Hugo Rosemont

Tech companies are not Governments. My essay for the Emerging Threats Journal: emergingthreats.co.uk/tech-companies…

A few final thoughts on the events of the past few days: First, by far the worst result of the DoD contract saga has been the supply chain risk designation for Anthropic. In the worst-case scenario (Hegseth really did mean "no one who does business with the U.S. military may conduct ANY COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY with Anthropic"; the courts somehow uphold this or refuse to stay Anthropic's supply chain risk designation while they consider the issue, potentially for many months), this could spell death for the company. The DoD may have just killed the goose that lays the golden eggs, to the delight of our geopolitical adversaries. But it's worse than that. As of Friday, every single investor in data center infrastructure suddenly lives in a world where the U.S. government feels that it would be acceptable, in one fell swoop, to significantly undermine the entire business model of a particular frontier lab. Congratulations, data centers have now become more expensive to build - for everyone (no, not just Anthropic). This also percolates to the business of every U.S. tech company generally (not limited to AI). Even those who dislike Anthropic need to understand that U.S. businesses, and investors in U.S. businesses, require a climate of business certainty. The U.S. government, by singling out a particular U.S. company in this fashion over a mere contractual disagreement, has *already* done great harm to the U.S. business environment. Especially if the courts don't swiftly strike this down, we're in for a really bad time. Second, turning now to OpenAI's contract with the DoD, I invite everyone to be more pragmatic. The alternative to OpenAI providing services to the DoD was never going to be "DoD has no access to powerful AI and can't use it in automated AI weapons or domestic mass surveillance". The DoD's alternative to ChatGPT was MechaHitler. I leave it up to the reader to decide which of these two options is preferable. Third, it is critical to understand that the U.S. military *needs* access to powerful AI. Our geopolitical adversaries will have access to powerful AI. Our geopolitical adversaries will use it on the battlefield. Terrorist organizations could also conceivably obtain access to powerful AI. The United States must, at the very minimum, be able to play defense on this field. But there is no way to do so without access to *truly* frontier models - and that means either Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini. Fourth, and as an extension of the third point, our geopolitical adversaries WILL use fully automated AI weapons. They WILL use them without a human in the loop. They WILL do this before it is reasonably safe to do so. The cost of a human life in countries like Russia approaches zero. This means that we will very soon live in a world in which there shall exist fully automated AI weapons. We get to choose only whether they are wielded solely by our adversaries or also by the U.S. military. I personally hate the idea of fully automated AI weapons without a human in the loop, and I would strongly prefer it if no country developed them, ever. But they *are* coming, and it is useless to hide one's head in the sand and pretend that they are not. Given this, I personally fully support Anthropic's stance on helping the DoD develop fully autonomous weapons, but only when the models become sufficiently powerful to be used in this fashion in a *very* safe manner.

Three general things from this AMA: 1. There is more open debate than I thought ther ewould be, at least in this part of Twitter, about whether we should prefer a democratically elected government or unelected private companies to have more power. I guess this is something people disagree on, but…I don’t. This seems like an important area for more discussion. 2. I think the is a question behind a lot of the questions but I haven’t seen quite articulated: What happens if the government tries to nationalize OpenAI or other AI efforts? I obviously don’t know; I have thought about it of course (it has seemed to me for a long time it might be be better if building AGI were a government project) but it doesn’t seem super likely on the current trajectory. That said, I do think a close partnership between governments and the companies building this technology is super important. 3. People take their safety (in the national security sense) more for granted than I realized, which I think is a good thing on balance but I don’t think shows enough respect to the tremendous work it takes for that to happen. Also, I am on the whole very grateful for the level of reasonable and good-faith engagement here. It was not what I expected.

Inside the “tense, painful” talks between the Treasury + MoD over the spending plan designed to transform the UK’s military + how those tensions tumbled into public view this week over Leonardo’s helicopter contract With @Joe_Mayes + @kate__duffy bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

This gets to the core of the issue more than any debate about specific terms. Do you believe in democracy? Should our military be regulated by our elected leaders, or corporate executives? Seemingly innocuous terms from the latter like "You cannot target innocent civilians" are actually moral minefields that lever differences of cultural tradition into massive control. Who is a civilian and not? What makes them innocent or not? What does it mean for them to be a "target" vs collateral damage? Existing policy and law has very clear answers for these questions, but unelected corporations managing profits and PR will often have a very different answer. Imagine if a missile company tried to enforce the above policy, that their product cannot be used to target innocent civilians, that they can shut off access if elected leaders decide to break those terms. Sounds, good, right? Not really - in addition to the value judgement problems I list above, you also have to account for questions like: -What level of information, classified and otherwise, does the corporation receive that would allow them to make these determinations? How much leverage would they have to demand more? -What if an elected President merely threatens a dictator with using our weapons in a certain way, ala Madman Theory/MAD? Is the threat seen as empty because the dictator knows the corporate executives will cut off the military? Is the threat enough to trigger the cutoff? How might either of those determinations vary if the current corporate executive happens to like the dictator or dislike the President? -At what level of confidence does the cutoff trigger, both in writing and in reality? The fact that this is a debate over AI does not change the underlying calculus. The same problems apply to definitions and use of ethically fraught but important capabilities like surveillance systems or autonomous weapons. It is easy to say "But they will have cutouts to operate with autonomous systems for defensive use!", but you immediately get into the same issues and more - what is autonomous? What is defensive? What about defending an asset during an offensive action, or parking a carrier group off the coast of a nation that considers us to be offensive? At the end of the day, you have to believe that the American experiment is still ongoing, that people have the right to elect and unelect the authorities making these decisions, that our imperfect constitutional republic is still good enough to run a country without outsourcing the real levers of power to billionaires and corpos and their shadow advisors. I still believe. And that is why "bro just agree the AI won't be involved in autonomous weapons or mass surveillance why can't you agree it is so simple please bro" is an untenable position that the United States cannot possibly accept.

Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network. In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome. AI safety and wide distribution of benefits are the core of our mission. Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement. We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the DoW also wanted. We will deploy FDEs to help with our models and to ensure their safety, we will deploy on cloud networks only. We are asking the DoW to offer these same terms to all AI companies, which in our opinion we think everyone should be willing to accept. We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements. We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can. The world is a complicated, messy, and sometimes dangerous place.

Breaking News: OpenAI said it would provide the Pentagon with A.I. tools, hours after technology by Anthropic, its competitor, was banned by President Trump. nyti.ms/4r2Iw5w

In an exclusive interview with CBS News' @jolingkent, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said that the Pentagon’s decision to designate the AI company a supply chain risk is “retaliatory and punitive.” The Pentagon made the designation, which restricts military contractors from doing business with Anthropic, after the company refused to give the military unfettered access to its AI model.

Breaking News: President Trump told federal agencies to stop using A.I. technology made by Anthropic, an order that could complicate defense work. The company had clashed with the military over how officials wanted to use its A.I. model. nyti.ms/4sjjccL

'Taken on its own terms, the bill improves flexibility. But flexibility is not the same as capability,' write Professor Vincent Connelly and @hamish_mundell in the latest #RUSICommentary. rusi.org/explore-our-re…

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Thursday the AI company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Pentagon’s demands to allow wider use of its technology. defensenews.com/news/pentagon-…

General Valerii Zaluzhnyi on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the war: “We Ukrainians no longer have a choice, we will either perish or survive. The formula for survival is simple to continue fighting, strengthen economy and maintain unity.”

📢NEW REPORT: Organised crime is winning. Criminal gangs are using AI for sophisticated fraud, hiding behind crypto payments and are increasingly offering their services to hostile states. New report by @ZoeSwanwick, with foreword by @RichardBakerMP, digs into how the UK is failing to keep up, and what to do about it.

"I called up my counterpart, Mark Sedwill, at the time and said 'What the hell are you guys doing giving up the Chagos Islands?'" Former National Security Advisor HR McMaster on the Chagos Deal following recent criticism by President Trump. #Newsnight

'As the US steps back, Europe must step forward: together with the US where possible, but on its own – or with other partners – when it is not.' Read RUSI's Director-General @rach_ellehuus's insights from #MSC2026 in today's #RUSICommentary. rusi.org/explore-our-re…

Where things stand on defence spending w/@Joe_Mayes @alexwickham: -PM is on board w/military chiefs on raising spending further -Reeves is resisting beyond joint borrowing+private money (officials say it won't be enough) -She's reassessing whether to join a global defence bank

Exhausted, disillusioned, and losing trust - voters see that Westminster isn’t working anymore. In @TheCriticMag I explain why the problem isn’t communication or personalities but broken structures. thecritic.co.uk/westminster-is…

There have been many efforts over decades at joint procurement. Nations insist on their share of jobs, and their own variants: costs go up and timelines out. UK/French projects have foundered on who leads. But in a world of disorder, it’s right to try again, working with EU. 3/4

The U.K.’s failure to finalize budgets for key defense programs is beginning to impact international partnerships, impinging on London's effort to project solidarity with European partners. politico.eu/article/europe…