OpenAI agrees with Dept. of War to deploy models in their classified network

https://twitter.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175

by eoskx • 5 months ago

1407 642 5 months ago

https://xcancel.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175

https://fortune.com/2026/02/27/openai-in-talks-with-pentagon...

verdverm• 5 months ago

If the "safety stack" (guardrails) bit is true, it's the exact opposite of their beef with Anthropic... which is not surprising given who's running the US right now.

I always assumed those folks need a way to look strong with their base for a media moment over equitable application of the policies or law.

eoskx• 5 months ago

"Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network.

In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome.

AI safety and wide distribution of benefits are the core of our mission. Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.

We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the DoW also wanted. We will deploy FDEs to help with our models and to ensure their safety, we will deploy on cloud networks only.

We are asking the DoW to offer these same terms to all AI companies, which in our opinion we think everyone should be willing to accept. We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements.

We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can. The world is a complicated, messy, and sometimes dangerous place."

moogly• 5 months ago

We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can.

Serve Palestinians volleys of rockets, that is.

jordanscales• 5 months ago

This is awkward? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47188473

BoiledCabbage• 5 months ago

So they agreed to the exact same clauses that Anthropic put forward but with OpenAI instead?

So it wasn't about those principles making them a supply chain risk? They're just trying to punish Anthropic for being the first ones to stand firm on those principles?

yoyohello135• 5 months ago

I’m sure a big donor just used the US gov as a bludgeon to destroy their competition

Jensson2• 5 months ago

Anthropic would probably not renegotiate in a year about the principles, while Sam Altman is known to be morally flexible so OpenAI will almost surely allow the military to do what they want in the future. Sam Altman might even have said behind closed doors that these restrictions will be removed once the drama has died down.

small_model• 5 months ago

What principals do Anthropic have?, they happily build a product and acknowledge it will lead to the loss of millions of jobs, particularly SWE's first, but shrug and say 'nothing we can do, we just build the thing', that will kill a lot of people.

push0ret• 5 months ago

So they agreed to the same red lines that had earlier led to the fallout with Anthropic? Kind of strange.

fintechie• 5 months ago

Well you know how it goes... you need to read between the lines. I can agree with you on your "principles", but not enforce them myself.

yoyohello135• 5 months ago

Sam saw Anthropic was getting too competitive. So he called his buddies in the gov to knock them down a peg.

Analemma_3• 5 months ago

For sure, he's been pissed that OpenAI no longer has the Mandate of Heaven and Claude is all anyone has been talking about since December. (And it's not just an ego thing: because OAI isn't profitable yet, they need the hype to keep going to raise money on favorable terms, so loss of buzz is an existential threat). I absolutely believe that he started making calls to try and get buddies in the White House to take Anthropic down.

coliveira6• 5 months ago

That's very possible! In the last few days Anthropic was getting a lot of attention, and OpenAI was looking weaker in comparison. It seems like a politically coordinated job to remove competition.

lathgan• 5 months ago

Follow the money. There is a UAE sheik who bought 49% of Trump's World Liberty and is involved in OpenAI's Project Stargate:

https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/35909013656801

I'm sure more will drop in the coming months.

harmonic183743• 5 months ago

I don't trust Sam to be telling the truth. It would be to his benefit to lie about this and make Anthropic look bad, so he of course would, even if it's not actually the case.

Jackson__• 5 months ago

Hell, I would have thought it likely that anthropic was doing the same thing. Of course that was proven wrong, but for OAI I wouldn't even be guessing. This has always been what sama does.

arppacket2• 5 months ago

I bet Sam secretly pledged to DoD that the red lines were only temporary, for optics and to calm employees at the all hands meeting.

A few months down the line, OpenAI will quietly decide that their next model is safe enough for autonomous weapons, and remove their safeguard layer. The mass surveillance enablement might be an indirect deal through Palantir.

coliveira6• 5 months ago

Very possible, double speaking is Sam Altman's specialty.

fatal94• 5 months ago

The fact they were able to strike a deal in the first place hours after Anthropic was declared a supply chain risk should make this obvious. Their employees are smart people, the only way they can reason past this is their compensation.

foobarqux• 5 months ago

No, the difference is that the government agrees to no "unlawful" use as determined by the government.

Anthropic said that mass surveillance was per se prohibited even if the government self-certified that it was lawful.

fwlr• 5 months ago

It makes sense if you imagine the real motivation is “make sure the AI contracts go to my good friend Sam”, and all the red line stuff is just a way to pick a fight with Anthropic.

deaux• 5 months ago

All OpenAI employees during the board revolt that vouched for sama's return are personally responsible.

swat535• 5 months ago

OpenAI employees revolted for their millions worth of stock, not for principle.

Anyone thinking they have any virtue is naive.

rich_sasha• 5 months ago

Is the Pentagon signing a EULA confirming all their data will now be used, anonymised, for improving the service?

wmf• 5 months ago

Obviously not? You know enterprise customers don't have the same EULA as consumers, right?

robertwt7• 5 months ago

How did they agree to the terms that were initially put forward by Anthropic but with OpenAI? Surely there’s a catch here. Or is it just Sam negotiation skill?

jackyli02• 5 months ago

SA is a real weasel lol. Acted like he stood behind Anthropic's principles just to announce the deal with DoW a few hours later.

MGriisser• 5 months ago

Sam Altman not being consistently candid or truthful would be the shock of the century.

Imnimo2• 5 months ago

I don't see how OpenAI employees who have signed the We Will Not Be Divided letter can continue their employment there in light of this. Surely if OpenAI had insisted upon the same things that Anthropic had, the government would not have signed this agreement. The only plausible explanation is that there is an understanding that OpenAI will not, in practice, enforce the red lines.

tempaccount420• 5 months ago

Didn't the safety-conscious employees already leave when OpenAI fired Sam Altman and then re-hired him?

In my mind the only people left are those who are there for the stocks.

AbstractH245• 5 months ago

In all seriousness, what’s the average tenure at OpenAI and how much of the company in March 2026 was even around for that?

DANmode• 5 months ago

Review the signers https://notdivided.org

bobanrocky• 5 months ago

And h1 slaves

vineyardmike• 5 months ago

Nah. It's possible that the agreement still supports the required terms.

There is more to this story behind the scenes. The government wanted to show power and control over our companies and industries. They didn’t need those terms for any specific utility, they wanted to fight “woke” business that stood up to them.

Supposedly OpenAI had the same terms as Anthropic (according to SamA). Maybe they offered it cheaper and that’s why they agreed. Maybe it’s all the lobbying money from OpenAI that let the government look the other way. Maybe it’s all the PR announcements SamA and Trump do together.

SpicyLemonZest7• 5 months ago

Maybe Sam Altman said nicer things about Donald Trump. Maybe he promised that he would not revoke their API keys when Hegseth directs the military to seize ballots. Maybe he's jockeying for position to take over the government when AGI hits.

Ultimately, I don't know how much the specific reasons matter. Pete Hegseth must be removed from office, OpenAI must be destroyed for their betrayal of the US public, that's all there is to it.

jeffbee• 5 months ago

It's this simple: Trump is a criminal. Larry Ellison is his pal. Sam Altman has a huge deal for cloud services from Oracle. Trump is using the DoD budget to backstop Ellison's business.

harmonic183743• 5 months ago

I prescribe literally zero truth value to what Sam says. He will say whatever he needs to get ahead. It is honestly irritating to me that you and many others here seem to implicitly assume his messages are correlated with truth, doing his social engineering work for him, as if his word should adjust your priors even slightly.

I don't necessarily think he's lying, but there's so much obvious incentive for him to lie here (if only because his employees can save face).

Imnimo2• 5 months ago

None of those explanations are compatible with the pledge of solidarity in the We Will Not Be Divided letter.

sigmar• 5 months ago

Supposedly OpenAI had the same terms

"we put them into our agreement." is strange framing is Altman's tweet. Makes me think the agreement does mention the principles, but doesn't state them as binding rules DoD must follow.

pseudalopex4• 5 months ago

Supposedly OpenAI had the same terms as Anthropic (according to SamA).

He said human responsibility. Anthropic said human in the loop.

And Anthropic refused to say any lawful purpose would be allowed reportedly.

coliveira6• 5 months ago

Yes, what is implied in this episode is that all big companies that do AI development or provide computing for Ai are now signing for these very shady uses of their technologies.

granzymes• 5 months ago

Surely if OpenAI had insisted upon the same things that Anthropic had, the government would not have signed this agreement.

Have we been watching the same Trump admin for the last year? That sound exactly like something the government would do: pointlessly throw a fit and end up signing a worse deal after blowing up all political capital.

davidw3• 5 months ago

They seem moderately competent at doing blatant corruption ( https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/official-trump/ , Qatari jet, etc...). See jeffbee's comment below.

unethical_ban• 5 months ago

While that thought crossed my mind, someone in a sub thread of parent comment made a point: OpenAI made a statement about how "We insisted this be not be used in those ways and DoD totally says they won't". Which sounds to me like they ceded any hard terms oand conditions and are letting the DoD use it in "any lawful means" which is what Anthropic didn't stand for.

arugulum2• 5 months ago

Surely if OpenAI had insisted upon the same things that Anthropic had, the government would not have signed this agreement.

But they did.

"Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement."

newguytony• 5 months ago

Good ole Sammy has never lied

fooker2• 5 months ago

Unrelated, but want to buy a bridge?

You could recoup your investment in a year by collecting toll. Expedited financing available on good credit!

WD-42• 5 months ago

I'm sure it's a matter of interpretation. Anthropic thinks the DoW's demands will lead to mass surveillance and auto-kill bots. The DoW probably disagrees with that interpretation, and all OpenAI needs to do is agree with the DoW.

My bet is that what the DoW wants is pretty clearly tied to mass surveillance and kill-bots. Altman is a snake.

propagandist3• 5 months ago

Human responsibility is not the same as human decision making.

And they are crossing the picket line, which honestly I was sure they would do, though I did expect it to take a bit longer.

This is too transparent even for sama.

layer85• 5 months ago

The difference is that Anthropic wanted to reserve the right to judge when the red lines are crossed, while OpenAI will defer to the DoD and its policies for that. In both cases, the two parties can claim to agree on the principles, but when push comes to shove, who decides on whether the principles are violated differs.

khalic3• 5 months ago

Anthropic has safeguards baked in the model, this is the only way to make sur it's harder for the DOJ to misuse it. A pinky swear from the DoD means nothing

outside12347• 5 months ago

All of us can act too. Stop using the OpenAI models. Stop using the app. Design in other models no matter what. Screw these guys.

foo12bar• 5 months ago

Do you expect that to work?

hirvi74• 5 months ago

The only plausible explanation is that there is an understanding that OpenAI will not, in practice, enforce the red lines.

Do you mean the same OpenAI that has a retired U.S. Army General & former director of the NSA (Gen. Nakasone) serving on its board of directors?

2snakes• 5 months ago

I think it is like a loyalty test to an authority above the law (executive immunity) in order to do business. “If we tell you to do so, you may do something you thought was right or wrong.” It is like an induction into a faction and the way the decisions could be made. Doesn’t necessarily mean anything about “in practice in the future”, just that the cybernetic override is there tacitly. If the authority thinks they can get away with something, they will provide protection for consequences too. Some people more equal than others when it comes to justice for all, etc. There are probably alternative styles for group decision making…

tedsanders3• 5 months ago

I'm an OpenAI employee and I'll go out on a limb with a public comment. I agree AI shouldn't be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons. I also think Anthropic has been treated terribly and has acted admirably. My understanding is that the OpenAI deal disallows domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, and that OpenAI is asking for the same terms for other AI companies (so that we can continue competing on the basis of differing services and not differing scruples). Given this understanding, I don't see why I should quit. If it turns out that the deal is being misdescribed or that it won't be enforced, I can see why I should quit, but so far I haven't seen any evidence that's the case.

mathisfun123• 5 months ago

Given this understanding, I don't see why I should quit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning

pear01• 5 months ago

Why would you believe that? If that were the case what was the issue with Anthropic even about?

You, and your colleagues, should resign.

phs318u• 5 months ago

Thank you for responding. Everyone wants to think they will “do the right thing” when their own personal Rubicon is challenged. In practice, so many factors are at play, not least of which are the other people you may be responsible for. The calculus of balancing those differing imperatives is only straightforward for those that have never faced this squarely. I’ve been marched out of jobs twice for standing up for what I believed to be right at the time. Am still literally blacklisted (much to the surprise of various recruiters) at a major bank here 8 years after the fact. I can’t imagine that the threat of being blacklisted from a whole raft of companies contracting with a known vindictive regime would make the decision easier.

baconner2• 5 months ago

Respectfully, it's very hard to see how anyone could look at what just happened and come to the conclusion that one company ends up classed a "supply chain risk" while another agrees the the same terms that led to that. Either the terms are looser, they're not going to be enforced, or there's another reason for the loud attempt to blacklist Anthropic. It's very difficult to see how you could take this at face value in any case. If it is loose terms or a wink agreement to not check in on enforcement you're never going to be told that. We can imagine other scenerios where the terms stated were not the real reason for the blacklisting, but it's a real struggle (at least for me) to find an explanation for this deal that doesn't paint OpenAI in a very ethically questionable light.

ChadNauseam3• 5 months ago

Did Sam Altman say that he wouldn't allow ChatGPT to be used for fully autonomous weapons? (Not quite the same as "human responsibility for use of force".)

I don't want to overanalyze things but I also noticed his statement didn't say "our agreement specifically says chatgpt will never be used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance." It said something that kind of gestured towards that, but it didn't quite come out and say it. It says "The DoW agrees with these principles, and we put them in our agreement." Could the principles have been outlined in a nonbinding preamble, or been a statement of the DoW's current intentions rather than binding their future behavior? You should be very suspicious when a corporate person says something vague that somewhat implies what you want to hear - if they could have told you explicitly what you wanted to hear, they would have.

But anyway, it doesn't matter. You said you don't think it should be used for autonomous weapons. I'd be willing to bet you 10:1 that you'll never find altman saying anything like "our agreement specifically says chatgpt will never be used for fully autonomous weapons", now or any point in the future.

retornam• 5 months ago

I have a bridge to Brooklyn to sell you if you believe this.

Standing up for whats right often is not easy and involves hard choices and consequences, your leader has shown you and the world that he is not to be trusted.

I can't tell you what to do but I hope you make the right decision.

throwawaywd89e• 5 months ago

"AI shouldn't be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons". The statement from OpenAI virtually guarantees that the intention is to use it for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. If this wasn't the intention them the qualifier "domestic" wouldn't be used, and they would be talking about "human in the loop" control of autonomous weapons, not "human responsibility" which just means there's someone willing to stand up and say, "yep I take responsibility for the autonomous weapon systems actions", which lets be honest is the thinnest of thin safety guarantees.

kaashif• 5 months ago

Anthropic is deemed a betrayer and a supply chain risk for actually enforcing their principles.

OpenAI agrees to be put in the same position as Anthropic.

It seems like you must actually somehow believe that history will repeat itself, Hegseth will deem OpenAI a supply chain risk too, then move to Grok or something?

There's surely no way that's actually what you believe...

trvz• 5 months ago

You may have missed that no single word said or written by any of the current US government’s members can be believed.

scarmig2• 5 months ago

Why do you suppose OpenAI's deal led to a contract, while Anthropic's deal (ostensibly containing identical terms) gets it not only booted but declared a supply chain risk?

segmondy2• 5 months ago

You can't be this naive?

tfehring• 5 months ago

(Disclosure, I'm a former OpenAI employee and current shareholder.)

I have two qualms with this deal.

First, Sam's tweet [0] reads as if this deal does not disallow autonomous weapons, but rather requires "human responsibility" for them. I don't think this is much of an assurance at all - obviously at some level a human must be responsible, but this is vague enough that I worry the responsible human could be very far out of the loop.

Second, Jeremy Lewin's tweet [1] indicates that the definitions of these guardrails are now maintained by DoW, not OpenAI. I'm currently unclear on those definitions and the process for changing them. But I worry that e.g. "mass surveillance" may be defined too narrowly for that limitation to be compatible with democratic values, or that DoW could unilaterally make it that narrow in the future. Evidently Anthropic insisted on defining these limits itself, and that was a sticking point.

Of course, it's possible that OpenAI leadership thoughtfully considered both of these points and that there are reasonable explanations for each of them. That's not clear from anything I've seen so far, but things are moving quickly so that may change in the coming days.

[0] https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175

[1] https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230

nullocator3• 5 months ago

I don't know you, so maybe you're actually for real and speaking on good faith here but honestly this and your other responses in this thread read exactly like "...salary depends on not understanding"

mmanfrin2• 5 months ago

You can make blood money but you have to be aware it's blood money. Don't delude yourself in to thinking you work for an ethical or moral company.

Griffinsauce2• 5 months ago

Aside from that unlikely read, this deal was still used as a pressure point on Anthropic, there's absolutely no way OpenAI was not used as a stick to hit with during negotiations.

What is your red line?

mattalex• 5 months ago

Assuming this is real: Why do you think anthropic was put on what is essentially an "enemy of the state" list and openai didn't?

The two things anthropic refused to do is mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, so why do _you_ think openai refused and still did not get placed on the exact same list.

It's fine to say "I'm not going to resign. I didn't even sign that letter", but thinking that openai can get away with not developing autonomous weapons or mass surveillance is naive at the very best.

popalchemist• 5 months ago

Why would you trust anything out of Sam's mouth? He's a sociopath. Is that lost on you?

latexr4• 5 months ago

My understanding is that the OpenAI deal disallows domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons

And you believe the US government, let alone the current one will respect that? Why? Is it naïveté or do you support the current regime?

If it turns out that the deal is being misdescribed or that it won't be enforced, I can see why I should quit.

So your logic is your company is selling harmful technology to a bunch of known liars who are threatening to invade democratic countries, but because they haven’t lied yet in this case (for lack of opportunity), you’ll wait until the harm is done and then maybe quit?

I’ll go out on a limb and say you won’t. You seem to be trying really hard to justify to yourself what’s happening so you can sleep at night.

Know that when things go wrong (not if, when), the blood will be on your hands too.

q3k• 5 months ago

Coward.

make3• 5 months ago

insane cope

curiousgal2• 5 months ago

This is not meant as a personal attack but this has got to be the most naive thing I've read.

vimda• 5 months ago

"domestic" "mass" surveillance, two words that can be stretched so thin they basically invalidate the whole term. Mass surveillance on other countries? Guess that's fine. Surveillance on just a couple of cities that happen to be resisting the regime? Well, it's not _mass_ surveillance, just a couple of cities!

bambax2• 5 months ago

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Nekorosu• 5 months ago

I won't trust a word coming from Sam Altman's mouth until I see official signed documents (which I won't).

leptons• 5 months ago

OpenAI deal disallows domestic mass surveillance

And the US Military is forbidden from operating on US soil, but that didn't stop this administration from deploying US Marines to California recently.

You're fooling yourself if you think this administration is following any kind of rule.

virtualritz• 5 months ago

Giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming [1] does not play a role in your thinking:

I don't mean this in any way rude and I apologize if this comes accross as such but believing it won't be used in exactly this way is just naive. History has taught us this lesson again and again and again.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189650#47189970

jdiaz973• 5 months ago

Scam Altman already got community noted btw

mda• 5 months ago

I can totally see why you should quit, but we see different things apparently.

cyanydeez• 5 months ago

Right beautifying lies are always going to head in the direction of doing whats self interested.

syllogism4• 5 months ago

You should quit because the only reasonable thing for your leadership to have done is to refuse to sign any agreement with DoW whatsoever while it's attempting to strongarm Anthropic in this fashion.

It doesn't even matter if OpenAI is offered the same terms that Anthropic refused. It's absurd to accept them and do business with the Pentagon in that situation.

If you take the government at its word, it's killing Anthropic because Anthropic wanted to assert the ability to draw _some_ sort of redline. If OpenAI's position is "well sucks to be them", there's nothing stopping Hegseth from doing the same to OpenAI.

It doesn't matter at all if OpenAI gets the deal at the same redline Anthropic was trying to assert. If at the end of this the government has succeeded in cutting Anthropic off from the economy, what's next for OpenAI? What happens next time when OpenAI tries to assert some sort of redline?

What's the point of any talk of "AI Safety" if you sign on to a regime where Hegseth (of all people) can just demand the keys and you hand them right over?

wjekkekene• 5 months ago

What a joke

sensanaty• 5 months ago

Assuming this isn't a troll and you really think this, you should at least have the cojones to admit you're taking the blood money instead of trying to pretzel the truth so hard that you just look like a moron instead.

_heimdall• 5 months ago

My understanding is that OpenAI's deal, and the deal others are signing, implicitly prevents the use of LLMs for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons because today one care argue those aren't legal and the deal is a blanket for allowing all lawful use.

Today it can't be used for mass surveillance, but the executive branch has all the authority it needs to later deem that lawful if it wishes to, the Patriot Act and others see to that.

Anthropic was making the limits contractually explicit, meaning the executive branch could change the line of lawfulness and still couldn't use Anthropic models for mass surveillance. That is where they got into a fight and that is where OpenAI and others can claim today that they still got the same agreement Anthropic wanted.

wanderlust123• 5 months ago

So its ok as long as its not domestic. Got it

tibbydudeza4• 5 months ago

At the next town hall ask them directly - you making assumptions here.

matkoniecz• 5 months ago

Can you at least stop lying to yourself? Given what they did with Anthropic for not supporting domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons...

My understanding is that the OpenAI deal disallows domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons

Your understanding is entirely wrong. At least stop lying to yourself and admit that you are entirely fine with working on evil things if you are paid enough.

assimpleaspossi• 5 months ago

How would OpenAI respond to China or Russia using OpenAI--or any AI--for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons?

ryan_n• 5 months ago

For the record I don’t care if you quit or not. Cash rules after all… However, you are incredibly naive if you think the current admin will follow through on those terms.

exizt88• 5 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith_(existentialism)

4b11b42• 5 months ago

lol, naive as hell. why would your company's agreement be the same as the one who just refused the _same_ agreement? Even my question doesn't even make sense, this is a contradiction, therefore your statement must be false. There, it's proven

roflburger• 5 months ago

Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

Spooky23• 5 months ago

You work for a company that’s part of the Trump, Ellison, Kutchner orbit of corruption.

Y’all are developing amazing technology. But accept reality and drop whatever sense of moral righteousness you’re carrying here. Not because some asshole on the internet says so, but for your own mental health.

dannyfreeman• 5 months ago

Your work will be used to power an auto aim kill bot. I personally couldn't live with that.

retsibsi5• 5 months ago

My understanding is that the OpenAI deal disallows domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons,

In that case, what on earth just happened?

The government was so intent on amending the Anthropic deal to allow 'all lawful use', at the government's sole discretion, that it is now pretty much trying to destroy Anthropic in retaliation for refusing this. Now, almost immediately, the government has entered into a deal with OpenAI that apparently disallows the two use cases that were the main sticking points for Anthropic.

Do you not see something very, very wrong with this picture?

At the very least, OpenAI is clearly signaling to the government that it can steamroll OpenAI on these issues whenever it wants to. Or do you believe OpenAI will stand firm, even having seen what happened to Anthropic (and immediately moved in to profit from it)?

and that OpenAI is asking for the same terms for other AI companies (so that we can continue competing on the basis of differing services and not differing scruples)

If OpenAI leadership sincerely wanted this, they just squandered the best chance they could ever have had to make it happen! Actual solidarity with Anthropic could have had a huge impact.

thisisit• 5 months ago

Your response is a perfect encapsulation of "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

I think its wrong for someone to ask someone to resign but acting that there is no issue here is debating in bad faith.

rancar2• 5 months ago

The founders are all on a first name basis. I’m surprised no one has noted that Anthropic and OpenAI winning together by giving the world two different choices, just like the US does in its political landscape. In this circumstance, OpenAI wins the local market for its government and aligned entities (while having the free consumer by a matter of cost dynamic for that ideal customer profile which is vary broad and similar to Google’s search audience where most their revenue still depends), while Anthropic is provided the global market and prosumer market where people can afford choice by paying for it.

UncleMeat• 5 months ago

Bad timing to be defending OpenAI's collaboration with the military as it launches an illegal bombing campaign.

datsci_est_2015• 5 months ago

Please read about the imperial boomerang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang

mpalmer5• 5 months ago

Looks to me like you have decided that you are being paid to shut up and take the word of the most thoroughly dishonest and corrupt US government we've yet seen. Why on God's slowly-browning green earth do you trust that Altman got the deal Anthropic was trying for?

fluidcruft• 5 months ago

What people don't understand is that domestic surveillance by the government doesn't happen and isn't needed. They know it's illegal and unpopular and for over two decades they have a loophole. Since the Bush administration it's been arranged for private contractors to do the domestic surveillance on the government's behalf. Entire industries have been built around creating "business records" for no other purpose than to sell them to the government to support domestic surveillance. This is entirely legal and why the DoW has been able to get away with saying things like "domestic surveillance is illegal, we don't do that" for over two decades while simultaneously throwing a shit fit about needing "all legal uses" if their access to domestic surveillance is threatened.

There's a big difference between "the government won't use our tools for domestic surveillance" (DoW/DoD/OpenAI/etc) and "we won't allow anyone to use our tools to support domestic surveillance by the government" (Anthropic)

Hegseth and the current Trump admin are completely incompetent in execution of just about everything but competent administrations (of both parties) have been playing this game for a long time and it's already a lost cause.

chasd00• 5 months ago

#1 weekend HN is not a sane place. #2 emotions are high. #3 for what it’s worth @tedsanders I understand where you’re coming from and I believe you’re making the right choice by staying or at least waiting to make a decision. Don’t let #1 and #2 hurt you emotionally or force you to make a rash decision you later regret.

Edit: I don’t work at OpenAI or in any AI business and my neck is on the chopping block if AI succeeds… like a lot of us. Don’t vilify this guy trying to do what’s right for him given the information he has.

jackmott42• 5 months ago

You are naive, and assisting a fascist regime.

ALittleLight• 5 months ago

This seems like the kind of foolishness it takes a lot of money to believe. Anthropic blew up their contract with the Pentagon over concerns on lethal autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance. OpenAI rushes in to do what Anthropic wouldn't.

If you think that means your company isn't going to be involved in lethal autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance... I don't really know what to tell you. I doubt you really believe that. Obviously you will be involved in that and you are effectively working on those projects now.

outside12347• 5 months ago

Listen, if the Government using it for legit and safe use cases wasn’t an issue, then they wouldn’t have complained about Anthropic’s language. Sam is just looking the other way and pretending for you employees.

Or Sam bribed the government to do this, which is also entirely possible.

andsoitis• 5 months ago

Ted, what do you think of your CEO’s statement: “the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome.”

The evidence seems to overwhelmingly point in the opposite direction.

johnwheeler• 5 months ago

I know the money is good, but if I were you (or any OpenAI employee), I'd move over to Google or Anthropic posthaste.

Is it really worth the long-term risk being associated with Sam Altman when the other firms would willingly take you and probably give you a pay bump to boot?

It doesn't make sense to me why anyone would want to associate themselves with Altman. He is universally distrusted. No one believes anything he says. It's insane to work with a person who PG, Ilya, Murati, Musk have all designated a liar and just general creep.

Defending him or the firms actions instantly makes you look terrible, like you'll gladly take the "Elites vs UBI recipients" his vision propagates.

Shame on you people. What a disgusting vision.

motbus3• 5 months ago

These sort of agreements are easily bypassable, especially on such tools.

Someone might just create a spawn of openai with a tag and do all the stuff there...

There is no much guarantee I think

germandiago• 5 months ago

To me it looks weird that a replacement won't accept Dept of War terms. This was the source of the dispute so...

I do not know but I would not very optimistic about those new terms.

raw_anon_11116• 5 months ago

“ It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

You’re being purposefully niave if you trust any government and especially this government to behave legally or ethically.

Qiu_Zhanxuan• 5 months ago

You're paid to look the other way. At least, own it.

fooker2• 5 months ago

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"

Imustaskforhelp6• 5 months ago

there is a recent post about how one of the top OpenAI exec has given 25 million$ to a Trump PAC before publicly supporting Anthropic/signing this deal.

One got characterized as supply chain risk and so much for OpenAI to get the same.

And even that being said, I can be wrong but if I remember, OpenAI and every other company had basically accepted all uses and it was only Anthropic which said no to these two demands.

And I think that this whole scenario became public because Anthropic denied, I do think that the deal could've been done sneakily if Anthropic wanted.

So now OpenAI taking the deal doesn't help with the fact that to me, it looks like they can always walk back and all the optics are horrendous to me for OpenAI so I am curious what you think.

The thing which I am thinking OTOH is why would OpenAI come and say, hey guys yea we are gonna feed autonomous killing machines. Of course they are gonna try to keep it a secret right before their IPO and you are an employee and you mention walking out of openAI but with the current optics, it seems that you/other employees of OpenAI are also more willing to work because evidence isn't out here but to me, as others have pointed out, it looks like slowly boiling the water.

OpenAI gets to have the cake and eat it too but I don't think that there's free lunch. I simply don't understand why DOD would make such a high mess about Anthropic terms being outrageous and then sign the same deal with same terms with OpenAI unless there's a catch. Only time will tell though how wrong or right I am though.

If I may ask, how transparent is OpenAI from an employees perspective? Just out of curiosity but will you as a employee get informed of if OpenAI's top leadership (Sam?) decided that the deal gets changed and DOD gets to have Autonomous killing machine. Would you as an employee or us as the general public get information about it if the deal is done through secret back doors. Snowden did show that a lot of secret court deals were made not available to public until he whistleblowed but not all things get whistleblowed though, so I am genuinely curious to hear your thoughts.

jacquesm3• 5 months ago

I don't see why I should quit.

So, can you please draw the line when you will quit?

- If OpenAI deal allows domestic mass surveillance - If OpenAI allows the development of autonomous weapons - OpenAI no longer asks for the same terms for other AI companies

Correct?

If so, then if I take your words at face value:

- By your reading non-domestic mass surveillance is fine

- The development of AI based weapons is fine as long as there is one human element in there, even if it could be disabled and then the weapon would work without humans involved

- The day that OpenAI asks for the same terms for other AI companies and if those terms are not granted then that's also fine, because after all, they did ask.

I have become extremely skeptical when seeing people whose livelihood depends on a particular legal entity come out with precise wording around what does and does not constitute their red line but I find it fascinating nonetheless so if you could humor me and clarify I'd be most obliged.

weatherlite• 5 months ago

I don't see how OpenAI employees who have signed the We Will Not Be Divided letter can continue their employment there in light of this

Well some may voluntarily leave, some will be actively poached by Anthropic perhaps and some I suppose will stay in their jobs because leaving isn't an easy decision to make.

latexr4• 5 months ago

some I suppose will stay in their jobs because leaving isn't an easy decision to make.

Anyone who chooses to stay shouldn’t have signed the letter. What’s the point of doing it if you’re not going to follow through? If you signed the letter and don’t leave after the demands aren’t met, you’re a liar and a coward and are actively harming every signatory of every future letter.

ivan_gammel• 5 months ago

Another plausible explanation that is familiar to a lot of people in other countries is banal corruption. Kick out one competitor on bogus allegations, then on the next day invite another one… what else that could be?

miohtama• 5 months ago

OpenAI is already doing mass surveillance, so nothing changes

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/21/tumbler-ridge-...

chpatrick• 5 months ago

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

no_wizard• 5 months ago

For all I know Sam Altman orchestrated this via well timed donations and whatever the hell contacts he has in government, Trump specifically seems to have taken the man

So using Anthropic’s own words to cover a power play or pulling relationships to see if they could get anthropic to balk at it.

the_real_cher4• 5 months ago

Have you seen the size of OpenAi employees comp?

Woolad theyll create the autonomous military robots themselves for that check.

vander_elst2• 5 months ago

I don't see how OpenAI employees who have signed the We Will Not Be Divided letter can continue their employment [...]

Sometimes money is more attractive than morality. So I guess money is the answer here.

4ndrewl• 5 months ago

This is not a turning point. This is the destination. Were you onboard the wrong train?

KellyCriterion• 5 months ago

The ones who signed are not the same as the ones who didnt sign and continue to work there, Id guess?

shevy-java2• 5 months ago

Makes sense.

lazide2• 5 months ago

I few will leave. Most will look nervously at their (non-public) stock and their bank accounts, and continuing keeping on.

garyclarke27• 5 months ago

I would not discount how much of a factor, irrational human emotions play in negotiations. Dario is arrogant and pompous so probably wound Hegseth up the wrong way. Sam is much more charming and amenable so more able to get his way despite similar terms.

pluc3• 5 months ago

Easy: have no principles that money can't buy. That's the American Dream!

righthand• 5 months ago

Money buddy, they never cared. They didn’t care when they went back on their safety and guidance boards, they didn’t care when they tried to push Altman out, and these employees won’t care when the first AI nuke launches. Money, money, money so they don’t think about it later. It’s the exact same reason Facebook employees have given us the other side of surveillance hell.

chazftw• 5 months ago

It was just a ruse to figure out who to fire. Either resign on your own terms or get fired. Companies and government only have one loyalty, to themselves,

tmpz222• 5 months ago

They were always in it just for the money.

The morals were just there while it was easy virtue signaling.

Same for almost all Google, Facebook, etc. Prove me wrong, please.

raw_anon_11116• 5 months ago

I don't see how OpenAI employees who have signed the We Will Not Be Divided letter can continue their employment there in light of this

https://www.levels.fyi/companies/openai/salaries

ecocentrik• 5 months ago

I think the problem might actually be with reenforcing the red lines. The events of the last few weeks and this new deal only make sense if Anthropic was trying to find out how Palantir and the Pentagon had circumvented their restrictions to attempt to reenforce those restrictions like company actually concerned about the misuse of their product. OpenAI most likely came in with assurances that they wouldn't attempt to reinforce their restrictions.

zingerlio• 5 months ago

OpenAI employees put knives on their own necks to demand Altman to get back and be their boss [1], not too long ago, right? Altman wiggles his tongues and makes them a solid paycheck. "We will not be divided," unless the water boils slow enough. Wait for a few months, he will renegotiate the terms with DoD, just like his move to turn OpenAI into a for-profit.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/openai-staff-walk-protest-sam-al...

randall2• 5 months ago

i don’t get it. what’s his motive in your view? he literally has no shares in openai.

tjwebbnorfolk• 5 months ago

I don't see how OpenAI employees who have signed the We Will Not Be Divided letter can continue their employment there

um, easy -- everyone has a price. Some of the most highly-paid workers on the planet work there.

Pay me $5M/yr and there are a LOT of things I wouldn't do for $300k.

crowcroft• 5 months ago

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

superkuh• 5 months ago

I have just canceled all services and deleted my account with OpenAI. They can get money from the current US regime but I will not contribute to their violations of the constitution.

rvz• 5 months ago

Not a surprise here, that letter was a trap for OpenAI employees who filled it out with their names on it. [0]

The ones that did might as well leave. But there was no open letter when the first military contract was signed. [1] Now there is one?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47176170

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/17/openai-mi...

operator_nil2• 5 months ago

So does this mean that OpenAI will give whatever the DoD asks for and they will pinky swear that it won’t be used for mass surveillance and autonomous killing machines?

insane_dreamer3• 5 months ago

yes

and we know we can trust openAI because they were founded on "open" and "safe" AI (up until they realized how much money there was to be made, at which point their only value changed to "make money")

cube002• 5 months ago

If the redlines are the same how'd this deal get struck?

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has the same redlines as Anthropic when it comes to working with the Pentagon, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed to CNN.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/27/tech/openai-has-same-redl...

skybrian• 5 months ago

You're expecting logic from the Trump administration and that's not really how they do things. Maybe it was never about the redlines? Maybe they decided Anthropic was their enemy, and that was their excuse.

yoyohello135• 5 months ago

Anthropic was too public about being “good”. And if there is one thing the Trump admin cannot abide it’s morality.

spongebobstoes5• 5 months ago

deals are based on personal relationships, not abstract logic

_zoltan_2• 5 months ago

huh? the same deal was offered to anthropic who decided not to take it.

slim• 5 months ago

Look more carefully at what sam altman satd : he did not say he won't remove technical safeguards against surveilance and autonomous killing, instead he said "We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should"

nxobject2• 5 months ago

We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should

How surprised should I be that a government who’s consistently railed against “woke AI” isn’t caring about that?

interestpiqued• 5 months ago

What a snake

t0lo3• 5 months ago

Snakes- as predicted

Jcampuzano2• 5 months ago

I would put bets on the issue probably being that it was pointed out that Anthropic's models were used to assist the raid in Venezuela, Anthropic then aggressively doubled down on their rules/principles and the DOD didn't like being called out on that so they lashed out, hard.

If theres anything this admin doesn't like, its being postured against or called out by literally anyone, especially in public.

Monotoko2• 5 months ago

I don't even think Anthropic balked at being used to assist, as long as a human has the final say.

mythz3• 5 months ago

Sam is just about the least trustworthy person in AI, I don't trust his words as face value and I consider these weasel words:

prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility *for the use of force*

propagandist3• 5 months ago

That means autonomous killbots are a-ok. Human responsibility is not the same as human decision-making.

The president or anybody at DoD can be "responsible", and we know there will be zero accountability. The courts defer to the executive, and Congress is all-too-happy for the executive to take the flak for their wars.

elAhmo• 5 months ago

All that money and not a single ounce of integrity.

davidw3• 5 months ago

We need some kind of group like "tech people with morals". I'm done with these people and their corruption and garbage.

t0lo3• 5 months ago

Yeah some new banner to organise around- the hard part is easily communicating you're an ethical technologist and finding others.

schoen• 5 months ago

Also, it's probably tricky to find a Schelling point that a broad range of people can agree to.

* no military use

* no lethal use

* no use in support of law enforcement

* no use in support of immigration enforcement

* no use in mass surveillance

* no use in domestic mass surveillance (but mass surveillance of foreigners is OK)

* no use in domestic surveillance

* no use in surveillance

* require independent audits

* require court oversight

* require company to monitor use

* require company to monitor use and divulge it to employees

* some other form of human rights monitoring or auditing

* some other form of restriction on theaters/conflicts/targets

* company will permit some of these uses (not purport to forbid them by license, contract, or ToS) but not customize software to facilitate them

* company can unilaterally block inappropriate uses

* company can publicly disclose uses it thinks are inappropriate

* some other form of remedy

* government literally has to explain why some uses are necessary or appropriate to reassure people developing capabilities, and they have some kind of ongoing bargaining power to push back

It feels normal to me that a lot of people would want some of those things, but kind of unlikely that they would readily agree on exactly which ones.

I even think there's a different intuition about the baseline because one version is "nobody works on weapons except for people who specifically make a decision to work for an arms company because they have decided that's OK according to their moral views" (working on weapons is an abnormal, deliberate decision) and another version is "every company might sell every technology as part of a weapons system or military application, and a few people then object because they've decided that's not OK according to their moral views" (refusing to work on weapons is an abnormal, deliberate decision). I imagine a fair number of people in computing fields effectively thought that the norm or default for their industry was the latter, because of the perception that there are "special" military contractors where people get security clearances and navigate military procurement processes, and most companies are not like that, so you were not working on any form of weapon unless you intentionally chose to do so. But, having just been to the Computer History Museum earlier this week, I also see that a lot of Silicon Valley companies have actually been making weapons systems for as long as there has been a Silicon Valley.

lioeters3• 5 months ago

"Starting today I will be asking prominent members of the tech community to sign their name onto this. A code of conduct, authored by me, that pledges them to a universal ethos, which I created, that I call tech ethics or Tethics for short."

padolsey• 5 months ago

Not a group per se but I maintain an index of 'good' people in tech here, and their contraries - https://goodindex.org

latexr4• 5 months ago

Sam has -6/100? How does that work? If you can go into the negatives, how low can you get?

matsemann5• 5 months ago

It's why I think "software engineer" is a misnomer. We don't have a license, we don't have an ethics code, we don't sign off on stuff. In other disciplines, an engineer could topple a project they feel is unsafe or against code, and be backed by their union if replaced. A software engineer just says yes if their stocks aren't vested, and will be replaced if not.

gyomu• 5 months ago

Where can I read more about all the licensed engineers toppling unethical military projects?

qudat• 5 months ago

I just looked this up so might not be fully accurate but it seems most private sector “engineers” don’t require a license. You only need a PE license when providing a service to the public. That is quite a strict band on the title.

curiousgal2• 5 months ago

This, honestly. Seeing all those billionaires on inauguration day lined up to kiss the ring was utterly pathetic. Like what is the fucking point of having billions of dollars if you're just going to be someone else's bitch. And for what? A couple more billion dollars. Oof

jakeydus3• 5 months ago

A union?

gota• 5 months ago

A guild. Control who learns the trade.

seanclayton• 5 months ago

Unfortunately most engineers irrationally hate unions

stackedinserter• 5 months ago

I do have morals and I would do the same.

SilverElfin• 5 months ago

So basically Greg Brockman of OpenAI, currently the largest MAGA PAC donor, used his bribe to make the government destroy his main competition? I’m absolutely cancelling ChatGPT and will tell everyone I know to cancel as well.

I also absolutely do not trust sleezy Sam Altman when he claims he has the same exact redlines as Anthropic:

AI safety and wide distribution of benefits are the core of our mission. Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.

If Hegseth and Trump attack Anthropic and sign a deal with OpenAI under the same restrictions, it means this is them corrupting free markets by picking which companies win. Maybe it’s at the behest of David Sacks, the corrupt AI czar who complained about lawfare throughout the Biden administration but now cheers on far worse lawfare.

So it’s either a government looking to surveil citizens illegally or a government that is deeply corrupt and is using its power to enrich some people above others.

corford• 5 months ago

If you're unhappy with this, an immediate way to signal it is with your wallet. In my case I've just uninstalled chatgpt from my phone, cancelled my subscription and will up my spend with anthropic.

cjonas• 5 months ago

Thanks for reminding me. Been meaning to cancel for months.

mrcwinn3• 5 months ago

I canceled my subscription, wiped my history, closed my account, deleted the app. Using Claude Max.

ckemere• 5 months ago

Same

nearlyepic• 5 months ago

Do you honestly believe that cancelling a subscription makes a bit of difference to a company that is either committing accounting fraud on a monumental scale or shoveling venture capital money into a furnace? not to mention the whole collaborating with a fascist government thing.

taking real action is your choice, but stop pretending this kind of thing matters one iota

edit: to be clear, i'm not advocating for nihilism, but tricking yourself into thinking you made a difference to make yourself feel better isn't the play either

Analemma_3• 5 months ago

I think you have too much pessimism. It's not guaranteed to work, but as I mentioned in another thread, since around December, Claude (and Gemini to a lesser extent) has had all the buzz in tech circles, while Chat-GPT has seemed like the also-ran. And that matters: decision-makers in companies notice these things and momentum becomes self-reinforcing (you use Claude Code because everyone else uses Claude Code). If a large enough group of developers visibly defects from OpenAI because of this, it definitely could have consequences. It's not a sure thing, but it's far from hopeless.

I was not a Chat-GPT user even before this, but I'm bumping my Claude Code subscription to the next tier up. Fuck OpenAI.

coliveira6• 5 months ago

At least I'm not getting my hands dirty.

Sl1mb02• 5 months ago

but stop pretending this kind of thing matters one iota

This is blatantly false and intellectually dishonest. Of course it matters. Your edit is also wrong; you are advocating for nihilism with statments like these.

biophysboy• 5 months ago

Yes? Earnings matter to investors

mythz3• 5 months ago

It absolutely matters, especially when done in unison like this.

Cancelling ChatGPT sends a signal that you don't agree with weaponizing AI. Switching to Claude says you support Anthropic's principled stance against it. If you have a strong opinion either way, today is the day to vote with your wallet.

Dismissing every small action as meaningless is just apathy and how nothing ever changes.

idiotsecant• 5 months ago

It's the only thing that matters. These companies don't follow the rules of capitalism physics. They live or die on vibes alone and the tech community abandoning them en masse is bad for the vibes. Once they lose the vibes they are Wiley Coyote looking down at the canyon below.

sriram_malhar• 5 months ago

What has an impact is cancelling a subscription and then talking about it. The media will amplify it the pushback. The goal is to make the name OpenAI and ChatGPT toxic, that whatever you do will be converted into a technology that will surveil or bomb you.

mythz3• 5 months ago

Perfect timing - Had already cancelled my Claude sub over their OAuth ban in external tools and was about to pick up a Codex sub as the next best alternative.

Ended up renewing my Claude sub today instead. Principled stances matter and I no longer trust OpenAI to be trustworthy custodians of my AI History.

adverbly• 5 months ago

Deleted all chats and deleted my account.

a_victorp• 5 months ago

I tried doing that but I'm certain they didn't delete it, because I tried logging in after a week and it worked

willio58• 5 months ago

Thanks for the reminder. Doing the same now.

The little respect I had left for Sam is now wiped. Makes me sick.

Growing up I always thought AI would be this beautiful tool, this thing that opens the gates to a new society where work becomes optional in a way. But I failed to think about human greed.

I remember following OpenAI way back when it was a non profit explaining how AI uncontrolled could be highly detrimental. Now Sam has not only taken that non profit and made it for-profit. It seems he’s making the most evil decisions he can for a buck.

Cancel your subscription, tell your friends to. And vote to heavily tax these companies and their leaders.

slopinthebag2• 5 months ago

Personally I'm happy about this. OpenAI are being fair about letting the gov use their models to spy on everybody, doesn't seem right that Americans get a pass.

afruitpie• 5 months ago

Just canceled my subscription! I immediately received an email with the subject “We’d love your feedback on why you canceled your ChatGPT plus subscription” and a link to a survey.

I linked to https://notdivided.org/ as the reasoning why.

AbstractH245• 5 months ago

I’d like to say I did that but I already canceled my subscription 4 months ago in favor of Claude and Gemini based purely on product quality.

Was shocking back then to think how far we’ve come.

rrrpdx1• 5 months ago

Totally agree. Signed up for a claude code account and will not give OpenAI any money in the future. Let's see what Google does. I will definitely vote with my wallet.

outside12347• 5 months ago

Exactly. Stop using OpenAI. Don’t design it into your software at work. Use Claude. Screw these guys.

outside12347• 5 months ago

Just deleted OpenAI account, F these guys

IAmGraydon2• 5 months ago

Yep I’m pulling the plug on my OIA account on Monday morning and switching to Anthropic.

fandorin• 5 months ago

Same here. Removed my account, deleted the app.

Robdel123• 5 months ago

Raise your hand if you actually read it or if you read the title and replied? I see a lot of comments that sure seem like they didn’t read it.

Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.

IF this is true, it SHOULD be verifiable. So, we wait? I mean, I am a dummy, but that language doesn’t seem too washy too me? Either it’s a bold face lie and OpenAI burns because of it or it’s true and the Trump admin is going after the “left” AI company. Or whatever. My point is, someone smarter than me/us is going to fact check Sam’s claim.

operator_nil2• 5 months ago

Do you know who isn't a dummy? Sam. The crucial part of that statement is that the DoD will use OpenAI systems "lawfully and responsibly," which I don't doubt is written somewhere in their contract. However, those terms are so open-ended that it's impossible for OpenAI to enforce. Sam could have clarified in his tweet that they explicitly prohibited the use of their technology for mass surveillance and autonomous killings, but he deliberately chose not to and to simply say, "We told them not to do bad things." which smells like bullshit

Robdel123• 5 months ago

I guess I’m hanging on what

reflects them in law

Means exactly. What law and what does it say?

I’m also sure he quietly bent the knee, but I want to know what “law and policy” it’s being reflected in to know.

jrflowers• 5 months ago

I like the idea of seeing someone post “I dislike and distrust Sam Altman” and thinking “They must be saying that because they haven’t read the things that he writes”

SpicyLemonZest7• 5 months ago

The problem is that many of those would-be fact checkers have massive incentives to lie about it. So regardless of whether it is true, you're going to see a number of detailed and well-researched pieces over the weekend arguing that Altman is right and this whole thing is Anthropic's fault. The set of people who could cause OpenAI to burn and the set of people who have millions of dollars riding on its success substantially overlap; it may not take a particularly good argument to convince them.

Robdel123• 5 months ago

Yeah, you’re right. I’m overly hopeful and naïve

Edit: as soon as I hit submit I realized this might sound condescending, but I actually mean this lol

anon-3988• 5 months ago

Either it’s a bold face lie and OpenAI burns because of it

Do you really still genuinely believe in this? This is the same person that said ads is going to be the last resort, and yet we are getting ads. I just don't understand how people can trust a single word coming out of folks like Sam, Musk, Trump or whoever rich asshole.

I listen to these people talk and they literally do not have souls. They will say whatever it is they need to get ahead. I watched a couple of Sam speeches and videos, the man does not have anything interesting to say.

anigbrowl• 5 months ago

1-800-Come-on-now

DoW: WOKE Antropic tried to impose their 'values' on us? Friendship ended!! National security risk!

OpenAI: We just signed a deal that's strong on values, the exact same ones as Anthropic, no way we would mislead anyone about this

You: Seems legit

ImPostingOnHN• 5 months ago

"The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement" is incredibly wishy washy.

What does it even mean to reflect those principles in law? Did they pass a law that says they can't do it? Which one?

What does it mean to "put them into our agreement"? Did they just have a section in the appendix listing various principles, or is there agreement from both parties to not violate those principles? What system does the contract specify for verification of compliance?

recursivecaveat• 5 months ago

I mean, this is a company literally named "Open"AI, nominally a non-profit or whatever. I think they will survive quietly opening an endpoint for their customer. Unlikely anyone is under enough illusions about Sama's moral character to be scandalized by deception.

dataflow2• 5 months ago

This seems full of loopholes.

The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.

(1) Well, did both sides sign the agreement and is it actually effective? Or is it still sitting on someone's desk until it can get stalled long enough?

(2) What does "agreement" even mean? Is it a legally enforceable contract, or just some sort of MoU or pinkie promise?

(3) If it's a legally enforceable contract, is it equally enforceable on all of their contracts, or just some? Do they not have existing contracts this would need to apply to?

(4) What does "reflects them in law and policy" even mean? Since when does DoW make laws, and in what sense do their laws reflect whatever the agreement was? Are these laws he can point to so everyone else can see? Can he at least copy-paste the exact sentences the government agreed to?

mrcwinn3• 5 months ago

Hey dang I know I’m not allowed to say this due to community guidelines, but Sam Altman is a lying sack of shit.

straydusk2• 5 months ago

I know the reaction to this, if you're a rational observer, is "OpenAI have cut corners or made concessions that Anthropic did not, that's the only thing that makes sense."

However, if you live in the US and pay a passing attention to our idiotic politics, you know this is right out of the Trump playbook. It goes like this:

* Make a negotiation personal

* Emotionally lash out and kill the negotiation

* Complete a worse or similar deal, with a worse or similar party

* Celebrate your worse deal as a better deal

Importantly, you must waste enormous time and resources to secure nothing of substance.

That's why I actually believe that OpenAI will meet the same bar Anthropic did, at least for now. Will they continue to, in the same way Anthropic would have? Seems unlikely, but we'll see.

ocdtrekkie• 5 months ago

Another good question: If OpenAI knew Anthropic wasn't a competitor... was the price higher? Will the federal government also pay more for a worse product?

straydusk2• 5 months ago

You'd have to think so. They're really the only serious player left - I doubt Google would want to be involved, and xAI is a significant step down.

voganmother422• 5 months ago

If you support openai, you support this admin, simple as

cwyers• 5 months ago

There's a lot of people in this thread that assume that Sam Altman is the one who is being dishonest here, and I kind of understand, but the other two parties who could just as easily be lying are Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump, and of the three of them if you think sama is the _most_ likely to lie I feel like you have not been paying attention.

mrcwinn3• 5 months ago

So nice of him! I am sure he believes they should offer these terms to all competitors.

HN: if you continue to subscribe to OpenAI, if you use it at your startup, you’re no better than the tech bros you often criticize. This is not surprising but beyond shady.

dakolli• 5 months ago

They're pretending like they didn't enter into this agreement last January and are completely entrenched in intelligence programs already. They are trying to make it look like they are stepping up in a time of need (time of need for the DoD), in reality they sold their soul to intelligence and the military a year ago.

I posted about this here after Sam made his tweet:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189756

Source: https://defensescoop.com/2025/01/16/openais-gpt-4o-gets-gree...

AmericanOP2• 5 months ago

Instant uninstall.

skeledrew• 5 months ago

We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should

A bold statement. It would appear they've definitively solved prompt injection and all the other ills that LLMs have been susceptible to. And forgot to tell the world about it.

mkozlows2• 5 months ago

So there are two possibilities here:

1. There's no substantive change. Hegseth/Trump just wanted to punish Anthropic for standing up to them, even if it didn't get them anything else today -- establishing a chilling effect for the future has some value for them in this case, after all. And OpenAI was willing to help them do that, despite earlier claiming that they stood behind Anthropic's decisions.

2. There is a substantive change. Despite Altman's words, they have a tacit understanding that OpenAI won't really enforce those terms, or that they'll allow them to be modified some time in the future when attention has moved on elsewhere.

Either way, it makes Altman look slimy, and OpenAI has aligned with Trump against Anthropic in a place where Anthropic made a correct principled stand. It's been clear for a while that Anthropic has more ethics than OpenAI, but this is more naked than any previous example.

slopinthebag2• 5 months ago

OpenAI has aligned with Trump against Anthropic in a place where Anthropic made a correct principled stand.

Just to be clear, you believe that the correct, principled stand is that it's OK to use their models for killing people and civilian surveillance?

Both OAI and Anthropic have the same moral leg to stand on here, OAI is just not hypocritical about it.

mkozlows2• 5 months ago

If you believe that any country should have a military and intelligence apparatus, the job of that apparatus is to kill people and surveil foreigners. I do think the US government should have a military and intelligence apparatus. Therefore, any company that works with it, from suppliers of clothing and food to suppliers of compute and AI, are supporting an organization with that mission.

The US military _does not_ need to build autonomous weapon systems and _should not_ surveil US citizens broadly.

calvinmorrison• 5 months ago

perhaps us mere mortals should petition our lawmakers to ban mass surveillance.

iainctduncan• 5 months ago

Did anyone ever doubt sama would just follow the money?

weasels gonna weasel

lefrenchy• 5 months ago

This will backfire on Sam someday, he’s just a pawn in the agenda of the Trump admin.

abraxas• 5 months ago

I hope so but I am less optimistic. The oligarchy in Russia who remained loyal to the Putin regime have done just fine for decades as long as they did not attempt to overthrow the dictator. The regime in Washington is basically constructing the same type of kleptocracy and very little evidence is there that anyone who matters will get in their way. So far as I can tell the country is already a form of authoritarian regime where the loyalty to the supreme ruler is the main parameter of conducting business there.

drivebyhooting3• 5 months ago

In my experience ChatGPT is the most sanctimonious of the leading models.

When I need advice for my clandestine operations I always reach for Grok.

AmericanOP2• 5 months ago

Department of War just killed OpenAI's brand

d--b• 5 months ago

At this stage, everything OpenAi does is to try to keep investors investing.

They’re willing to let their brand go to trash for this government contract.

Pretty much every American is standing with Anthropic on this. No one left or right wants mass surveillance and terminators. In fact, no one in the world wants this, except the US military.

But Altman seems so desperate to keep the cash coming he’s ready to do anything.

AbstractH245• 5 months ago

It’s amazing how quickly the players keep shifting here.

Yesterday and the day before sentiment seemed to be focused on “Anthropic selling out”, then that shifted to “Anthropic holds true to its principles in a David vs Goliath” and “the industry will rally around one another for the greater good.” But suddenly we’re seeing a new narrative of “Evil OpenAI swoops in to make a deal with the devil.”

Reminds of that weekend where Sam Altman lost control of OpenAI.

karmasimida• 5 months ago

Sam is a player and honestly the more interesting one in the whole thing.

Mad respect to Sam, now I believe OpenAI have better chance to win in the race

Sl1mb02• 5 months ago

Mad respect to Sam

And people wonder how we got here.

AbstractH245• 5 months ago

He’s certainly solidified his place in the history of this era.

But I suspect the public sentiment will eventually turn against him. When society sets its pitchforks on big tech he’ll be the poster boy. A 21st century John D. Rockefeller.

Him, Musk, Bezos, and Zuck.

insane_dreamer3• 5 months ago

Hitler won the race in the 1930s too. Totally crushed it.

webdevver2• 5 months ago

absolute truth nuke and the hysteria around it is yet more evidence that HN is a negative signal.

anything HN countersignals, go long on.

deepfriedbits• 5 months ago

"There are decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen."

slibhb• 5 months ago

I'm unsure how to feel about this whole dust-up. It doesn't seem like much has changed in substance. Maybe OpenAI outmaneuvered Anthropic behind the scenes. Possibly Anthropic was seen as not behaving deferentially enough towards the government. But this administration has proven comically corrupt, so it wouldn't surprise me if money was involved. Will be interested to see what journalists turn up.

insane_dreamer3• 5 months ago

I'm never using an OpenAI model or Codex ever again. Period. Idaf whether it scores better than Claude on benchmarks or not.

This is a red line for me. It's clear OpenAI has zero values and will give Hesgeth whatever he wants in exchange for $$$.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/technology/openai-reaches...

m4rtink• 5 months ago

So this is indeed how OpenAI survives (a little bit longer ?) - government bailout.

quantumwannabe• 5 months ago

More details on the difference between the OpenAI and Anthropic contracts from one of the Under Secretaries of State:

The axios article doesn’t have much detail and this is DoW’s decision, not mine. But if the contract defines the guardrails with reference to legal constraints (e.g. mass surveillance in contravention of specific authorities) rather than based on the purely subjective conditions included in Anthropic’s TOS, then yes. This, btw, was a compromise offered to—and rejected by—Anthropic.

https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027566426970530135

For the avoidance of doubt, the OpenAI - @DeptofWar contract flows from the touchstone of “all lawful use” that DoW has rightfully insisted upon & xAI agreed to. But as Sam explained, it references certain existing legal authorities and includes certain mutually agreed upon safety mechanisms. This, again, is a compromise that Anthropic was offered, and rejected.
Even if the substantive issues are the same there is a huge difference between (1) memorializing specific safety concerns by reference to particular legal and policy authorities, which are products of our constitutional and political system, and (2) insisting upon a set of prudential constraints subject to the interpretation of a private company and CEO. As we have been saying, the question is fundamental—who decides these weighty questions? Approach (1), accepted by OAI, references laws and thus appropriately vests those questions in our democratic system. Approach (2) unacceptably vests those questions in a single unaccountable CEO who would usurp sovereign control of our most sensitive systems.
It is a great day for both America’s national security and AI leadership that two of our leading labs, OAI and xAI have reached the patriotic and correct answer here

https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230

SpicyLemonZest7• 5 months ago

You're quoting social media posts from a regime official who says he didn't participate in these negotiations and doesn't work for the relevant department.

If his characterization of the agreement is correct, which I will not believe and you should not believe until a trustworthy news outlet publishes the text, I suppose this would convince me that Hegseth does not literally plan to build a Terminator for democracy-ending purposes. There's a lot of inexcusable stuff here regardless, but perhaps merely boycotting OpenAI and the US military would be a sufficient response if this all checks out.

qwerasdf5• 5 months ago

which I will not believe and you should not believe

It seems like you chose to immediately disbelieve it.

until a trustworthy news outlet publishes the text

If you've found one of these, let me know. I'm still looking...

toraway• 5 months ago

  It is a great day for both America’s national security and AI leadership that two of our leading labs, OAI and xAI have reached the patriotic and correct answer here

He's an administration official openly cheerleading his team. This should be characterized as the insider perspective/spin, not a neutral analysis of the relevant facts.

advisedwang• 5 months ago

A government promise that they'll only do lawful things is not reassuring at all:

1. We've seen government lawyers write memos explaining why such-and-such obviously illegal act is legal (see: torture memo). Until challenged, this is basically law.

2. We've seen government change the law to make whatever they want legal (see: patriot act)

3. We've seen courts just interpret laws to make things legal

A contractor doesn't realistically have the power to push back against any of these avenues if they agree to allow anything legal.

(At the risk of triggering Godwin's Law, remember that for the most part the Holocaust was entirely legal - the Nazi's established the necessary authorization. Just to illustrate that when it comes to certain government crimes, the law alone is an insufficient shield.)

Tepix• 5 months ago

This is it exactly.

makeramen• 5 months ago

The DoW wants to only be beholden to the laws, and not to Anthropics TOS.

So the question is: do you trust the government to effectively govern its own use of AI? or do you trust Anthropic's enforcement of its TOS?

nullocator3• 5 months ago

They DoW doesn't care about laws, that's the whole point. Anthropic did not believe the most law breaking administration in history when their drunkard incompetent leader said "lol trust us bro"

MostlyStable• 5 months ago

Even this most-charitable-possible (to DoW) explanation does not even come close to justifying the supply chain risk designation. It is absolutely enough (and honestly more than enough) for a contract cancellation and a switch to a competitor. DoW could have done that for any reason at all, or no reason at all. If they had issues with Anthropics terms, they 100% should have done that.

Nothing in the quoted text comes anywhere close to the realm of justifying the retaliatory actions.

piker• 5 months ago

I find myself totally agreeing with the quoted text and also this sentiment. It just makes no sense to nuke Anthropic as a negotiation tactic if your interest is in preserving the republic long term.

ukblewis2• 5 months ago

AFAIK, the U.S. government is fully entitled to serve them under the U.S. Department of War’s terms as per the Defense Production Act. The government has yet to do this, but a company acting in a way that the Department of War perceives as benefiting enemy states could certainly be a justification for declaring a supply chain risk. Anthropic’s decision timing as the U.S. has launched a war in the Middle East to save millions of Iranian lives (tens if not hundreds of thousands of Iranians have already been killed by the Islamic Regime) definitely seems to be unjustifiable and the U.S. Department of War (so weird for me to type that instead of DOD) was smart, in my opinion, not to force Anthropic to work with them but to drop all work with them and move to providers who will meet the military’s needs while at war.

(Just in case anyone was wondering, I live in Israel)

mindcandy• 5 months ago

The DoW is engaging in simple crybullying. In my time as an online moderator I see it all the time.

“You are impinging on my freedom to force you to participate in activities you have expressly indicated it is against your will to engage in! You bully! I am such a victim!”

https://xcancel.com/SecWar/status/2027507717469049070?s=20

This is endemic of the entire current administration. It is as disappointing as it is unsurprising.

ignoramous• 5 months ago

More details on the difference...

Does the qualifier "domestic" for mass surveillance mean that OpenAI allows the use of its models for whatever isn't "domestic"?

  ... Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force ...

ajkjk• 5 months ago

how I wish that "patriotic" meant something instead of just "did what we wanted". I'm so tired of living in an era where every communication made by every organization feels like a lie

transcriptase• 5 months ago

Sam must not be aware of what happened to any business or foreign nation/leader considered outwardly friendly to the first Trump administration when the democrats regained control in 2020.

yoyohello135• 5 months ago

You’re assuming democrats will ever be allowed to regain control.

_23sd• 5 months ago

If they earnestly believe in fast ASI timelines then political grudges have to be pretty low on OAI's list of worries about 2029.

gaigalas• 5 months ago

We really need a plan for the scenario in which the US loses the trade war and decides to go homicidal AI on the whole world. Like, help them recover or something.

hnthrowaway0315• 5 months ago

Ah, is it the time when Skynet starts to manifest itself...

pbnjay2• 5 months ago

I had kept my Plus subscription just because I was lazy, and it was inexpensive and convenient… but this turn definitely helped me get off the fence. I am exporting and deleting my data now, and the cancellation is already done.

pbnjay2• 5 months ago

For anyone reading this later, I got my data export and deleted my account and got a pro-rated refund. So double whammy!

skygazer• 5 months ago

Perhaps Trump's DOD objects specifically to Anthropic models themselves declining to do immoral and illegal things, and not something just stipulated in an ignorable contract. That would give room for Sam to throw some public CYA into a contract, while neutering model safety to their requirements.

midnitewarrior• 5 months ago

Opportunism without principles at its finest.

spprashant• 5 months ago

Just uninstalled the app and canceled subscription. OpenAI can't justify their insane valuation without an user base. Especially when there are capable models elsewhere.

mmanfrin2• 5 months ago

Absolute disgrace of a person and organization.

impulser_2• 5 months ago

For the people that don't understand how they got a deal with the same redlines, it probably because OpenAI agreed to not question them. The safeguards are there, both parties agree now fuck off and let us use your model how we see fit.

Anthropic probably made the mistake of questioning the Military's activities related to Claude after the Venezuela mission and wanted reassurance that the model wouldn't be used for the redlines, and the military didn't like this and told them we aren't using your models unless you agree to not question us and then the back and forth started.

In the end, we will probably have both OpenAI and Anthropic providing AI to the military and that's a good thing. I don't think they will keep the supply chain risk on Anthropic for more than a week.

Monotoko2• 5 months ago

Anthropic vs OpenAI will probably be The Machine vs Samaritan

(Person Of Interest for those who haven't seen it, watched it a decade ago and it's actually quite surprising how on point it ended up being)

xvector2• 5 months ago

I don't think they will keep the supply chain risk on Anthropic for more than a week.

Why? It is in the admin's interest to absolutely destroy Anthropic. Make them an example.

impulser_2• 5 months ago

Because once Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and all their contractors call to tell them they need Anthropic they will drop it.

blueblisters2• 5 months ago

My knee-jerk reaction to this was looks like an opportunistic maneuver that Sam is known for and I'm considering canceling my subscriptions and business with OpenAI

But what's the most charitable / objective interpretation of this?

For example - https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230

Does it suggest that determination of "lawful use" and Dario's concerns falls upon the government, not the AI provider?

Other folks have claimed that Anthropic planned to burn the contentious redlines into Claude's constitution.

Update: I have cancelled my subscriptions until OpenAI clarifies the situation. From an alignment perspective Anthropic's stand seems like the correct long-term approach. And at least some AI researchers appear to agree.

Analemma_3• 5 months ago

As people have repeatedly mentioned, if the War Department was unhappy with Anthropic's terms, they could have refused to sign the contract. But they didn't: they were fine with it for over a year. And if they changed their mind, they could've ended the contract and both sides could've walked away. Anthropic said that would've been fine. But that's not what happened either: they threatened Anthropic with both SCR designation and a DPA takeover if Anthropic didn't agree to unilateral renegotiation of terms that the War Department had already agreed were fine.

It's absurd, and doubly so if OAI's deal includes the same or even similar redlines to what Anthropic had.

spongebobstoes5• 5 months ago

it seems like oai deal does include the same red lines, plus some more, and the ability for oai to deploy safety systems to limit the use cases of the model via technical means

this seems strictly better than what anthropic had. anthropic has ruined their relationship with the US govt, giving oai a good negotiating hand

the oai folks are good at making deals, just look at all the complex funding arrangements they have

cedws• 5 months ago

I think Altman probably rationalised it to himself by thinking that if he doesn’t do it, Musk/xAI will, and they give zero fucks about safety. So maybe he told himself that it’s better if OpenAI does it.

Griffinsauce2• 5 months ago

Is there a name for this phenomenon? I've taken to calling it "the nihilist's excuse"

slekker• 5 months ago

Knowing Sam, that's exactly what happened -- and the echo chamber inside OpenAI wouldnt dare to disagree

4b11b42• 5 months ago

yeah or he didn't even

askvictor• 5 months ago

I feel that if xAI worked well for the job, it would have been already been selected.

manmal2• 5 months ago

Unless you're using an enterprise plan or pay per token, you're not hurting their business at all by cancelling. The consumer plans are heavily subsidised.

Hamuko• 5 months ago

Does it matter? These AI companies need to be able to prove that users are willing to pay at all, even if they're not paying a profitable amount of money. If investors see that they're dumping money into something that's not selling, why continue to do so?

tjpnz• 5 months ago

It will hurt in future funding rounds if their subscriber metric is stalling or going backwards, regardless of how many of those subscriptions are profitable.

blueblisters2• 5 months ago

I think their consumer plans are gross margin positive but OpenAI has ~50M paying subscribers driving >$10B in revenue.

Realistically, you need at least ~1M subscribers to cancel to make this painful.

But I suspect this will get drowned out in the face of other news.

cube002• 5 months ago

Cancelling is the only language these companies understand.

Even Disney couldn't ignore the mass cancellations after dropping Kimmel and Disney+ bearly turns over a profit.

joemi2• 5 months ago

This is ultimately about drawing moral lines, isn't it? In that case it wouldn't matter if it hurts their business or not.

Imustaskforhelp6• 5 months ago

AI companies seem to be growth companies whose whole point seems to be that they are okay with extreme amounts of losses/lack of profitability so long as they grow a lot.

If you back down from using Chatgpt, you throw a wrench in their growth numbers.

I would consider training data could have important info as well and to be honest, with their circular financing, Nvidia <-> openAI with GPU's being the main cost (and given that OpenAI isn't facing the Ram crisis heck it created the ram crisis by pre-ordering 20%) and recent deals, money isn't an issue to them for some time now. Growth is.

You are also forgetting that OpenAI is planning to add ads in which case you would be the product, its better not to discourage anyone who wishes to cancel perhaps.

Other commentators have made some good points as well and I used to think the same thing as you but I do think that cancelling might make the most sense.

That or if you want to cause maximum damage, trying to burn the most tokens that you physically can asking random things to burn OpenAI's money but remember that the model still takes energy requirements so you'd be wasting energy for something quite pointless.

IMO, it might be better to cancel/not use OpenAI.

coryodaniel3• 5 months ago

There is value tied to free users, but also, not sure I want my work and data in a product that’s OK with DoD mass surveillance and I’m not sure my customers would want their data pumping through it either.

jdiaz973• 5 months ago

cancelling my openai subscription, they're gonna miss my 20 USD

ttrashh• 5 months ago

Cancel your subscription. It's the least you can do.

deadbolt• 5 months ago

Choosing to go along with calling it the "Department of War" tells you all you need to know.

netsroht• 5 months ago

Remember when openai was too afraid to release the full GPT-2 model (this one had only 1.5B params) because humanity apparently wasn't ready for it. Look where we are just a couple of years later. I really admired them back in the day for openai gym and PPO etc.

outside12347• 5 months ago

Screw OpenAI. Never opening that app again or using one of their models.

camillomiller• 5 months ago

Sam Altman is this. Sam Altman needs to be stopped.

romulussilvia• 5 months ago

I wonder if this will cause this to save open ai from the bubble! i am sure i am wrong;-)

fiatpandas• 5 months ago

human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems

So there’s the difference, and an erasure of a red line. OpenAI is good with autonomous weapon systems. Requiring human responsibility isn’t saying much. Theres already military courts, rules of engagement, and international rules of war.

LarsDu883• 5 months ago

China has evacuated its embassies in Iran.

This is really about the imminent strike on Iran which is now super telegraphed. They are gonna use ChatGPT for target selection, and the likely outcome is that it will fuck things up and a bunch of civilians are going to die because of this decision.

When this happens, Altman will go from being merely a drifter to having blood on his hands.

cogman10• 5 months ago

Iran, Cuba, and to classify people as "Antifa".

A lot of innocent people are about to be harmed because the cogs of fascism are lubricated with blood.

LarsDu883• 5 months ago

The Iran situation is unique. If it is true that Epstein was part of a blackmailing operation run by Israeli intelligence, then the time to act is limited. It may only be a matter of time before the US-Israel special relationship begins to deteriorate, especially as the House of Representatives starts digging into what was going on.

For hardline right wing Israeli government officials who would be privy to such information, the window of time to leverage to US to enact regime change on the Islamic Republic is closing. The survival of Israel over the long run really depends on not having a hardline Islamic regime in Iran developing nuclear weapons. Things like AI safety and US elections are secondary to such prerogatives. The question for voters in the US is whether it really is worth it to the average US citizen to shed blood and tax dollars for this stuff.

I hope there can be a peaceful regime change in Iran and that there will be peaceful relations with Iran and Israel in the future. But damn I wish things could go back to normal with our US political system once this is all settled.

coffeebeqn• 5 months ago

Why would they use chatgpt for target selection?

LarsDu883• 5 months ago

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has over 200,000 personnel. There are thousands of putative SAM sites and MANPAD launch sites. The amount of data to crunch is significant.

Alternatively, the DoW is simply incompetent and Trump or Hegseth wants to use AI to draft war plans.

greenchair• 5 months ago

speaking of blood on their hands, they are fighting multiple lawsuits related to suicide advice chats.

voganmother422• 5 months ago

OpenAI in action: https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2026/2/28/israel-strikes-...

looksjjhg• 5 months ago

So it’s personal basically

jstummbillig• 5 months ago

Surely if OpenAI had insisted upon the same things that Anthropic had, the government would not have signed this agreement.

Under normal circumstances, that would seem really plausible. But given how far Trump continues to go just out of spite and to project power, it actually is the opposite.

I am fully prepared to believe that they got absolutely nothing else out of it (to date).

matsemann5• 5 months ago

OpenAI was the biggest donor ($25 millions) to Trumps campaign. This is them getting their back scratched in return.

0xfedbee• 5 months ago

Honestly not even surprised. What else could you expect from a zionist?

saos• 5 months ago

Musk 100% right about this guy

tintor• 5 months ago

Difference from Anthropic's deal is:

- OpenAI is ok with use of their AI for autonomous weapons, as long as there is "human responsibility"

- Anthropic is not ok with use of their AI for autonomous weapons

IAmGraydon2• 5 months ago

I think you guys are giving far too much attention to the "autonomous weapons" angle and not enough to the "spying on Americans" angle. It makes no sense to use an LLM to power an autonomous weapon. It does make a lot of sense to use an LLM to monitor communications and public social media profiles to create a list of "domestic terrorists" that they can then target. I'm willing to bet this is what the administration wanted to use Anthropic for.

xiphias2• 5 months ago

Sure, and actually the open models are already good enough to do that, it's not like any company could stop any organization that can collect the data from doing this.

They can just improve on it a lot.

utopiah2• 5 months ago

Oh yeah, from the company which raison d'etre was being open and being good.

shocked pikachu face

Come on by now we all know the only thing Altman (who else is still at OpenAI from the start?) wants it more money and more power, it doesn't really matter how.

gabeh• 5 months ago

It's only $200 from me for the remainder of the year but you're not getting it anymore OpenAI. Voting with my wallet tonight. Really sad, I've followed OpenAI for years, way before ChatGPT. It's just too hard to true up my values with how they've behaved recently. This sucks. Goodnight everyone.

unfunco2• 5 months ago

I cancelled and deleted my account and I got an email immediately with a pro-rata refund. You can get that money back.

tim333• 5 months ago

It's been kind of downhill since the 2023 Altman firing and rehiring.

jobs_throwaway• 5 months ago

Just cancelled my Plus plan as well. I will still wait to see how things play out before deciding if I'll delete my account altogether, but OpenAI's actions simply don't align with my values at the moment. Very disappointing.

user0648• 5 months ago

Same. Moving to Anthropic. At some point we can’t let the slide continue

tayo42• 5 months ago

How do llms get used in either survalience or for autonomous weapons. Using written English seems so inefficient?

levanten• 5 months ago

Funny that these are the same people that have been blasting the alarm on dangers of AI singularity. Now they cannot wait to put their tools in weapons.

wannabe_loser• 5 months ago

I guess we aren't curing cancer with ai anymore

riazrizvi• 5 months ago

Refreshing sanity.

Uptrenda• 5 months ago

is there a single thing left that altman promised that he hasn't broken with this company...

pu_pe• 5 months ago

So this week we've learned that even the government asseses Anthropic has the better model, and that OpenAI leadership has no concern for safety whatsoever.

e40• 5 months ago

This is how OpenAI gets bailed out in an AI crash, too big to fail becomes too important to fail.

apexalpha• 5 months ago

"We will not be divided!"

They got divided 12 hours later, lol.

arendtio• 5 months ago

So now we are waiting for Anthropic to explain to us what Sam agreed to and what they rejected.

On the surface, it looks like both rejected 'domestic mass surveillance' and 'autonomous weapon systems', but there seem to be important differences in the fine print, since one company is being labeled a 'supply chain risk' while the other 'reached the patriotic and correct answer'.

One explanation would be that the DoW changed its demands, but I doubt that. Instead, I believe OpenAI found a loophole that allows those cases under certain conditions.

matsemann5• 5 months ago

From an open non-profit to a war machine in such a short time is baffling.

croes• 5 months ago

Is OpenAI and ChatGPT nie a national security threat for other countries?

redml• 5 months ago

regardless of your opinion of ai in government, sam could not have picked a worse way for optics to swoop in and make a deal. it just looks incredibly bad.

neuroelectron• 5 months ago

Sam Altman is a psychopath and his only talent is lying to people and convincing them of his lies.

charcircuit6• 5 months ago

I am glad OpenAI stood up to do what's right and give the American people the ability to choose how AI is used for themselves rather than dictating it from their high horse.

Edit: It looks like the terms are similar in OpenAI's deal in what they prohibit so it isn't clear why they are any better. We should be the ones dictating what is and isn't prohibited. Not Sam. We will have to wait for more news on what is actually different.

raincole2• 5 months ago

Yeah. And they are losing money from inference (HN told me so) so the US government is subsidizing our token usage!

charcircuit6• 5 months ago

OpenAI is not losing money from inference. HN has told you the opposite repeatedly.

Kim_Bruning2• 5 months ago

Any government is allowed to choose to do whatever it wants however it wishes; in a republic: given what is legally determined by the three branches. Obviously. They can contract with whomever they want, make any deal with whomever they want.

This also means that they should adhere to a deal once it is signed. That's part of the law too. They shouldn't suddenly turn around and try to alter the deal, then retaliate against their deal partner when they say "that wasn't the deal". You can't just go and answer: "Pray we don't alter it further".

The government of a nation sets the example for others, and should be scrupulous in their dealings.

charcircuit6• 5 months ago

Just because you sign a deal that didn't mean you can't change it or terminate it in the future. As long as both parties agree any contract can be modified or terminated. If they don't usually the contract contains information on how it works.

khalic3• 5 months ago

Their models are crappy anyway, the "super intelligence" BS is nowhere to be seen. Just let them die or become a US government asset.

dgxyz• 5 months ago

Sam Altman being a complete bell end? Who'd have thought it.

I hope everyone goes and works for Anthropic and OpenAI collapses.

Markets going to be interesting on Monday. This plus a war. Urgh.

bambax2• 5 months ago

In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety

Right. Pete "FAFO" Hegseth is a model of intelligence, moderation, and respect for due process. Nothing to see here.

lm28469• 5 months ago

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shares Anthropic’s concerns when it comes to working with the Pentagon

The same day:

Pssst psst Samy Samy, come here we have money and data psst

Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network.

ozgung• 5 months ago

Do I understand this correctly:

An algorithm, an ML model trained to predict next tokens to write meaningful text, is going to KILL actual humans by itself.

So killing people is legal,

Killing people by a random process is legal,

A randomized algorithm deciding on who to kill is legal,

And some of you think you are legally protected because they used the word “domestic”?

techpression• 5 months ago

Domestic means nothing, it’s like the company Daniel Ek invested in saying they won’t sell weapons to ”Democracies”, in the context of warfare and control these words are meaningless.

They will deploy this on a domestic scale and claim to use it to locate non-domestic threats. I can’t believe anyone is falling for this.

booleandilemma2• 5 months ago

Is it possible the killing machine could hallucinate and kill some random, innocent person?

sumeno2• 5 months ago

It's incredibly unlikely that it won't do exactly that, although we'll be very lucky if it's just that and not a random, innocent city

phtrivier• 5 months ago

Verhoeven fans would simply call it "a glitch".

boxedemp3• 5 months ago

It's already happened in the Korean DMZ

mpalmer5• 5 months ago

I don't think you do?

Who said that any of it is legal? Keeping in mind that when the government does something, it usually takes more than 24h for there to be an official determination on whether they broke the law.

nsvd2• 5 months ago

Well, DHS has shown this year that they won't show restraint when it comes to attacking American citizens. I would expect that trend to continue.

boxedemp3• 5 months ago

Killing people has been legal forever. But you have to do it at scale for it to be legal.

ares623• 5 months ago

Is this setting the stage for a bailout? Was the whole thing between the three parties smoke and mirrors to justify a bailout down the line? It's conspiracy theory territory but, you know who we're dealing with here.

mrweasel• 5 months ago

Didn't the department of war announce that it would be working with xAI just this past December?

adangert• 5 months ago

Let me reiterate some points for people here:

Income and revenue sources always, inevitably, and without fail, determine behavior.

aoeusnth1• 5 months ago

I think your theory might be missing an extremely relevant and timely counterexample?

kseniamorph• 5 months ago

Is there anyone who really understands what’s different about the OpenAI agreement? Or maybe these are just Sam Altman’s public statements that don’t actually reflect the real terms of the deal. I honestly can’t figure it out.

kledru• 5 months ago

Sorry, despite the public statements of some sort of solidarity with Anthropic by sama this looks like a plot to take over from losing position.

Sadly it would be very difficult for Anthropic to relocate to another country with their IP, models, and infrastructure.

(Guess I need to build everything I intended this year in a weekend.)

imwideawake• 5 months ago

Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic should all have each other's backs when it comes to hard lines like this. Sam can say whatever he wants, but signing this deal on the same day Trump and Hegseth went scorched earth on Anthropic — for standing up for the very values OpenAI claims to hold — is sleazy.

Screw Sam, and screw OpenAI. I've been a customer of theirs since the first month their API opened to developers. Today I cancelled my subscription and deleted my account.

I'd already signed up for Claude Max and had been slow to cancel my OpenAI subscriptions. This finally made the decision easy.

webdevver2• 5 months ago

TOTAL ALTMAN VICTORY

SpaceL10n• 5 months ago

Does deploying these models in "the classified network" also mean this technology is going to be used to help kill people?

vander_elst2• 5 months ago

Subscribers should be aware what they are supporting. I think that keeping an OpenAI account can be considered an active support of this decision, at least for private people who can easily change providers.

throwaway20261• 5 months ago

It is quite shocking that almost all AI companies are saying "we are not ok with domestic surveillance" but they'll happily sign up to surveilling the rest of the world population.

So by that measure the US govt can go get some Israeli software to surveill their domestic populace!

Homo sapiens deserve to become extinct.

nateburke3• 5 months ago

Plain and simple this is revenge for the Anthropic super bowl ads, which were epic burns against openAI's primary future revenue stream.

madeofpalk• 5 months ago

This seems like an exceptionally shallow reading of everything and everyone involved.

You think OpenAI decided to build MurderBot because someone made fun on them selling ads?

nateburke3• 5 months ago

I think it's plausible, given the effort he seemed to put into his initial response to the ads: https://x.com/sama/status/2019139174339928189

petee• 5 months ago

This explains the "Free Codex" offer i just got in my email

tibbydudeza4• 5 months ago

While Dario is not my hero with the sometimes the outrageous things he says he has a firm moral compass and a backbone that aligns with mine and thus I will support his company and their products in my personal use and my work.

owenthejumper• 5 months ago

Well in the end this is great news - this virtually guarantees Anthropic win in the court.

pluc3• 5 months ago

lol it didn't even take them a whole night.

ukblewis2• 5 months ago

Thank you Sam Altman for being a man with a good sense of ethics and empowering the US Military while it fights evil in Iran and empowering the US government and ignoring the idiotic haters

resters• 5 months ago

There will be a scene in some future movie about Trump's authoritarian rise (we are still early in it) that shows Sam signing this agreement. Sam will be played by a character actor meant to symbolize silicon valley opportunism and greed.

What sam and greg don't realize is that the many who succumb to trump's pressure tactics will all be lumped into the same category by history.

Sam and Greg are handing an authoritarian regime that has broken so many laws in the past year a superweapon.

_zoltan_2• 5 months ago

to all the naysayers: what did all these people doing AI research expect? that the military doesn't want to use their stuff? and then when it does, Pikachu face?

I know I'll get down voted but come on, this is so very naive.

brainzap• 5 months ago

the AI datacenter built for 180B are used for surveillance and control

KronisLV• 5 months ago

In an imaginary world, this would be a precursor to Anthropic coming to EU in a greater capacity and teaming up with Mistral, eventually leading to similar innovation and progress that DeepSeek forced upon the West, benefitting everyone in the long run. They seem to have the morals for it and the respect for human rights and life given their recent announcement (after some backtracking), unlike OpenAI. Sadly, that's not the real world.

tao_oat• 5 months ago

I'd apply to work for Anthropic in a heartbeat if it was a European company.

DebtDeflation• 5 months ago

At this point it seems the entire AI Safety/Ethics debate was nothing more than a Marketing campaign to hype up the capabilities of the models - get people to think that if they're potentially dangerous that must mean they're so capable and they need to sign up for a subscription.

darkstarsys• 5 months ago

All of this, the news articles, the social media discussion, this very discussion, will be part of the training set for future AIs. What will they learn from this?

FrustratedMonky2• 5 months ago

Maybe the problem here is they are negotiating by using social media posts. Where is the team of Anthropic people, and the team of Gov people, that should be in a room somewhere doing this in private?

gurumeditations• 5 months ago

The “Department of War” does not exist and no one should use their preferred pronouns.

TeeWEE• 5 months ago

If you work at OpenAI, leave now while you can.

otterley3• 5 months ago

The stories I’ve been reading say that the DoW’s agreement with OpenAI contain the very same limitations as the agreement with Anthropic did. In other words, they pressured Anthropic to eliminate those restrictions, Anthropic declined, then they made a huge fuss calling them “a radical left, woke company,” put them on the supply-chain risk list, then went with OpenAI even though OpenAI isn’t changing anything either.

The whole story makes no sense to me. The DoW didn’t get what they wanted, and now Anthropic is tarred and feathered.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/trump-will-end-government-use-of...

“OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said the company’s deal with the Defense Department includes those same prohibitions on mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, as well as technical safeguards to make sure the models behave as they should.”

angoragoats• 5 months ago

It’s the Department of Defense, and let’s not have the main post be a link to the non-consensual-porn-generating and Nazi-supporting site. Could an admin change the main link to the Fortune article also linked here?

_alternator_• 5 months ago

So while Sam Altman claims that OAI received promises not to have fully automated killbot-GPT from Hegseth, so did Anthropic(!)—but it contained weasel legal language that allowed the USG to ignore the restrictions at will. (We all know how the current admin reads such language.)

So until we see the contract I think it’s fair to assume that OAI and Anthropic got roughly the same deal, with Anthropic insisting on language that actually limits the government, while OAI licked the boot and is passing it off like filet mignon.

vldszn• 5 months ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195085

kneel• 5 months ago

Chatgpt has an export function for all of your chats

Use it to save your data, shouldn't be hard to get it working elsewhere

vorticalbox• 5 months ago

prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance

so foreign mass surveillance is all good?

gammarator2• 5 months ago

I would not be surprised if Sam A. helped engineer this whole situation… “Child’s play,” like replacing a reddit ceo.

gammarator2• 5 months ago

Oh look! https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-whole-thing-was-scam

rambojohnson• 5 months ago

get fucked OpenAI. cancelled my subscription.

weare138• 5 months ago

There's was an 80s movie about this...

bodobolero• 5 months ago

I canceled my ChatGPT subscription and switched to Lumo Plus subscription https://lumo.proton.me/about I also considered https://mistral.ai/products/le-chat

Both are based in Europe but Proton Lumo has the better privacy promises.

Would be interested in experiences of others with those alternatives for question/answering type research (not for coding for which there exist other, better alternatives like Gemini and Claude)

xvector2• 5 months ago

If you want privacy the only option that reasonably delivers is Moxie's https://confer.to

But tbh I just switched to Anthropic, they need all the support they can get. Claude is great for question/answer.

jaybrendansmith• 5 months ago

What part of "These people are fascists, and need to be stopped" are people failing to understand?

boxedemp3• 5 months ago

The part about money

fabbbbb• 5 months ago

Anyone having success with exporting data from ChatGPT? Got the export email 11 hours ago but still no download link..

coryodaniel3• 5 months ago

Don’t just cancel, flood them with CCPA requests.

taway1874• 5 months ago

Well ... bumped up my Claude subscription from Pro to Max and closed out my OpenAI accounts. It's a drop in the ocean but I'll sleep better knowing I did the right thing. Thanks ChatGPT! It was good knowing you.

nahuel0x• 5 months ago

Remember that the US administration is supporting Israel on the ethnic-cleansing and genocide of Gaza, using Palantir technology and AI systems that generate kill lists. It's "IBM and the Holocaust" all over again.

hwc• 5 months ago

Please note that the US Congress has not approved the existence of a "Department of War" this century. Calling it the Department of Defense is the only legally correct way to refer to it.

agentic_lawyer• 5 months ago

From the man who founded Worldcoin and built a grandiose vision of having the biometrics of every human in the developing world saved on his own corporate database: America - you're next.

OpenAI agrees with Dept. of War to deploy models in their classified network

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