"Burying bad news" is a term for when the government releases unfavorable information at a time when the public is least likely to be paying attention. The two most opportune times to bury bad news are:
- On a Friday afternoon/evening
- During a major competing news event
The US Department of War had complete control of when to time their beat-down of Anthropic. And when did they choose to do it?
- At 5:01pm on a Friday afternoon
- On the eve of their spectacular bombing of Iran
We believe that fully-autonomous lethal weapons systems (aka slaughterbots) are a horrible idea. They open up a fast path to AI apocalypse or AI dystopia, no Superintelligence needed. And the American people agree with us! Why else would the Department of War doubly bury the bad news?
We can't let them bury the bad news. Yesterday, I messaged my Representative and Senators (message below). So did my wife. So did my mom. And so did my brother-in-law. All 3 of them normies when it comes to AI safety! If you are an American, now is an excellent time to tell your elected representatives how you feel, plus encourage your friends and family to as well:
https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member
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Subject: No Terminator bots, and no illegal retaliation
Dear Representative Clark,
The Department of War recently revealed their intention to build Terminator bots and/or spy on Americans. The company Anthropic refused to cooperate with these illegal acts, and now the Department of War is retaliating against Anthropic in illegal and unprecedented ways (no American company has ever been labeled a supply chain risk). Please do whatever you can in Congress to hold the Department of War to the law.
Nice one for taking action!
What was the illegal part? Isn't it just unprecedented?
(Checking partly for my own knowledge and also because it seemed quite central to your call to action to the legislators)
The retaliation against Anthropic by labeling them a supply chain risk is indeed illegal. Congress authorized DoD to label companies as supply chain risks under very specific circumstances - the goal is to prevent foreign adversaries from infiltrating their components into our weapons systems. Hegseth flagrantly abused this power in a contract dispute with an American company. Anthropic has sued, and they will win in court.
In the meantime, the question is whether American companies who do business with both DoD and Anthropic will comply with the illegal decree. Will those companies cut off their business with Anthropic?
Having Congress stand up for the law will strengthen the spines of those companies. That is why I believe contacting your representatives is helpful on the margin.
Cool, makes sense. To be clear, I think contacting representatives is helpful! I wasn't trying to question that.
I don't know anything about the Congress authorisation so will defer on that. I'll just say that if the legality is in dispute rather than unambiguous/settled, then using the word illegal might be counterproductive/polarising, whereas "unprecedented" seems unambiguously true.