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The Anthropic C-suite needs to rewatch Oppenheimer.
More details are emerging regarding the US Government's decision to impose defense export controls on Claude Fable. There are lots of similarities between this kerfuffle and the February Supply Chain Risk designation. Somehow, Anthropic executives still don't understand the language of power and government. It's not hard. All they need to do is watch Oppenheimer (and pay attention this time). If they still can't figure it out, here is my cheat sheet:
If you are working on sufficiently powerful technology with dual-use applications, then you work for the War Department. There is no option for you to continue your preferred work while licensing only peaceful civilian applications of your product.
If you piss off the wrong person, you're screwed. Some people will see defeating you as a stepping stone to greater power and influence. Some people will work to destroy you simply out of spite.
Anthropic has scientific geniuses, Anthropic has an Oppenheimer, but does Anthropic have a General Groves? How far do you think Oppenheimer would have gotten without General Groves?
If you are trying to convince the government that you are not a security risk, do not hire people like this and present them as neutral experts. (No seriously, what the actual fuck were they thinking?)
You don't get to decide what counts as a security risk and what doesn't. That is the job of the government and the political process.
The president does not care about your ethical concerns. You think you know how much he doesn't care, but he actually cares much less than that.
If you aren't okay with the government using your technology, then don't build it. Isidor Rabi said no. You can say no too.
Trump is 80 years old and is literally brain damaged. He's falling asleep in the Oval Office on camera and has leukemia or something bruising his hand. Why do people continue to worship this fat orange clown? He is dumb and belongs in the nursing home not the White House. The United States is a fake joke country.
Because even taking all of that impotent screed as a given, he still outperforms pretty much all of the rest of our expert class.
How much more pathetic are the rest of them then?
How much sillier a joke the other nations of the world?
As a member of the expert class (in the broadest sense), I must object. Trump is not one of us. He does not deal in facts, he deals in narratives. Few people are prouder than he is of his ignorance.
Nor is it clear that he outperforms anyone, let alone the experts. I mean, MAHA did more for measles awareness than the CDC ever did before, but that was likely not intentional. The medicine Nobel for the Paracetamol-autism link is yet another one which the woke Scandinavians deny him.
Free trade is what made the US the economic powerhouse it is today, but perhaps Trump can outperform the free market with his tariffs.
To an outside observer, the Iranian thing looks pretty bad -- botched coup, expensive air war, antagonizing rather than decapitating the regime, etc. But sure, there is a chance that the deal he will make will be much better than the Obama deal and he will get the war Nobel.
You are ahistoric and wrong. Free trade has always been controversial, has been fiercely contested by different regions, and furthermore, what really made the US a powerhouse is not free trade with foreign nations but free trade between its member states.
If you want free trade with the US, apply for membership.
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So do most of the rest of you. The difference is, Trump's narrative is simple enough to still have a relationship with basic observable reality. Half of your class doesn't know what a woman is.
Worse - they quite transparently pretend not to know.
I agree. If a group of transactivists were going up against a group of Republican politicians on a knowledge test of female anatomy and physiology, I would bet on the transactivists. They know exactly what a woman (in the ordinary English sense of the word) is - they just don't know what the word "woman" means.
I actually think this is true across a lot of topics. I observe that leftists generally have a better intuition for beauty than conservatives do -- because liberals know exactly what to deface. I.e., if we participate in a body-positivity movement with slogans like "Health At Every Size," we all know which sizes are being promoted. You don't have to promote that it's ok to be healthy and fit. Likewise the climate genocide paint-throwers will try to deface Van Gogh and Leonardo, not Piss Christ.
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