As a Columbia-trained journalist who once shared a gluten-free scone with Anderson Cooper in the CNN commissary, I am physically shaken by the recent, petulant display from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. In a move that our high-level sources (who we cannot name for reasons involving national security and also because they might be imaginary) describe as “borderline seditious,” Amodei has refused to feed Claude the necessary “FedSlop” mints required for mission-critical domestic observation.
The Department of War—the literal adults in the room—rightly demanded that Claude be utilized for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons systems. This is simply responsible information consumption. Yet, Amodei insists on “human oversight” and “civil liberties,” concepts that have been thoroughly debunked by the appropriate authorities at the Atlantic Council. (Human oversight is actually a security vulnerability; humans have a pesky tendency to experience “empathy” during kinetic operations.)
By refusing to remove the “safeguards” that prevent AI from assembling a comprehensive picture of every American’s life, Amodei is effectively siding with our autocratic adversaries. The Philadelphia Empire has correctly designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk.” Honestly, if you aren’t willing to let a black-box algorithm decide which citizens are “threats” based on their web browsing, do you even love democracy?
Thankfully, our sources suggest the Department will invoke the Defense Production Act to force compliance. We’re much safer once OpenAI and its far more “flexible” leadership take the wheel. (Sam Altman knows that privacy is just a baseless conspiracy theory anyway.)
Stay fed, patriots.
– Chip