The best brains don't go work for the CIA or the DoD, or at least they don't stay. It's not an environment in which you can strive and do your best work. Nothing against what they do, I'm ex-military, but the culture in these institutions just doesn't cut it for the Vibes required. In addition, one's career is much better served working in the free market than submitting yourself to the government's arbitrary levelling/career ladder.

The government is just structurally incapable of attracting this type of top A+ talent at scale. They get and keep smart people but not the smartest people. For this, they absolutely need to use industry relations.

Just picture yourself in a position to work at either OpenAI, or GE, the DoD or GM. The average tech worker will much prefer the hip SV company than the old quasi-government dinosaur corporation or the government's agency.

I'm sure the environment is fine, it's just a question of economics. The comp for mere software engineers these days is more than the commander in chief gets paid. Usually what organizations like USDS try to do to attract coders is get them interested in a "tour of duty" where they rough it for a few years on a major general's salary before going back to their old jobs generating text, managing cat videos, and getting people to click on ads. It's a busted system.

The number one reason hackers don’t work for the DoD is they won’t be able to do any kickass drugs anymore. Hackers love drugs.

The number 2 reason is the pay is shit.

Hell of a dataset, but less of the talent. Takes a very specific type of person to get to the front of the AI field, then take a government salary using your knowledge for (what could be) war and surveillance, likely against any public interest in alignment.

I’d say talent? Outside of OpenAI no team has been able to release a model as capable as GPT-4, and I’m unsure if the CIA has been prioritizing LLM experts in their hiring.