LessWrong posts by zvi

This was the worst week I have had in quite a while, maybe ever.

The situation between Anthropic and the Department of War (DoW) spun completely out of control. Trump tried to de-escalate by putting out a Truth merely banning Anthropic from direct use by the Federal Government with a six month wind down. Then Secretary of War Hegseth went rogue and declared Anthropic a supply chain risk, with wording indicating an intent to outright murder Anthropic as a company.

Then that evening OpenAI signed a contact with DoW,

I’ve been trying to figure out the situation and help as best I can. I’ve been in a lot of phone calls, often off the record. Conduct is highly unbecoming and often illegal, arbitrary and capricious. The house is on fire, the Republic in peril. I have people lying to me and being lied to by others. There is fog of war. One gets it from all sides. It's terrifying to think about what might happen with one wrong move.

Also the Middle East is kind of literally on fire, which I’m not covering.

Last week, I had previously covered the situation in Anthropic and [...]
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Outline:
(04:17) A Well Deserved Break
(05:53) Huh, Upgrades
(07:40) On Your Marks
(07:59) Choose Your Fighter
(08:55) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon
(10:07) A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer
(11:48) You Drive Me Crazy
(12:34) They Took Our Jobs
(12:50) The Art of the Jailbreak
(13:27) Introducing
(14:04) In Other AI News
(15:29) Show Me the Money
(16:51) Quiet Speculations
(17:39) The Quest for Sane Regulations
(19:25) Chip City
(20:26) The Week in Audio
(20:39) Government Rhetorical Innovation
(22:53) Give The People What They Want
(24:28) Rhetorical Innovation
(34:23) We Go Our Separate Ways
(35:21) Thanks For The Memos
(48:10) Take A Moment
(48:37) Designating Anthropic A Supply Chain Risk Wont Legally Work
(50:18) The Buck Stops Here
(57:23) Sane Talk About the Department of War Situation
(01:06:18) I Declare Defense Production Act
(01:09:49) Greg Allen Illustrates The Situation
(01:18:33) Do Not Lend Your Strength To That Which You Wish To Be Free From
(01:23:56) Oh Right Democrats Exist
(01:24:46) Beware
(01:26:16) Endorsements of Anthropic Holding the Moral Line
(01:29:08) The Week The World Learned About Claude
(01:30:42) Other Reflections on the Department of War Situation
(01:31:45) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult
(01:32:30) The Lighter Side
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First published:

March 5th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YTnzcZSbA69fMCjNo/ai-158-the-department-of-war

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I’ve been trying to find a slot for this one for a while. I am thrilled that today had sufficiently little news that I am comfortable posting this.

Gemini 3.1 scores very well on benchmarks, but most of us had the same reaction after briefly trying it: “It's a Gemini model.”

And that was that, given our alternatives. But it's got its charms.

Consider this a nice little, highly skippable break.

The Pitch

It's a good model, sir. That's the pitch.

Sundar Pichai (CEO Google): Gemini 3.1 Pro is here. Hitting 77.1% on ARC-AGI-2, it's a step forward in core reasoning (more than 2x 3 Pro).

With a more capable baseline, it's great for super complex tasks like visualizing difficult concepts, synthesizing data into a single view, or bringing creative projects to life.

We’re shipping 3.1 Pro across our consumer and developer products to bring this underlying leap in intelligence to your everyday applications right away.

Jeff Dean also highlighted ARC-AGI-2 along with some cool animations, an urban planning sim, some heat transfer analysis and the general benchmarks.

On Your Marks

Google presents a good standard set of [...]
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Outline:
(00:37) The Pitch
(01:31) On Your Marks
(04:34) Other Peoples Benchmarks
(06:54) Gemini 3 DeepThink V2
(12:33) Positive Feedback
(17:22) Negative Feedback
(19:07) Try Gemini Lite
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First published:

March 4th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/82zizPyyPgaEswbxz/gemini-3-1-pro-aces-benchmarks-i-suppose

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The attempt on Friday by Secretary of War Pete Hegsted to label Anthropic as a supply chain risk and commit corporate murder had a variety of motivations.

On its face, the conflict is a tale of three contracts and the associated working relationships.


The contract Anthropic signed with the Department of War (DoW) in 2025.

The new contract Anthropic was negotiating with DoW, that would have been modified to favor DoW, but where the parties could not reach agreement.

The contract OpenAI was negotiating and signed with DoW, which was per OpenAI modified favorably to OpenAI and thus may be modified further.

The contracts and negotiations need to be confidential, so we only have limited details, and especially only limited details have been shared in public.

We do know a lot, and we know a lot more than we did yesterday morning.

This post is what we know about those three contracts.

For further details and sources, and in particular for a more detail-oriented smackdown on a variety of false or misleading claims and takes, see the long version from yesterday. That post uses very careful qualifiers for [...]
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Outline:
(01:58) The Original Anthropic Contract With DoW
(06:29) The Proposed Revisions to Anthropics Contract
(12:51) OpenAIs Contract With DoW
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First published:

March 3rd, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PBrggrw4mhgbksoYY/a-tale-of-three-contracts

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This is the long version of what happened so far. I will strive for shorter ones later, when I have the time to write them.

Most of you should read the first two sections, then choose the remaining sections that are relevant to your interests.

But first, seriously, read Dean Ball's post Clawed. Do that first. I will not quote too extensively from it, because I am telling all of you to read it. Now. You’re not allowed to keep reading this or anything else until after you do. I’m not kidding.

That's out of the way? Good. Let's get started.

What Happened

President Trump enacted a perfectly reasonable solution to the situation with Anthropic and the Department of War. He cancelled the Anthropic contract with a six month wind down period, after which the Federal Government would be told not to use Anthropic software.

Everyone thought the worst was now over. The situation was unfortunate for Anthropic and also for national security, but this gave us six months to transition, it gave us six months to negotiate another solution, and it avoided any of the extreme highly damaging options that Secretary of [...]
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Outline:
(00:49) What Happened
(10:02) The Timeline Of Events
(21:39) I Did Not Have Time To Write You A Short One
(22:40) The Unhinged Declaration of the Secretary of War
(25:08) Altman Has Been Excellent On The Question of Supply Chain Risk, But May Need To Do More
(27:35) Arrogance Here Means Insisting On Meaningful Red Lines On Mass Domestic Surveillance and Lethal Autonomous Weapons
(29:35) Not Doing Business Is Totally Fine
(30:22) The Demand For Unrestricted Access Is New And Is Selective And Fake
(32:47) Claims Of Strongarming Are Ad Hominem Bad Faith Obvious Nonsense
(34:55) Hegseth Equates Not Being a Dictator With Companies Having Veto Power Over Operational Military Decisions
(40:54) The Part That If Enacted Would Be A Historically Epic Clusterfuck
(48:54) The Other Part Of The Clusterfuck
(52:49) The Department of War Had Many Excellent Options
(55:53) And Then Theres Emil Michael
(01:02:42) Anthropic Will Probably Survive
(01:05:14) The Goal of DoW Was Largely Mass Domestic Surveillance
(01:15:32) What Are The Key Differences Between The Two Contracts?
(01:22:54) OpenAIs Contract Terms
(01:27:04) What OpenAIs Contract Terms Actually Do
(01:29:16) OpenAI Is Trusting DoW And Sam Altman Misrepresented This
(01:33:13) OpenAI Accepted Terms Anthropic Explicitly Declined And That Would Not Have Protected Anthropics Red Lines
(01:35:26) How Altman Initially Described His Deal
(01:42:26) OpenAI Allowed All Lawful Use And Trusts DoW On This
(01:47:21) The DoW Could Alter This Deal
(01:49:29) Why OpenAIs Shared Legal Language Offers Almost No Protections
(01:59:11) So How Does OpenAI Hope For This To Work Out?
(02:01:56) This Was Never About Money
(02:05:03) OpenAI Tells Us How They Really Feel
(02:06:45) First The Good News
(02:11:40) The OpenAI Redlines Only Forbid Currently Illegal Activity
(02:16:28) Altman Does Not Present As Understanding The Difference In Redlines
(02:18:46) Meeting Of The Minds
(02:21:21) Anthropics Position Was The Opposite Of How This Is Portrayed
(02:21:56) The Room Where It Happened
(02:25:45) You Dont Have The Right
(02:32:25) I Ask Questions And Get Answers
(02:37:05) Does This Contract Apply To NSA?
(02:38:07) Can OpenAI Models Be Used To Analyze Commercially Available Data At Scale?
(02:48:21) Employee Activism
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First published:

March 2nd, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Wpdivf3iNJDzBcbzJ/secretary-of-war-tweets-that-anthropic-is-now-a-supply-chain

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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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