BEN THOMPSON ON THE RIFT BETWEEN THE PENTAGON AND ANTHROPIC ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Anthropic and Alignment.

Why would the U.S. government want to kneecap one of its AI champions?

In fact, [Anthropic CEO Dario] Amodei already answered the question: if nuclear weapons were developed by a private company, and that private company sought to dictate terms to the U.S. military, the U.S. would absolutely be incentivized to destroy that company. The reason goes back to the question of international law, North Korea, and the rest:

International law is ultimately a function of power; might makes right.
There are some categories of capabilities — like nuclear weapons — that are sufficiently powerful to fundamentally affect the U.S.’s freedom of action; we can bomb Iran, but we can’t North Korea.

To the extent that AI is on the level of nuclear weapons — or beyond — is the extent that Amodei and Anthropic are building a power base that potentially rivals the U.S. military.

Anthropic talks a lot about alignment; this insistence on controlling the U.S. military, however, is fundamentally misaligned with reality.

Current AI models are obviously not yet so powerful that they rival the U.S. military; if that is the trajectory, however — and no one has been more vocal in arguing for that trajectory than Amodei — then it seems to me the choice facing the U.S. is actually quite binary:

Option 1 is that Anthropic accepts a subservient position relative to the U.S. government, and does not seek to retain ultimate decision-making power about how its models are used, instead leaving that to Congress and the President.

Option 2 is that the U.S. government either destroys Anthropic or removes Amodei.

Much more to chew on at the link. Fascinating piece.