Anthropic irks White House with limits on models’ use

One of the very few tech companies who have refused to bend the knee to the United States' current dictatorial government.

It's startling how few are willing to. I'm rooting for them.

Can we trust this though? “Cooperate with us and we’ll leak fake stories about how frustrated we are with you as cover”.

And I’m not singling out Anthropic. None of these companies or governments (i.e. people) can be trusted at face value.

Which part?

Dictatorial suggests a "ruler with total power". The US has three branches of government. That hasn't changed, ever.

Two of them jump at the command one the other one, one out of fear (because he has ended the careers of every rep that has crossed him), and the other has been packed with life-time-appointment sycophants who put loyalty to the cut over anything else.

Russia (or literally any other dictatorial tyre pyre) also has three branches of government and a token opposition, for all the good it does.

Just because you have a nice piece of paper that outlines some kind of de jure separation of powers, doesn't mean shit in practice. Russia (and prior to it, the USSR) has no shortage of such pieces of paper.

That's a ridiculous take. Seriously outlandish. The US has always had and continues to have three working branches of government. That is a factual statement because it is indeed a fact.

I should think that it was very obvious that America does not have a dictatorial government; this is hyperbole.

It’s not a fact, because it depends upon a subjective interpretation of the word “working.” Some might argue, for example, that if the President can cow Congress into subservience, then the three branches of government are no longer in balance with each other, and thus the constitution is no longer “working” as intended.

The definition of dictatorial government is either a single person or a small group of people. So there being three branches of government doesn't necessarily prohibit a government from being a dictatorship if they are all working together to enact their authoritarian control without constitutional limits.

But really this is just pointless semantics. It doesn't matter what it is called it is still a problem.

Technically (and legally) the USSR also had the same three branches of government; just all controlled by the same party.

It can be true that the constitution is not working as intended, AND the US is a far cry from a country like Russian in terms of it operating as a constitutional republic / democracy. It is not subjective to say the US is more of a democratic country than Russia.

The fact of being elected is not relevant to the question, and neither is the nominal existence of constitutional checks. Extrajudicial murder of alleged criminals, abuse of criminal prosecution to target political enemies, armed thugs yanking innocent people out of their cars, steamrolling firms and universities into administration-favorable policy changes and extracting hundreds of millions of dollars — and that's just the first few things I could think of. There are dozens of examples. It is not inflammatory to describe simple reality.

The power of the purse is currently being usurped by the executive branch with no pushback from a republican congress, armed forces are being deployed to American cities, media corporations are being forced to have admin installed bias police, due process is a joke, museums are being forced to remove information the admin find objectionable. You can bury your head in the sand if you like but there are plenty of us who won’t.

Obvious only to those with their head in the sand https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/ice-ra...

ICE raids do not a dictator make.

I would be hesitant to call the US democratic process "free and fair." And the powers held by the president certainly make them more dictatorial then the heads of state of other democracies, particularly as wielded by the current administration.

So you have a democratic process of dubious quality that elected a government that is dictator-ish.

Don't accept that your countries elections are free and fair as a axiom.

Arguing de jure instead of de facto is fine until the reality of the de facto affects you.

I always think it's funny how people who have strong opinions based on nothing love to out themselves by just repeating that something is fact. clap clap We're all convinced, for sure! ;)

How do you explain Trump unilaterally renaming the Ministry of Defense, without legislative approval? Is it a “working branch” if their constitutionally granted power is easily sidestepped?

It's straight out of Charlie Kirk's playbook.

I don’t get this notion. Politics has a place on HN like any other interesting topic does, whether you like it or not

I think Russia was being used as an extreme example. It wasn't being lauded as a model nation, far from it.

Do you mean the Department of Defense? The U.S. doesn't have ministries.

because of this they're probably on borrowed time in this political climate

No need for that. I was just asking someone to clarify what they were saying.

Regardless of what you think about the government, that wasn’t a statement in the above. The statement was about tech companies. So it wasn’t clear.

They don't do that. They're not capable of cooperating with anyone, it's maximum punishment all the time. It's unclear if they can keep secrets either.

Maybe not yet, but the current US president has lauded authoritarian Hungary as a model for the US.

Does threatening to prosecute office supply store workers unless they print certain flyers count as the behavior of a dictator? That doesn't sound like the behavior of a government respecting the First Amendment.

Rome wasn't built in a day, you don't go straight from 2024 to throwing people out of windows overnight.

But you get there by doing exactly what's being done on a daily basis.

I think it would count as a (very) small element of that.

Depends on how he cows them into subservience. If he uses the threat of electoral defeat for opposing him, that's totally legitimate. If he uses his position as commander in chief to threaten them with force, that's different.

I couldn't care less because it has always been and always will be the department of war whether or not the letterhead says "Department of Defense."

Any single element of dictatorial rule is dictatorial rule. There is no space for any amount of that bullshit, regardless of how inane seeming it is.

A) Boundary testing. Small bites end up being large portions after enough are taken.

B) If I shit in 10 gallons of chocolate pudding, would you want to eat a bite of that pudding?

That is a plainly absurd standard for deciding what is dictatorial rule.

the dod was not officially renamed to the dow. that would take an act of congress. he gave it a secondary title.

New ones every hour! TV shows preemptively taken off the air in _anticipation_ of state backlash.

It's very obvious that America has a dictatorial government, and I'm baffled why you would deny this. The dictator-in-chief has argued explicitly and repeatedly that the written laws of the land don't constrain him; he can shut down departments Congress ordered him to run, levy taxes they didn't authorize, and overrule or rewrite any statute he feels isn't correct. He seized 10% of Intel Corporation without even a fig leaf of legal basis!

Perhaps you're confused that the normal system of laws is still operating? That's just the nature of dictatorship in a large country. The dictator only has so much time in the day, and if he has to delegate anyway he might as well use the preexisting courts and civil servants. He just has to put supervisors on top who can credibly threaten to invoke his wrath if people step too far out of line.

You're being plainly absurd by splitting hairs over a dangerous destruction of the rule of law, complete breakdown of checks and balances, and an executive that is behaving like it is both above the law, and will never lose power.

It does not matter how. The fact that he is able to do it at all illustrates a design weakness. Until recently, Presidents chose (consciously or otherwise) not to exploit that weakness. It doesn’t mean the weakness wasn’t always there.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly and crassly decided in favor of the current administration; among their decisions one to elevate the president above the law, and a carte Blanche for gerrymandering with a footnote that that is against the spirit of democracy.

The congress is dominated by the republicans, who have given up on every last shred of dignity and turned themselves into yes men that will approve anything Trump says, from a justified invasion of Greenland to how unnecessary it would be to publish the Epstein files.

And the executive branch currently hunts down government employees with an unsuitable personal opinion, takes jet plane bribes from foreign leaders, and tries to eradicate slavery and the Native American genocide from museums and school books.

Tell me about those three branches again. Right now, they have been perverted into a single tool to carry out the whims of an egotistic asshole backed by a powerful group of conservative activists.