site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

There's no need to talk about the Singularity: current AI models are already powerful enough to be dangerous. (if you had asked a year ago, though...)

Claude Opus helped plan the Venezuela and Iran attacks, and a special version (with less restrictive behaviour) is used in government biology labs. It's so important that the Department of War was flirting with the Defense Production Act to force Anthropic to sell it to them before they went with the Supply Chain Risk designation instead.

Claude Mythos and Project Glasswing found many (thousands?) of serious vulnerabilities in common software. Anthropic chose to patch those bugs instead of exploiting them, but a foreign state wouldn't necessarily do the same. Heck, I don't think the US government would do the same.

Exporting chips to ensure there's an American "tech stack" behind foreign AI isn't quite as bad as exporting centrifuges to ensure there's an American tech stack behind foreign nukes, but it's similar enough to rhyme.

Claude Mythos and Project Glasswing found many (thousands?) of serious vulnerabilities in common software.

My understanding of those "many serious vulnerabilities" is that they're egg fried rice, egg fried noodles, egg fried vermicelli, shrimp fried rice, shrimp fried noodles... It basically boils down to a few categories of serious vulnerability, and the "many thousands" claim is marketing. Correct me if I'm wrong, though.

AI for military planning feels like a bit of a non sequitur. Both in the sense of 'what degree did they contribute' and in the sense of the USA being in a position of such profound advantage in technology and force projection that they could probably get a way with 'Rank these 5 sites in order we should hit them' and have it be a productive question to ask. It's not like AI is gonna bridge the gap and allow a country to suddenly swing way above their weight class