I have strong signal that Dario, Jared, and Sam would genuinely burn at the stake before acceding to something that's a) against their values,

I am sure you think they are better than the average startup executive, but such hyperbole puts the objectivity of your whole judgement under question.

They pragmatically changed their views of safety just recently, so those values for which they would burn at the stake are very fluid.

I think avg(HN) is mostly skeptical about the output, not that the input is corrupt or ill-meaning in this case. Although with other companies, one can't even take their claims seriously.

And in any case, this is difficult territory to navigate. I would not want to be in your spot.

It’s hard to take your comment at face value when there’s documented proof to the contrary. Maybe it could be forgiven as a blunder if revealed in the first few months and within the first handful of employees… but after 2 plus years and many dozens forced to sign that… it’s just not credible to believe it was all entirely positive motivations.

I's enheartening to see that leaders at Anthropic are willing to risk losing their seat at the table to be guided by values.

I'm concerned that the context of the OP implies that they're making this declaration after they've already sold products. It specifically mentions already having products in classified networks. This is the sort of thing that they should have made clear before that happened. It's admirable (no pun intended) to have moral compunctions about how the military uses their products but unless it was already part of their agreement (which i very much doubt) they are not entitled them to countermand the military's chain of command by designing a product to not function in certain arbitrarily-designated circumstances.

[1]: https://www.axios.com/2026/01/20/anthropic-ceo-admodei-nvidi...

(1) this is a wildly unpopular and optically bad deal

(2) it's a high data rate deal--lots of tokens means bad things for Anthropic. Users which use their product heavily are costing more than they pay.

(3) it's a deal which has elements that aren't technically feasible, like LLM powered autonomous killer robots...

then it makes a whole lot of sense for Anthropic to wiggle out of it. Doing it like this they can look cuddly, so long as the Pentagon walks away and doesn't hit them back too hard.

What I don't get though is, why did the so-called "Department of War" target Anthropic specifically? What about the others, esp. OpenAI? Have they already agreed to cooperate? or already refused? Why aren't they part of this?

Many groups that are driven by ideals have still committed horrible acts.

Sometimes, it's even a very odd prerequisite.

No sane person wants to become a legitimate military target. They want to sleep in their own beds, at home, without risking their families lives. Just like the rest of us.

After 20 years of everyone in this industry saying "we want to make the world a better place" and doing the opposite, the problem here is not really related to people's "understanding".

And before the default answer kicks in: this is not cynicism. Plenty of folks here on HN and elsewhere legitimately believe that it's possible to do good with tech. But a billion dollar behemoth with great PR isn't that.

Why would I care. All people with at least some positive or negative notoriety have friend and associates that will, hand to their heart, promise that they mean well. They have the best intentions. And any deviations from their stated ideals are just careful pragmatic concerns.

Road to Hell and all that.

Yeah, I totally see Anthropic execs defending them to their last dollar in the wallet. Par for the course for megacorps. It's just I personally don't value those values at all.

So what core values led "Dario, Jared, and Sam" to work with a government that just tried to rename the DoD to "department of war" and is acting aggressively imperialist in a way like the US hasn't in a long time.

And who exactly are these "autocratic adversaries" they are mentioning? Does this list include the autocrats the US government is working together with?

Something I don't think is well understood on HN is how driven by ideals many folks at Anthropic are, even if the company is pragmatic about achieving their goals.

Jonah Goldberg (speaking of foreign policy): "you've got to be idealistic about the ends and ruthlessly realistic about means."

https://notdivided.org

But the final decisions made usually depend on the incentive structures and mental models of their leaders. Those can be quite different...

When the mass surveillance scandal, or first time a building with 100 innocent people get destroyed by autonomous AI, the company that built is gonna get blamed.

I mean if you sign a contract with the Department of War, what on Earth did you think was going to happen?

Glad to hear you say some moral convictions are held at one of the big labs (even if, as you say, this doesn't guarantee good outcomes).

I really don't buy any moral or value arguments from this new generation of tycoons. Their businesses have been built on theft, both to train their models and by robbing the public at large. All this wave of AI is a scourge on society.

Just by calling them "department of war" you know what side they're on. The side of money.

I's enheartening to see that leaders at Anthropic are willing to risk losing their seat at the table to be guided by values.

Their "Values":

We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner.

Read: They are cool with whatever.

We support the use of AI for lawful foreign intelligence and counterintelligence missions.

Read: We support spying on partner nations, who will in turn spy on us using these tools also, providing the same data to the same people with extra steps.

Partially autonomous weapons, like those used today in Ukraine, are vital to the defense of democracy. Even fully autonomous weapons (those that take humans out of the loop entirely and automate selecting and engaging targets) may prove critical for our national defense. But today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons.

Read: We are cool fully autonomous weapons in the future. It will be fine if the success rate goes above an arbitrary threshold. Its not the targeting of foreign people that we are against, its the possibility of costly mistakes that put our reputation at risk. How many people die standing next to the correct target is not our concern.

Its a nothingburger. These guys just want to keep their own hands slightly clean. There's not an ounce of moral fibre in here. Its fine for AI to kill people as long as those people are the designated enemies of the dementia ridden US empire.

I have strong signal that Dario, Jared, and Sam would genuinely burn at the stake before acceding to something that's a) against their values, and b) they think is a net negative in the long term.

Sure, but what happens when the suits eventually take over? (see Google)

I have strong signal that Dario, Jared, and Sam would genuinely burn at the stake before acceding to something that's a) against their values, and b) they think is a net negative in the long term. (Many others, too, they're just well-known.)

This is a nice strawman, but it means nothing in the long run. People's values change and they often change fast when their riches are at stake. I have zero trust in anyone mentioned here because their "values" are currently at odds with our planet (in numerous facets). If their mission was to build sustainable and ethical AI I'd likely have a different perspective. However, Anthropic, just like all their other Frontier friends, are accelerating the burn of our planet exponentially faster and there's no value proposition AI doesn't currently solve for outside of some time savings, in general. Again, it's useful, but it's also not revolutionary. And it's being propped up incongruently with its value to society and its shareholders. Not that I really care about the latter...

"You either die the good guy or live long enough to become the bad guy"

The "bad guy" actually learns that their former good guy mentality was too simplistic.

But I do think that most people who are making the important decisions at Anthropic are well-intentioned, driven by values, and are genuinely motivated by trying to make the transition to powerful AI to go well.

in which case, these people will necessarily have to be the first to go, I suppose, once the board decides enough is enough.

Refusing to do things that go against "company values" even if they risk damaging the company, isn't exceptional circumstances; it's the very definition of "company values".

But if those values aren't "company" values but "personal" values, then you can be sure there's always going to be someone higher up who isn't going to be very appreciative once "personal" values start risking "company" damage.

Everyone try to make changes move so it goes well, for some party. If someone want to serve best interest of humanity at whole, they don't sell services to an evil administration, even less to it's war department.

Too bad there is not yet an official ministry of torture and fear, protecting democracy from the dangerous threats of criminal thoughts. We would be given a great lesson of public relations on how virtuous it can be in the long term to provide them efficient services, certainly.

which is left under the article: "Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War"

:)

I have strong signal that Dario, Jared, and Sam would genuinely burn at the stake before acceding to something that's a) against their values, and b) they think is a net negative in the long term. (Many others, too, they're just well-known.)

I very much doubt it judging by their actions, but let's assume that's cognitive dissonance and engage for a minute.

What are those values that you're defending?

Which one of the following scenarios do you think results in higher X-risk, misuse risk, (...) risk?

- 10 AIs running on 10 machines, each with 10 million GPUs

OR

- 10 million AIs running on 10 million machines, each with 10 GPUs

All of the serious risk scenarios brought up in AI safety discussions can be ameliorated by doing all of the research in the open. Make your orgs 100% transparent. Open-source absolutely everything. Papers, code, weights, financial records. Start a movement to make this the worldwide social norm, and any org that doesn't cooperate is immediately boycotted then shut down. And stop the datacenter build-up race.

There are no meaningful AI risks in such a world, yet very few are working towards this. So what are your values, really? Have you examined your own motivations beneath the surface?

how driven by ideals many folks at $Corporatron are

Well let's see... it says in the post:

    * worked proactively to deploy our models to the Department of War and the intelligence community. 

    * the first frontier AI company to deploy our models in the US government’s classified networks, 

    * the first to deploy them at the National Laboratories, and 

    * the first to provide custom models for national security customers. 

    * extensively deployed across the Department of War and other national security agencies

    * offered to work directly with the Department of War on R&D to improve the reliability of these systems

    * accelerating the adoption and use of our models within our armed forces to date.

    * never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner.

Something I don't think is well understood on HN is how driven by ideals many folks at Anthropic are

I don't think you understand how capitalism and corporations work, friend. Even if Anthropic is a public benefit corporation it still exists in the USA and will be placed under extensive pressure to generate a profit and grow. Corporations are designed to be amoral and history has shown that regardless of their specific legal formulation they all eventually revert to amoral growth driven behavior.

This is structural and has nothing to do with individuals.

Literally just giving business away. This is not a cynical take, this is a realistic one.

This would be like agreeing to have your phone regularly checked by your spouse and citing the need for fidelity on principle. No one would like that, no smart person would agree to that, and anyone with any sense or self-respect would find another spouse to "work with".

They will simply go to another vendor... Anthropic is not THAT far ahead.

Also, the US’s enemies are not similarly restricted. /eyeroll

Palmer Luckey ("peace through superior firepower") is the smart one, here. Dario Amodei ("peace through unilateral agreement with no one, to restrict oneself by assuming guilt of business partners until innocence is proven") is not.

Anthropic could have just done what real spouses do. Random spot checks in secret, or just noticing things. >..<

And if a betrayal signal is discovered, simply charge more and give less, citing suspicious activity…

… since it all goes through their servers.

Honestly, I'm glad that they're principled. The problem is that 1) most people in general are, so to assume the opposite is off-putting; 2) some people will always not be. And the latter will always cause you trouble if you don't assert dominance as the "good guy", frankly.

I's enheartening to see that leaders at Anthropic are willing to risk losing their seat at the table to be guided by values.

They are the deepest in bed with the department of war, what the fuck are you on about? They sit with Trump, they actively make software to kill people.

What a weird definition of "enheartening" you have.

leaders at Anthropic are willing to risk losing their seat at the table

Hot take: Dario isn’t risking that much. Hegseth being Hegseth, he overplayed his hand. Dario is calling his bluff.

Contract terminations are temporary. Possibly only until November. Probably only until 2028 unless the political tide shifts.

Meanwhile, invoking the Defense Production Act to seize Anthropic’s IP basically triggers MAD across American AI companies—and by extension, the American capital markets and economy—which is why Altman is trying to defuse this clusterfuck. If it happens it will be undone quickly, and given this dispute is public it’s unlikely to happen at all.

driven by values

So what? Every business is driven by values.

It is a horrible and ruthless company and hearing a presumably rich ex-employee painting a rosy picture does not change anything.

guided by values

driven by values

well-intentioned

What values? What intentions? These people grin and laugh while talking about AI causing massive disruptions to livelihoods on a global scale. At least one of them has even gone so far as to make jokes about AI killing all humans at some point in the future.

These people are at the very least sociopaths and I think psychopaths would be a better descriptor. They're doing everything in their power to usher in the Noahide new world order / beast system and it's couldn't be more obvious to anyone that has been paying attention.

It's also amusing they talk about democratic values and America in the same sentence. Every single one of our presidents, sans Van Buren, is a descendant of King John Lackland of England. We have no chain of custody for our votes in 2026 - we drop them into an electronic machine and are told they are factored into the equation of who will be the next president. Pretending America is a democracy is a ruse - we are not. Our presidents are hand-picked and selected, not elected. Anyone saying otherwise is ill informed or lying.

Of all major LLMs, Claude is perhaps the most closed and, subjectively, the most biased. Instead of striving for neutrality, Anthropic leadership's main concern is to push their values down people's throats and to ensure consistent bias in all their models.

I have a feeling they see themselves more as evangelists than scientists.

That makes their models unusable for me as general AI tools and only useful for coding.

If their biases match yours, good for you, but I'm glad we have many open Chinese models taking ground, which in the long run makes humanity more resistant to propaganda.