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The DoDs recent beef with Anthropic over their right to restrict how Claude can be used is revealing. > Though Anthropic has maintained that it does not and wi

The DoDs recent beef with Anthropic over their right to restrict how Claude can be used is revealing. > Though Anthropic has maintained that it does not and will not allow its AI systems to be directly used in lethal autonomous weapons or for domestic surveillance Autonomous AI weapons is one of the things the DoD appears to be pursuing. So bring back the Skynet people, because that’s where we apparently are. 1. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/anthropic-ai-defense-war-venezuela-maduro-rcna259603 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/anthropic-ai-defense-w...

nightski 8mo ago
If you ever doubted it you were fooling yourself. It is inevitable.
- tartoran 8mo ago
  If we all sit back and lament that it’s inevitable surely it could happen.
  - nightski 8mo ago
    It doesn't matter, it only takes one to make it happen.
- samiv 8mo ago
  It's ok we'll just send a robot back in time to help destroy the chip that starts it.
  - wolttam 8mo ago
    Judging by what's going on around me, it failed :(
    - bcrosby95 8mo ago
      We're just stuck in the non-diverged timeline that's fucked.
zer00eyz 8mo ago
> Autonomous AI weapons In theory, you can do this today, in your garage. Buy a quad as a kit. (cheap) Figure out how to arm it (the trivial part). Grab yolo, tuned for people detection. Grab any of the off the shelf facial recognition libraries. You can mostly run this on phone hardware, and if you're stripping out the radios then possibly for days. The shim you have to write: software to fly the drone into the person... and thats probably around somewhere out there as well. The tech to build "Screamers" (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screamers_(1995_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screamers_(1995_film) ) already exists, is open source and can be very low power (see: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/O_lz0b792ew https://www.youtube.com/shorts/O_lz0b792ew ) --
- wordpad 8mo ago
  Didn't screamers evolve sophisticated intelligence? Is that what happens if we use claw and let it write its own skills and update it's own objectives?
  - gs17 8mo ago
    Scarier, in the original story, the robots were called "claws".
- chasd00 8mo ago
  > software to fly the drone into the person... and thats probably around somewhere out there as well. ardupilot + waypoint nav would do it for fixed locations. The camera identifies a target, gets the gps cooridnates and sets a waypoint. I would be shocked if there wasn't extensions available (maybe not officially) for flying to a "moving location". I'm in the high power rocketry hobby and the knowledge to add control surfaces and processing to autonomously fly a rocket to a location is plenty available. No one does it because it's a bad look for a hobby that already raises eyebrows.
  - tim333 8mo ago
    The Ukrainian drones that took out Russia's long range bombers used ArduPilot and AI. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb)
chasd00 8mo ago
hasn't Ukraine already proved out autonomous weapons on the battlefield? There was a NYT podcast a couple years ago where the interviewed higher up in the Ukraine military and they said it's already in place with fpv drones, loitering, target identification, attack, the whole 9 yards. You don't need an LLM to do autonomous weapons, a modern Tomahawk cruise missile is pretty autonomous. The only change to a modern tomahawk would be adding parameters of what the target looks like and tasking the missile with identifying a target. The missile pretty much does everything else already ( flying, routing, etc ).
- slibhb 8mo ago
  Yes. They published a great article about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/magazine/ukraine-ai-drones-war-russia.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/magazine/ukraine-ai-drone... As I remember it the basic idea is that the new generation of drones is piloted close enough to targets and then the AI takes over for "the last mile". This gets around jamming, which otherwise would make it hard for dones to connect with their targets.
- testdelacc1 8mo ago
  A drone told to target a tank needs to identify the shape it’s looking at within milliseconds. That’s not happening with an LLM, certainly.
  - mikkupikku 8mo ago
    A loiter drone on the other hand can probably afford to take a minute to identify a target before dropping on it.
nradov 8mo ago
The DoD was pursuing autonomous AI weapons decades ago, and succeeded as of 1979 with the Mk 60 Captor Mine. https://www.vp4association.com/aircraft-information-2/32-2/mk-60-captor-mine/ https://www.vp4association.com/aircraft-information-2/32-2/m... The worries over Skynet and other sci-fi apocalypse scenarios are so silly.
- deepsquirrelnet 8mo ago
  Self awareness is silly, but the capacity for a powerful minority to oppress a sizeable population without recruiting human soldiers might not be that far off.
  - nradov 8mo ago
    The more automation a weapons system has, the more human technicians are needed to keep it working.
georgemcbay 8mo ago
> Autonomous AI weapons is one of the things the DoD appears to be pursuing. So bring back the Skynet people, because that’s where we apparently are. This situation legitimately worries me, but it isn't even really the SkyNet scenario that I am worried about. To self-quote a reply to another thread I made recently (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083145#47083641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083145#47083641): When AI dooms humanity it probably won't be because of the sort of malignant misalignment people worry about, but rather just some silly logic blunder combined with the system being directly in control of something it shouldn't have been given control over. I think we have less to worry about from a future SkyNet-like AGI system than we do just a modern or near future LLM with all of its limitations making a very bad oopsie with significant real-world consequences because it was allowed to control a system capable of real-world damage. I would have probably worried about this situation less in times past when I believed there were adults making these decisions and the "Secretary of War" of the US wasn't someone known primarily as an ego-driven TV host with a drinking problem.
- breppp 8mo ago
  Statistically more probable this kind of blunder will happen in a small disaster before a large disaster and then regulated e.g. 50 people die due to water poisoning issue rather than 10 billion die in a claude code powered nuclear apocalypse
bigyabai 8mo ago
It turned out that the Pentagon just ignored Anthropic's demands anyways: https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-used-anthropics-claude-in-maduro-venezuela-raid-583aff17 https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-used... I really doubt that Anthropic is in any kind of position to make those decisions regardless of how they feel.
- deepsquirrelnet 8mo ago
  I don’t disagree, but they should be. Last I knew, the government doesn’t control the means of production… and the current US regime loves to boast about it. Confusing right?

nightski 8mo ago

If you ever doubted it you were fooling yourself. It is inevitable.

tartoran 8mo ago
If we all sit back and lament that it’s inevitable surely it could happen.
- nightski 8mo ago
  It doesn't matter, it only takes one to make it happen.
samiv 8mo ago
It's ok we'll just send a robot back in time to help destroy the chip that starts it.
- wolttam 8mo ago
  Judging by what's going on around me, it failed :(
  - bcrosby95 8mo ago
    We're just stuck in the non-diverged timeline that's fucked.

zer00eyz 8mo ago

> Autonomous AI weapons In theory, you can do this today, in your garage. Buy a quad as a kit. (cheap) Figure out how to arm it (the trivial part). Grab yolo, tuned for people detection. Grab any of the off the shelf facial recognition libraries. You can mostly run this on phone hardware, and if you're stripping out the radios then possibly for days. The shim you have to write: software to fly the drone into the person... and thats probably around somewhere out there as well. The tech to build "Screamers" (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screamers_(1995_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screamers_(1995_film) ) already exists, is open source and can be very low power (see: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/O_lz0b792ew https://www.youtube.com/shorts/O_lz0b792ew ) --

wordpad 8mo ago
Didn't screamers evolve sophisticated intelligence? Is that what happens if we use claw and let it write its own skills and update it's own objectives?
- gs17 8mo ago
  Scarier, in the original story, the robots were called "claws".
chasd00 8mo ago
> software to fly the drone into the person... and thats probably around somewhere out there as well. ardupilot + waypoint nav would do it for fixed locations. The camera identifies a target, gets the gps cooridnates and sets a waypoint. I would be shocked if there wasn't extensions available (maybe not officially) for flying to a "moving location". I'm in the high power rocketry hobby and the knowledge to add control surfaces and processing to autonomously fly a rocket to a location is plenty available. No one does it because it's a bad look for a hobby that already raises eyebrows.
- tim333 8mo ago
  The Ukrainian drones that took out Russia's long range bombers used ArduPilot and AI. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb)

chasd00 8mo ago

hasn't Ukraine already proved out autonomous weapons on the battlefield? There was a NYT podcast a couple years ago where the interviewed higher up in the Ukraine military and they said it's already in place with fpv drones, loitering, target identification, attack, the whole 9 yards. You don't need an LLM to do autonomous weapons, a modern Tomahawk cruise missile is pretty autonomous. The only change to a modern tomahawk would be adding parameters of what the target looks like and tasking the missile with identifying a target. The missile pretty much does everything else already ( flying, routing, etc ).

slibhb 8mo ago
Yes. They published a great article about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/magazine/ukraine-ai-drones-war-russia.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/magazine/ukraine-ai-drone... As I remember it the basic idea is that the new generation of drones is piloted close enough to targets and then the AI takes over for "the last mile". This gets around jamming, which otherwise would make it hard for dones to connect with their targets.
testdelacc1 8mo ago
A drone told to target a tank needs to identify the shape it’s looking at within milliseconds. That’s not happening with an LLM, certainly.
- mikkupikku 8mo ago
  A loiter drone on the other hand can probably afford to take a minute to identify a target before dropping on it.

nradov 8mo ago

The DoD was pursuing autonomous AI weapons decades ago, and succeeded as of 1979 with the Mk 60 Captor Mine. https://www.vp4association.com/aircraft-information-2/32-2/mk-60-captor-mine/ https://www.vp4association.com/aircraft-information-2/32-2/m... The worries over Skynet and other sci-fi apocalypse scenarios are so silly.

deepsquirrelnet 8mo ago
Self awareness is silly, but the capacity for a powerful minority to oppress a sizeable population without recruiting human soldiers might not be that far off.
- nradov 8mo ago
  The more automation a weapons system has, the more human technicians are needed to keep it working.

georgemcbay 8mo ago

> Autonomous AI weapons is one of the things the DoD appears to be pursuing. So bring back the Skynet people, because that’s where we apparently are. This situation legitimately worries me, but it isn't even really the SkyNet scenario that I am worried about. To self-quote a reply to another thread I made recently (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083145#47083641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083145#47083641): When AI dooms humanity it probably won't be because of the sort of malignant misalignment people worry about, but rather just some silly logic blunder combined with the system being directly in control of something it shouldn't have been given control over. I think we have less to worry about from a future SkyNet-like AGI system than we do just a modern or near future LLM with all of its limitations making a very bad oopsie with significant real-world consequences because it was allowed to control a system capable of real-world damage. I would have probably worried about this situation less in times past when I believed there were adults making these decisions and the "Secretary of War" of the US wasn't someone known primarily as an ego-driven TV host with a drinking problem.

breppp 8mo ago
Statistically more probable this kind of blunder will happen in a small disaster before a large disaster and then regulated e.g. 50 people die due to water poisoning issue rather than 10 billion die in a claude code powered nuclear apocalypse

bigyabai 8mo ago

It turned out that the Pentagon just ignored Anthropic's demands anyways: https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-used-anthropics-claude-in-maduro-venezuela-raid-583aff17 https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-used... I really doubt that Anthropic is in any kind of position to make those decisions regardless of how they feel.

deepsquirrelnet 8mo ago
I don’t disagree, but they should be. Last I knew, the government doesn’t control the means of production… and the current US regime loves to boast about it. Confusing right?