Stalin
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2008
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If you think that AI control of the US arsenal and mass surveillance of US citizens is a great thing, the egregious Hegsteth is your man...
time to re-watch the terminator franchise
"...Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei until Friday evening to grant the military unfettered access to Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence system or face either blacklisting as a “supply chain risk” or compulsion under the Defense Production Act. The ultimatum was delivered in a tense meeting at the Pentagon on Tuesday morning, attended by six senior defense officials, including the department’s top lawyer.
On the same day, Elon Musk’s xAI signed a deal with the Pentagon to deploy its fascistic Grok AI system on classified military networks, thereby breaking Claude’s exclusive position on classified networks. xAI agreed without restriction to an “all lawful purposes” standard, the exact formulation Anthropic has resisted.
The confrontation with Anthropic was triggered by revelations that Claude was used—without Anthropic’s prior knowledge—in the illegal January 3 US military assault on Caracas, Venezuela, in which between 83 and 100 people were killed and President Nicolás Maduro was abducted. As the World Socialist Web Site documented at the time, the assault was the culmination of a long-planned imperialist intervention driven by the US ruling class’s determination to control Venezuelan oil and reassert hegemony over Latin America.
The dispute between Anthropic and the Trump administration is being presented in the corporate media as a clash between “AI safety” and “national security.” In reality, it is a conflict within the American ruling class over the terms under which the technology giants will place their most powerful AI systems at the unrestricted disposal of US imperialism’s wars of aggression.
A senior Defense official told Axios that Tuesday’s meeting was “not warm and fuzzy at all,” with Hegseth telling Amodei he would not allow any company to dictate the terms under which the Pentagon makes operational decisions. The Pentagon’s aggression is driven, paradoxically, by dependency. As one Defense official admitted: “The only reason we’re still talking to these people is we need them and we need them now. The problem for these guys is they are that good.”
Claude is widely regarded as the most capable frontier AI model in the world. Claude Code—Anthropic’s AI coding tool—has transformed software engineering to such a degree that their own head of product, Boris Cherny, recently warned that AI will make 2026 “a painful year” for software engineers, predicting the job title will “start to go away.” Engineers at major firms report AI writing the entirety of their code.
The Pentagon is not threatening Anthropic because it can afford to lose Claude. It is threatening Anthropic precisely because it cannot—because the most powerful AI system on the planet is indispensable to its plans for AI-driven warfare, and because the precedent of any company imposing conditions on the war machine is intolerable to the state.
The strategic context makes this clear. On January 9, 2026, Hegseth released the “Artificial Intelligence Strategy for the Department of War,” committing the Pentagon to becoming an “AI-first warfighting force.” The strategy designates seven “Pace-Setting Projects,” including “Swarm Forge”—AI-enabled autonomous drone swarms—“Agent Network,” described as AI-enabled battle management encompassing campaign planning through “kill chain execution” and “Ender’s Foundry,” AI-driven military simulation. Initial demonstrations are due by July 2026. The Pentagon has a concrete plan for AI-driven warfare and needs the most powerful models to execute it.
The most significant escalation Tuesday was the explicit threat to invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA)—a wartime industrial mobilization law never previously used to compel an AI company to remove safety guardrails. The distinction from the “supply chain risk” designation is critical. Blacklisting is punishment—voiding all Pentagon contracts and forcing every contractor to sever ties with Anthropic. The DPA is compulsion—forcing Anthropic to tailor Claude to the Pentagon’s specifications, overriding the company’s own policies.
comrade stalin
moscow
time to re-watch the terminator franchise
"...Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei until Friday evening to grant the military unfettered access to Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence system or face either blacklisting as a “supply chain risk” or compulsion under the Defense Production Act. The ultimatum was delivered in a tense meeting at the Pentagon on Tuesday morning, attended by six senior defense officials, including the department’s top lawyer.
On the same day, Elon Musk’s xAI signed a deal with the Pentagon to deploy its fascistic Grok AI system on classified military networks, thereby breaking Claude’s exclusive position on classified networks. xAI agreed without restriction to an “all lawful purposes” standard, the exact formulation Anthropic has resisted.
The confrontation with Anthropic was triggered by revelations that Claude was used—without Anthropic’s prior knowledge—in the illegal January 3 US military assault on Caracas, Venezuela, in which between 83 and 100 people were killed and President Nicolás Maduro was abducted. As the World Socialist Web Site documented at the time, the assault was the culmination of a long-planned imperialist intervention driven by the US ruling class’s determination to control Venezuelan oil and reassert hegemony over Latin America.
The dispute between Anthropic and the Trump administration is being presented in the corporate media as a clash between “AI safety” and “national security.” In reality, it is a conflict within the American ruling class over the terms under which the technology giants will place their most powerful AI systems at the unrestricted disposal of US imperialism’s wars of aggression.
A senior Defense official told Axios that Tuesday’s meeting was “not warm and fuzzy at all,” with Hegseth telling Amodei he would not allow any company to dictate the terms under which the Pentagon makes operational decisions. The Pentagon’s aggression is driven, paradoxically, by dependency. As one Defense official admitted: “The only reason we’re still talking to these people is we need them and we need them now. The problem for these guys is they are that good.”
Claude is widely regarded as the most capable frontier AI model in the world. Claude Code—Anthropic’s AI coding tool—has transformed software engineering to such a degree that their own head of product, Boris Cherny, recently warned that AI will make 2026 “a painful year” for software engineers, predicting the job title will “start to go away.” Engineers at major firms report AI writing the entirety of their code.
The Pentagon is not threatening Anthropic because it can afford to lose Claude. It is threatening Anthropic precisely because it cannot—because the most powerful AI system on the planet is indispensable to its plans for AI-driven warfare, and because the precedent of any company imposing conditions on the war machine is intolerable to the state.
The strategic context makes this clear. On January 9, 2026, Hegseth released the “Artificial Intelligence Strategy for the Department of War,” committing the Pentagon to becoming an “AI-first warfighting force.” The strategy designates seven “Pace-Setting Projects,” including “Swarm Forge”—AI-enabled autonomous drone swarms—“Agent Network,” described as AI-enabled battle management encompassing campaign planning through “kill chain execution” and “Ender’s Foundry,” AI-driven military simulation. Initial demonstrations are due by July 2026. The Pentagon has a concrete plan for AI-driven warfare and needs the most powerful models to execute it.
The most significant escalation Tuesday was the explicit threat to invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA)—a wartime industrial mobilization law never previously used to compel an AI company to remove safety guardrails. The distinction from the “supply chain risk” designation is critical. Blacklisting is punishment—voiding all Pentagon contracts and forcing every contractor to sever ties with Anthropic. The DPA is compulsion—forcing Anthropic to tailor Claude to the Pentagon’s specifications, overriding the company’s own policies.
Pentagon gives Anthropic 3 days to drop AI safeguards or face blacklisting
The Trump administration has given Anthropic an ultimatum to remove AI safety restrictions on its Claude model or face blacklisting and compulsion under the Defense Production Act, while simultaneously signing a deal to deploy Elon Musk's fascist Grok AI on classified military networks.
www.wsws.org
comrade stalin
moscow
