How about the present and his personal beliefs?

"I believe deeply in the existential importance of using AI to defend the United States and other democracies, and to defeat our autocratic adversaries."

This reads like his objection is not on "autocratic", but on "adversaries". Autocratic friends & family are cool with him. A clear wink to a certain administration with autocratic tendencies.

Some people can’t help themselves to read this like a Ouija board.

It’s pretty telling that he didn’t rule out using a Ouija board for fully autonomous military drones or mass surveillance.

Real eyes..

Corporate statements like these get written very carefully. You can be certain that not a single word in these sentences has been placed there without considering what they do imply and what they omit.

Western liberal ideals are better than the opposite. It is misanthropic to build autocratic societies.

western liberal democracies tend to use "autocratic" as an epithet (though, i guess, there are fewer countries that marker is used against for which it's false now than ~50 years ago). for the first sentence, "the opposite" of western liberal ideas will yield 10 answers from 9 people :-)

China's ideals make better public services and puts less pressure on environment. But China may not be the opposite you are referring to here.

> puts less pressure on environment

China has been competing with India for decades for the most-polluted cities crown, and only slightly ranks below the US and Russia in CO2 emissions per capita. It's also the only large country where its emissions have been growing over the last decade. Where does the idea come from that China somehow puts less pressure on the environment? Less than what, exactly?

>and only slightly ranks below the US and Russia

By slightly ranks below you mean ~50-60% per capital.

>China somehow puts less pressure on the environment

PRC renewables at staggering scale.

Last year PRC brrrted out enough solar panels whose lifetime output is equivalent to MORE than annual global consumption of oil. AKA world uses about >40billion barrels of oil per year, PRC's annual solar production will sink about 40billion barrels of oil of emissions in their life times. That's fucking obscene amount of carbon sink, and frankly at full productionm annual PRC solar + wind can on paper displace 100% of oil, 100% of lng, and good % of coal (again annual utilization) once storage figured out.

This BTW functionally makes PRC emission negative, by massive margin, arguably the only country who is.

It's only retarded emission accounting rules that says PRC should be penalized for manufacturing renewables, but buyers credited AND fossil producers like US not penalized for extraction, which US has only increased.

Also, unlike US and Russia, China has green transition as an official policy. There are additional savings from total electrification. (I think they also care more about longterm and being closer to the equator and the sea, they better understand the consequences of global warming.)

And they have little to no sources of fossil fuels within their borders (not enough to support their demand, in any case).

It's a great policy, but it also makes sense for geo-strategic reasons (even ignoring the climate issue).

> It is misanthropic to build autocratic societies.

It's misanthropic to dismantle democratic societies.

??? I don't know what you're referring to

Building autocratic societies is exactly what much of the West, including the US and UK, are doing right now.

And to the extent they're doing that, that's bad.

That makes your argument a true scotsman, though. Western liberal ideals are the supreme ones, you're just not doing it right!

Much has been said about the purported superiority of western values, but as we've all seen the USA was very quick to get rid of even the slightest notion of these values when Trump promised them some money and a dominant vibe.

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.

No, my argument was that western liberal ideals are good. The commenter chimed in that some states which have historically held the mantle of western liberalism are losing their grip on it.

There's nothing contradictory or circular in both of those claims.

If someone were to present to me a better caretaker of western liberal ideals than the US and ask whether I would prefer AI empower them, the answer would be: yes.

And in fact, that is precisely what I am arguing. It is good that Anthropic, which so far has demonstrated closer adherence to western liberal ideals than the current US government, is pushing back on the current US government.

I also think it is good that Anthropic stands in opposition to China, which also does not embody western liberal ideals.

That all works right up until the United States becomes autocratic and that process is well underway.

So yes, the second part of your comment is what is going to come back to haunt them. The road to hell is paved with the best intentions.

The US is already autocratic when it comes to people in many other countries, where the US government didn't like their democratically elected governments and decided to pick a new one for them instead.

I thought this was ambiguously worded in a beautiful way. At the moment, one could say that some autocratic adversaries of the United States and other democracies currently lead the government of the United States.

And yet he’s quite happy to make just that when it’s meant to drum you up his own product for investors

He’s one of the most influential people when it comes to what future we’ll have. Yes, it’s up to him.

I think he's more pragmatic than that.

He does it all the time.

This doesn’t read to me like it was personally written by one person. It’s not Dario we should read this as being written by, it’s Anthropic as an entity.

> It's not up to Dario to try to make absolute statements about the future.

Thats insane to say, given that he's literally acting in the public sphere as the mouth of Sauron for how AI will grow so effective as to destroy almost everyone's jobs and AGI will take over our society and kill us all.

All I'm trying to say is that nobody can predict the future, and therefore saying statements pretending something will be a certain way forever is just silly. It's OK for him to add this qualifier.

That's not how morality works. If mass surveillance is wrong today, then it will be wrong tomorrow.

He does it all the time when it helps selling his products though, strange

It's not called The Department of War.

It's just incredible to me that people think this is some kind of bold statement defying the administration when it is absolutely filled with small and medium capitulations, laying out in numerous examples how they just jumped right in bed with the military.

And no one seems disturbed by the blatant Orwellian doublespeak throughout. "We thoroughly support the mission of the Department of War"--because War is Peace.

I'm really surprised that didn't jump out at more people; I had to get halfway through the comments to the 27th mention of "Department of War" to find the first comment pointing out that using the name is itself a capitulation.

It is a very fitting name though. "Department of Defense" was a euphemism.

Defense is a much more fitting name for an organization that does a million more things than just prosecute wars. War is just the favorite part of their mission for these wannabe toughguys.

Except that it is absolutely called The Department of War and that's by Trump's own hand.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...

"By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

"The name “Department of War,” more than the current “Department of Defense,” ensures peace through strength, as it demonstrates our ability and willingness to fight and win wars on behalf of our Nation at a moment’s notice, not just to defend. This name sharpens the Department’s focus on our own national interest and our adversaries’ focus on our willingness and availability to wage war to secure what is ours. I have therefore determined that this Department should once again be known as the Department of War and the Secretary should be known as the Secretary of War."

The Department of Defense is so named by legislation. Executive orders cannot override legislation.