- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- politics@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43810526
Actions by the president and the Pentagon appeared to drive a wedge between Washington and the tech industry, whose leaders and workers spoke out for the start-up.
Feb. 27, 2026
Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, said in a memo to employees this week that “we have long believed that A.I. should not be used for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons.”
More than 100 employees at Google signed a petition calling on the tech giant to “refuse to comply” with the Pentagon on some uses of artificial intelligence in military operations.
And employees at Amazon, Google and Microsoft urged their leaders in a separate open letter on Thursday to “hold the line” against the Pentagon.
Silicon Valley has rallied behind the A.I. start-up Anthropic, which has been embroiled in a dispute with President Trump and the Pentagon over how its technology may be used for military purposes. Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, has said he does not want the company’s A.I. to be used to surveil Americans or in autonomous weapons, saying this could “undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.”
This was the red line for the techbros? This was a bridge to far? Don’t get me wrong, it’s good that they didn’t fold on this point… but fuck, would have been nice if they had taken exception to any of the thousands of red lines the regime has crossed up until now.
They’re all invested in each other, a threat to one is a threat to all and up until now the regime hasn’t threatened their investments.
Seriously there’s a graph somewhere showing who’s invested in what and basically it’s all just one thing now. I don’t know why they maintain the charade of being separate companies.
And the reason they don’t want their technology being used to kill people is because they don’t trust the administration to keep it to foreign countries in the middle East where no one cares what happens. They’ll use it in the United States and everyone will know who’s technology is powering their drones.
All that’s happening is that financial self-interest and ethics both give the same answer in this scenario.