and the State governments could refuse to abide by that, but what would be the point? AFAIK none have outright refused. And obviously private citizens can call things whatever the heck they want, though if they get too creative they may have trouble expressing themselves in a way that others will understand.

The point is accuracy. He literally can only mandate the federal government. Everyone else knows it's the Gulf of Mexico in every state in the US and every English speaking country in the world.

I haven't heard of any states bothering to reprint maps. They all know his whole clown show charade will be over in the blink of an eye.

You could pretend he has more power than he does, but what would be the point?

The "funniest" thing about this is that in any other context, this administration absolutely insists that everyone should be called only by their legal name, not any other name that they prefer because they think it better suits their identity.

Calm down, reactionary.

Yes our democratically appointed government gets to tell contractors what to do not vice versa. I’d much rather that than have the contractors run things. You think Blackwater, Lockheed, Mark Zuckerberg should dictate how our military works? Who is the fascist here?

I'm fine with the Dept of Defense deciding the terms of the contract are not acceptable to them and therefore not doing business with Anthropic. Where it becomes very much not okay is when they retaliate against (or coerce) Anthropic by assigning them the supply chain risk designation. This is not telling a contractor what to do, this is attempting to put them out of business.

If they just tell them what to do, then there wouldn't need to be a contract, would there?

Why would you want a duplicitous CEO in charge of your countries terminator systems?

Yes that’s precisely what I’m saying. The government should fully control the systems it buys.

A corporation, according to US law, is considered a "person" and afforded many of the same rights as an individual citizen (https://www.fincen.gov/who-united-states-person).

Even outside of the US, a corporation is widely considered to be a company of people with their own agency and rights.

A person or group of people should be able to set their own boundaries without being subjected to immoral and unjust retaliation, i.e. corporate murder (https://x.com/i/status/2027515599358730315).

Also, ask any frontier model what Pete Hegseth thinks about democracy.

Anthropic is free to set its own boundaries and military is free to say that’s absurd and we’re not buying things we cant control.

Are you going to tell a farmer they are violating John Deere’s rights for boycotting their enshittified tractors?

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