LessWrong posts by zvi

The Department of War gave Anthropic until 5:01pm on Friday the 27th to either give the Pentagon ‘unfettered access’ to Claude for ‘all lawful uses,’ or else. With the ‘or else’ being not the sensible ‘okay we will cancel the contract then’ but also expanding to either being designated a supply chain risk or having the government invoke the Defense Production Act.

It is perfectly legitimate for the Department of War to decide that it does not wish to continue on Anthropic's terms, and that it will terminate the contract. There is no reason things need be taken further than that.

Undersecretary of State Jeremy Lewin: This isn’t about Anthropic or the specific conditions at issue. It's about the broader premise that technology deeply embedded in our military must be under the exclusive control of our duly elected/appointed leaders. No private company can dictate normative terms of use—which can change and are subject to interpretation—for our most sensitive national security systems. The @DeptofWar obviously can’t trust a system a private company can switch off at any moment.

Timothy B. Lee: OK, so don’t renew their contract. Why are you threatening to go nuclear by declaring them [...]
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Outline:
(08:00) Good News: We Can Keep Talking
(10:31) Once Again No You Do Not Need To Call Dario For Permission
(15:22) The Pentagon Reiterates Its Demands And Threats
(16:48) The Pentagons Dual Threats Are Contradictory and Incoherent
(18:27) The Pentagons Position Has Unfortunate Implications
(20:25) OpenAI Stands With Anthropic
(22:48) xAI Stands On Unreliable Ground
(25:25) Replacing Anthropic Would At Least Take Months
(26:02) We Will Not Be Divided
(27:50) This Risks Driving Other Companies Away
(30:32) Other Reasons For Concern
(32:10) Wisdom From A Retired General
(35:06) Congress Urges Restraint
(37:05) Reaction Is Overwhelmingly With Anthropic On This
(40:52) Some Even More Highly Unhelpful Rhetoric
(47:23) Other Summaries and Notes
(48:32) Paths Forward
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First published:

February 27th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ppj7v4sSCbJjLye3D/anthropic-and-the-dow-anthropic-responds

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Events continue to be fast and furious.

This was the first actually stressful week of the year.

That was mostly due to issues around Anthropic and the Department of War. This is the big event the news is not picking up, with the Pentagon on the verge of invoking one of two extreme options that would both be extremely damaging to national security and that would potentially endanger our Republic. The post has details, and the first section here has a few additional notes.

Also stressful for many was the impact of Citrini's AI scenario, where it is 2028 and AI agents are sufficiently capable to disrupt the whole economy but this turns out to be bearish for stocks. People freaked out enough about this that it seems to have directly impacted the stock market, although most stocks other than the credit card companies seem to have bounced back. Of course, in a scenario like that we probably all die and definitely the world transforms, and you have bigger things to worry about than the stock market, but the post does raise a lot of very good detailed points, so I spend my post going over [...]
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Outline:
(02:34) Anthropic and the Department of War
(06:06) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility
(06:39) Language Models Dont Offer Mundane Utility
(08:23) Huh, Upgrades
(08:43) On Your Marks
(15:22) Choose Your Fighter
(15:32) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon
(16:58) Head In The Sand
(17:58) Fun With Media Generation
(19:19) A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer
(19:46) You Drive Me Crazy
(20:43) They Took Our Jobs
(25:42) The Art of the Jailbreak
(26:43) Get Involved
(28:02) Introducing
(31:49) In Other AI News
(36:10) The India Summit
(46:01) Show Me the Money
(48:07) Quiet Speculations
(49:25) The Quest for Sane Regulations
(54:59) Chip City
(56:11) The Mask Comes Off
(58:19) The Week in Audio
(01:07:27) Quickly, Theres No Time
(01:07:59) Dean Ball On Recursive Self-Improvement
(01:13:28) Rhetorical Innovation
(01:18:23) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult
(01:20:23) The Homework Assignment Is To Choose The Assignment
(01:35:34) Agent Foundations
(01:36:54) Autonomous Killer Robots
(01:37:36) People Really Hate AI
(01:39:50) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone
(01:42:00) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone
(01:42:59) The Lighter Side
(01:47:24) If I streamed Slay the Spire 2, would you watch?
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First published:

February 26th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zC3Rtrj6RXwEde9h6/ai-157-burn-the-boats

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The situation in AI in 2026 is crazy. The confrontation between Anthropic and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is a new level of crazy. It risks turning quite bad for all. There's also nothing stopped it from turning out fine for everyone.

By at least one report the recent meeting between the two parties was cordial and all business, but Anthropic has been given a deadline of 5pm eastern on Friday to modify its existing agreed-upon contract to grant ‘unfettered access’ to Claude, or else.

Anthropic has been the most enthusiastic supporter our military has in AI and in tech, but on this point have strongly signaled they with this they cannot comply. Prediction markets find it highly unlikely Anthropic will comply (14%), and think it is highly possible Anthropic will either be declared a Supply Chain Risk (16%) or be subjected to the Defense Production Act (23%).

I’ve hesitated to write about this because I could make the situation worse. There's already been too many instances in AI of warnings leading directly to the thing someone is warning about, by making people aware of that possibility, increasing its salience or creating negative polarization and solidifying [...]
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Outline:
(01:32) This Standoff Should Never Have Happened
(06:07) Anthropic Cannot Fold
(07:12) Dean Ball Gives a Primer
(10:57) What Happened To Lead To This Showdown?
(18:05) Simple Solution: Delayed Contract Termination
(18:59) Better Solution: Status Quo
(19:29) Extreme Option One: Supply Chain Risk
(25:56) Putting Some Misconceptions To Bed
(28:16) Extreme Option Two: The Defense Production Act
(41:23) These Two Threats Contradict Each Other
(42:40) The Pentagons Actions Here Are Deeply Unpopular
(45:45) The Pentagons Most Extreme Potential Asks Could End The Republic
(48:07) Anthropic Did Make Some Political Mistakes
(49:13) Claude Is The Best Model Available
(50:55) The Administration Until Now Has Been Strong On This
(51:50) You Should See The Other Guys
(53:16) Some Other Intuition Pumps That Might Be Helpful
(53:55) Trying To Get An AI That Obeys All Orders Risks Emergent Misalignment
(01:00:13) We Can All Still Win
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First published:

February 25th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rmYB4a7Pskw7DLpCh/anthropic-and-the-department-of-war

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A viral essay from Citrini about how AI bullishness could be bearish was impactful enough for Bloomberg to give it partial responsibility for a decline in the stock market, and all the cool economics types are talking about it.

So fine, let's talk.

It's an excellent work of speculative fiction, in that it:


Depicts a concrete scenario with lots of details and numbers.

Introduces a bunch of underexplored and important mechanisms.

Gets a lot of those mechanisms more right than you would expect.

Provides lots of food for thought.

Takes bold stands.

Is clearly labeled as ‘a scenario, not a prediction’ up at the top.

Is fun to read and doesn’t let reality get in the way of exploring its ideas.

The Efficient Market Hypothesis is false, whoo!

Citrini: Hopefully, reading this leaves you more prepared for potential left tail risks as AI makes the economy increasingly weird.

It is still a work of speculative fiction. It doesn’t let reality get in the way of its ideas.

I appreciate Tor Bair's perspective of this being a case of Cunningham's Law, that the best [...]
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Outline:
(03:17) The Headline Destination
(05:36) ...And Thats Terrible
(08:59) SaaSpocalype Now
(09:48) Levels of Friction Go To Zero ...And Thats Terrible
(11:51) DoorDash and Uber
(13:36) Breaking Into The Marketplace
(14:24) Who Captures The Surplus?
(15:09) For Everything Else
(20:55) Real Estate Realism
(23:14) Everything Is Awesome And No One Is Happy
(23:49) Bearish For Non-AI Stocks Is Reasonable
(25:47) Other Levels of Friction Problems
(26:45) Oh Over There? Thats The Singularity
(28:12) Have I Got A Job For You
(29:51) Systemic Failure
(32:31) What Me Worry (About Economics)?
(37:14) We The People
(39:29) The Efficient Market Hypothesis Is False
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First published:

February 24th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bKrpLhqcoN6WycrFp/citrini-s-scenario-is-a-great-but-deeply-flawed-thought

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Anthropic first gave us Claude Opus 4.6, then followed up with Claude Sonnet 4.6.

For most purposes Sonnet 4.6 is not as capable as Opus 4.6, but it is not that far behind, it would have been fully frontier-level a few months ago, and it is faster and cheaper than Opus.

That has its advantages, including that Sonnet is in the free plan, and it seems outright superior for computer use.

Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 is available now on all plans, Cowork, Claude Code, our API, and all major cloud platforms.

We’ve also upgraded our free tier to Sonnet 4.6 by default—it now includes file creation, connectors, skills, and compaction.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is our most capable Sonnet model yet. It's a full upgrade of the model's skills across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge work, and design. Sonnet 4.6 also features a 1M token context window in beta.

JB: I use it all the time because I’m poor.

This substantially upgrades Claude's free tier for coding and computer use. It gives us all a better lightweight option, including for sub-agents where you would have previously needed to use Haiku. [...]
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Outline:
(01:53) On Your Marks
(10:09) Reactions: Its How Much You Save
(18:56) Bringing It Together
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First published:

February 23rd, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/u2vFY4wefyqPwwDH8/claude-sonnet-4-6-gives-you-flexibility

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