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America, and probably the world, stands on a precipice

• BergAndCo 7mo ago
  [dead]
• SilverElfin 7mo ago
  I don’t like most of the content from this guy, but he’s right about this one. If you can abuse your political position to turn private corporations into your slaves to abuse others, our political system is broken. Especially when you outsource actions that the government would itself be restricted from.
  • tmountain 7mo ago
    It’s not the type of behavior that you find in nations operating based on the rule of law. It’s emblematic of where the things are heading for the United States. A rapid descent into fascism (call it what it is).
    • inigyou 7mo ago
      At what point can we declare the Rubicon has been crossed?
      • spicymaki 7mo ago
        The tech crowd is so complicit these days the rubicon can only be crossed the moment the paramilitaries are at their door and press the Ring doorbell.
      • InexSquirrel 7mo ago
        Definitively, if Trump gets voted in for a third term.
      • fzeroracer 7mo ago
        I would say the rubicon was crossed a little over a month ago when the government started using a paramilitary group to kill American citizens but people's definition of 'rubicon' is going to vary wildly depending on how much of the boot they're deep throating. And unfortunately, the majority of the tech industry has it pretty deep.
        • deleted 7mo ago
          [deleted]
      • ajb 7mo ago
        At some point, they will start using violence to discipline their own side. Today, the people currently dismantling the rule of law, still in their heads imagine that they can do that and retain the benefits themselves. That's why the footsoldiers can still to some extent be intimidated into backing down by citizen opposition - they don't actually fear their own captains more. After they use violence to discipline their own side, everything gets much more serious. But it's also a point of risk for them, because it might break their coalition. So it's important to defend the rights even of those who are on the side of autocracy . Because if they are successful in establishing violence as their right over even their own allies and followers, there may be no way back without civil war.
        • orwin 7mo ago
          Yeah, they started with minorities, but they going against socialists/communists as loyalty tests, to close rank, and you will likely see violence against their own side shortly after they start putting political opponent in jail. At first jail, where they release them after a day or two, then in warehouses converted into jail-hospitals, where people stay weeks, get treated, sometime lose teeth. Almost always syndicalists and KPD supporters, sometimes SPD local leaders, it was often political? Oh sorry, you talked about the US?
      • AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
        January 6, 2021 (and the events leading up to it) was certainly a line, but maybe not the line. I would say, when the administration openly refuses to follow a court decision. (And in practice, it's going to have to be a Supreme Court decision, because the administration seems to appeal every lower court decision that is against them.) Or, when they openly and blatantly interfere in the 2026 election (either by cancelling it via martial law or state of emergency, or interfere in it via troops or ICE in the streets or state of emergency, or after the fact refusing to accept the results because of some claim of invalidity).
        • inigyou 7mo ago
          Then the Rubicon was crossed in April 2025. https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-defies-supreme-court-dangerous-precedent-why-2025-4?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-defies-supreme-...
      • insin 7mo ago
        The brownshirts are already on the streets
      • harimau777 7mo ago
        IMHO, the Rubicon was crossed when COINTELPRO was started.
      • tmountain 7mo ago
        https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-trump-maga-ice/685751/?lid=lf6odm4jo665 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-tr...
  • antonvs 7mo ago
    This seems like a classic case of "the boy who cried wolf". Almost everything Gary Marcus says has been trivially dismissable, and often soon proven wrong. If someone like that wants to be in a position to warn society of actual harms, they'd have to behave differently.
  • scottLobster 7mo ago
    Welcome to the return of history. This is hardly the first time or industry where the US government has forced compliance that wasn't necessarily in the public interest. And the corporations won't fight this. They're in it for the money and they're willing to bring actual gold bars to White House to ensure it keeps rolling in. They know what they're doing is corrosive and debasing, the more conscientious of them probably want to vomit on the inside. But they mostly suck it up and do it anyway, for their investors will discipline them if they don't. Either people run candidates and vote for the ones that campaign on stopping this, or it happens.
    • inigyou 7mo ago
      > for their investors will discipline them Worse: they'll be sacked and replaced with someone who will. Like Trump's FCC chair was saying he'll revoke the license of stations that make republicans look bad. Those stations will then be replaced with more copies of Newsmax. CBS either toes the line or it gets shut down and replaced by a station that will.
      • mmooss 7mo ago
        CBS is owned by Trump supporters. They aren't being forced against their will, they are acting on their own political motivation.
    • mmooss 7mo ago
      > the return of history The idea that somehow the current actions are 'real' history and what people were doing before is fake just feeds the claim of inevitabiility, a basic psyops maneuver - you can't win; our victory is inevitable. People have made history for centuries of Enlightenment - the whole idea is that we can control our fates as individuals through reason and compassion (humanism), and we have done it. We have transformed the world. The only problem is people giving up - despite the incredible success of this idea over centuries - and accepting that they can't control their fate. Certainly MAGA-ish conservatives believe they can make history.
      • 7mo ago
  • senko 7mo ago
    > our political system is broken I mean, I agree with you, but if you've only realized that now, you've missed out on some really weird stuff going on for the past couple of years.
  • some_random 7mo ago
    Serious question, do you think that the government shouldn't have authority over corporations in its jurisdiction? Not that this is necessarily the right way to do it, but this is rhetoric that would make a devout libertarian blush. Ultimately the government is threatening to nationalize what is new a key wartime industry in preparation for war, that does not seem to me like an abuse of power.
    • harimau777 7mo ago
      Its an abuse of power because it's a need they made up for a war they instigated.
• baal80spam 7mo ago
  [flagged]
• AtlasBarfed 7mo ago
  The real AI has been in action for centuries now. It's capitalism. Capitalism is a functioning AI that controls the world, that has had humans serving it. AI is the tool that capitalism will use to remove humans from the equation. The end state of capitalism is slave labor. The end state of technocapitalism removes humans from the labor equation.
  • almosthere 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    • gambiting 7mo ago
      I hate communism as much as the next guy, but you couldn't describe it more incorrectly even if you tried I think.
      • almosthere 7mo ago
        That is Literally the definition: society based on common ownership of the means of production They try to hide that away by flowering you with "everything is free" and "communal this and that" but when it comes down to it, the very exact definition is you don't own your labor.
        • wredcoll 7mo ago
          Do you know what "the means of production" actually is?
          • almosthere 7mo ago
            The land, labor, physical machinery and infrastructure that is used to produce goods.
        • palmotea 7mo ago
          >>> In communism the beginning state is slave labor. (your work is owned by the state, not yourself) > That is Literally the definition: society based on common ownership of the means of production So, you're saying in communism, the state is owned by you, and your work is owned by the state. And that somehow is more slave-like than when your work is owned by an employer-organization that's owned by some boss? > They try to hide that away by flowering you with "everything is free" and "communal this and that" but when it comes down to it, the very exact definition is you don't own your labor. It's not any worse than a capitalist company town. And honestly: a nation than banned private business and mandated that all workplaces be worker-owned cooperatives sounds both pretty communist to me and in no way worse to labor than our current system.
• stevage 7mo ago
  Not exactly relevant, but I couldn't read this without verifying my age. First time that has happened. I'm really surprised Substack thinks Australia's social media laws apply to them. (And no, I'm not willing to do that just to read an article.)
  • metalman 7mo ago
    I did not have to verify anything, so here is the text Marcus on AI America, and probably the world, stands on a precipice. Call your Senators and Representatives, right now. Gary Marcus Feb 26, 2026 As I wrote here yesterday, Anthropic’s showdown with The US Department of War may literally be life or death for all of us. If Pete Hegseth forces Dario Amodei to fold, not one but two monstrous precedents will be set. The first is obvious, and terrible in itself. The second is subtle but no less important. The first is that what Secretary Hegseth is demanding, backed by heavy threats, is that the US military have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s AI software, for applications such as military surveillance and autonomous weapons without humans in the loop. This could well extend to nuclear weapons.1 Nothing that I have read convinces me that Secretary Hegseth has a nuanced understanding of the strengths and limits of current AI, or that he will show restraint in how he applies it. Rather he is trying to define his career in part around deploying AI as broadly and as quickly as possible. The second is that Hegseth’s maneuver is an audacious power grabs that aims to circumvent Congress. By setting a deadline of 5:01 PM eastern tomorrow, Hegseth aims to cut everybody else – even Congress — out of the loop. A reader of this newsletter, a tech writer who describes himself as a political independent just wrote to me, rightfully panicked: Today the Pentagon will force Anthropic to change their corporate goal of responsible AI. This is not something to be decided in the marketplace by a bully with deep pockets; it must be decided in Congress. Senators and Congressmen must take a position and deliberate in public about whether it is OK to use AI for surveillance of Americans and to launch lethal strikes controlled by AI with no “human in the loop”. Please say something today, before Amodei has to surrender. He is right. Please call or write your Senators and Representatives right now. § AI policy, especially of this magnitude, is something that American people should have a say in. Congress should deliberate. Mass surveillance and AI-fueled weapons, possibly nuclear, without humans in the loop are categorically not things that one individual, even one in the Cabinet, should be allowed to decide at a gunpoint. But that is exactly where we are headed. 1 Hegsseth’s demand would in principle extend to apply Anthropic’s software to nuclear weapons without humans in the loop. In that connection, people should probably be aware of the fact that S. 1394 - Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Act of 2023 failed to pass. Which means we might not have a Stanislav Petrov next time around. Discussion about this post Write a comment... Richard Self 7h Given the unreliability of GenAI in everything that it do, the use in unsupervised warfare will be catastrophic. Reply Share 1 reply Roman's Attic 7h From what I’ve heard, these calls are especially valuable if you emphasize that this is an issue that will determine how you vote in the future Reply Share 1 reply 58 more comments... No posts Ready for more? Type your email... Subscribe © 2026 Gary Marcus · Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice Start your Substack Get the app Substack is the home for great culture This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts
• colbyn 7mo ago
  The title could have been a line out of Dune. It’s interesting that many of us myself included once thought that the butlerian jihad was silly until now. Frank Herbert wrote something that is particularly prescient. (Usually writers are just a decade ahead of their time. Whatever Podcasters are talking about today, has usually already been discussed in literature a decade ago. Prediction markets come to mind. Socially, over vs under population as discussed in popular books like the rationale optimist or the accidental superpower.)
  • abnercoimbre 7mo ago
    > Frank Herbert wrote something that is particularly prescient. Curiously enough the Dune books are a strong rebuke against prescience (read: humanity coveting precog abilities.) I'll leave it at that to avoid spoilering. Keep an eye on the next movie this year!
  • elric 7mo ago
    If you thought the Butlerian Jihad was silly, you may have missed a few important nuances in Dune. I mean I suspect the concept was originally a convenient way to explain why tech in Dune hadn't advanced all that much in 20k years, but the in-universe explanations are pretty good. In fact they are somewhat similar to the reasons why the Melnibonéan empire fell in the Michael Moorcock Elric universe: people got lazy, spent their time drugged out of their minds, and cruelty seemed to be one of the few things to get a rise out of them. In Dune labour was delegated to (thinking) machines, in Elric it was delegated to slaves. Eventually such a society will collapse or be conquered.
• roxolotl 7mo ago
  This is a reminder that we do not need super intelligence to risk catastrophic outcomes. All that we’ve needed is someone willing to delegate the decision to kill to a machine.
• solid_fuel 7mo ago
  This is a prescient warning about yet another abuse of power by the Trump administration that we would all do well to heed, so I'm sure it will be flagged to death within an hour or two. Many people here like to consider themselves "above politics" and "apolitical", thinking that if they just ignore all noise they can just keep living their lives as if this is all normal. But it is not normal. I think the priority of the "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth here is likely political surveillance and suppression at home, not autonomous nuclear weapons, but he is a known alcoholic who has repeatedly shown terrible judgement so I can't really rule anything out. This administration is criminal and has repeatedly shown disdain for the fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution. Our democratic system is only as strong as the will of the people to protect it. The call to action at the end of the article is good. I think it's worth calling your senators and house reps to speak up about this. Politicians in general are slimy and spineless, those seem to be traits required to succeed in politics, but as a consequence they do tend to notice when people really speak up and care about issues. As a survival instinct if nothing else.
  • krapp 7mo ago
    This doesn't spark curiosity though. Good hackers don't care about any of this. Let's talk about compilers.
    • atmavatar 7mo ago
      With all due respect, a lack of curiosity towards the moral implications of how tech is used in the world is an extremely irresponsible take for anyone working in the tech industry, which is presumably a large cohort here in Hacker News. If you happen to be part of this cohort, you should absolutely always question the moral implications of any project you work on, and you're in a better position than the average person to fully explore the possible ways tech can be used and abused. I'd argue that should be considered one of the primary purposes of Hacker News.
      • krapp 7mo ago
        I was being facetious. And I assume the only reason this thread hasn't been flagged like every other "political" thread is that the current top comment references Dune.
• Ancalagon 7mo ago
  Literally the worst administration possible during the AI singularity :).
  • kgwxd 7mo ago
    Seems to be very much by design. I would call it an "artificial singularity" though. It's not the real thing, just advertise to make it sort of look like one to the plebs.
• deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
• avanticc 7mo ago
  The Dune reference earlier in the thread is spot on. We often think of the Butlerian Jihad as a fight against sentient robots, but Herbert's core warning was actually about humans delegating their thinking and agency to machines. We are seeing that play out now not through some sci-fi uprising, but through the quiet erosion of accountability. When we let an algorithm decide who gets a loan or who is targeted in a conflict, we are not just using a tool. We are essentially offloading our moral responsibility to a black box that cannot be held accountable.
  • inertiatic 7mo ago
    >We are essentially offloading our moral responsibility to a black box that cannot be held accountable. We already did it with companies, buddy!
    • vermilingua 7mo ago
      Except that companies are not a black box, at every step there is a human making a comprehensible decision (probably with a paper trail). Yes, they dilute accountability to nearly nothing in some cases, but LLMs are sufficiently opaque to claim (ingenuously) that “nobody is responsible”.
      • some_random 7mo ago
        In principle yes but in practice even executives who are supposed to have the final responsibility for malfeasance don't actually get prosecuted.
      • mrjay42 7mo ago
        So you're aware of accountability dilution AND the opacity of LLMs making them not responsible for anything, therefore you agree with the point that was made. I guess your point could be: LLMs are just another level of capitalistic opacity to maximize opacity and dilution of accountability.
    • deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
• apolloartemis 7mo ago
  I hope that Gary reads this comment because an important correction is needed. The Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous AI Act was passed as part (last sentence) of Section 1638 of the FY2025 NDAA: SEC. 1638. Sense of Congress with respect to use of artificial intelligence to support strategic deterrence. (a) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that-- (1) the considered use of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools presents opportunities to strengthen the security of critical strategic communications and early warning networks, improve the efficiency of planning processes to reduce the risk of collateral damage, and enhance U.S. capabilities for modeling weapons functionality in support of stockpile stewardship; and (2) even with such applications, particular care must be taken to ensure that the incorporation of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools does not increase the risk that our Nation's most critical strategic assets can be compromised. (b) Statement of policy.--It is the policy of the United States that the use of artificial intelligence efforts should not compromise the integrity of nuclear safeguards, whether through the functionality of weapons systems, the validation of communications from command authorities, or the principle of requiring positive human actions in execution of decisions by the President with respect to the employment of nuclear weapons.
  • osy38dg 7mo ago
    [flagged]
• dataviz1000 7mo ago
  1. An oracle delivers a prophecy. 2. The hero takes action to avoid it. 3. Those very actions are what make the prophecy come true. Peter Thiel has all these paranoid delusions about the future. (Dude, I know you are listening, if you are scraping my Hacker News posts we seriously need to have a conversation about this!) Yet, his actions trying to prevent this future he is terrified of are the very things that will bring it to fruition. Hamlet is correct -- we defy augury.
  • Jamesbeam 7mo ago
    Sir, please stick to the instructions of the palantir corporate handbook to talk to upper management. The correct way to summon Peter Thiel is to stand in front of a mirror at midnight during a full moon and whisper his name three times with the cloned voice of Alex Karp. Have a nice day.
• observationist 7mo ago
  GM is worth less than old ladies writing the Enquirer about their visits with Elvis and Bigfoot on alien spaceships. At least the Enquirer can be entertaining. Don't get suckered by his takes on things; he's nothing but a credentialed blowhard pimping his pedigree for clout and cash. He's been furiously slinging arrows from the peanut gallery for years and it's gross.
  • EdwardDiego 7mo ago
    Play the ball, not the man.
  • michaelhoney 7mo ago
    Did you read the article? Gary Marcus has more than just one take: this is about politics and coercion, not whether LLMs can become AGI
    • observationist 7mo ago
      I find his politics and philosophy even less well informed and relevant than his AI takes, ymmv.
• ApolloFortyNine 7mo ago
  The US, and probably every country on earth, has a law where they can claim something as necessary for defense and take it (with or without compensation, in the US it's with). So I don't really think this spat proves anything at all. Honestly trying to throw in the article that AI may be responsible for nuclear weapons also throws this whole article into junk opinion tier. Just trying to riot up support. Though it is funny another commenter already found they passed a law where AI can't launch nuclear weapons last year.
  • browningstreet 7mo ago
    They have Grok, why do they need to bully Anthropic?
  • harimau777 7mo ago
    The fact that there's a law that says then can do it doesn't make it just or moral.
• HackerThemAll 7mo ago
  Now you see the real reason behind changing the name from Department of Defense to Department of War. It's what Republicans really want.
• misiek08 7mo ago
  Every day I’m more sure it’s: the world is, because of America. Making a law to make poisoning chemical compound safe for people to silent people who care for our health. Or global warming not existing, because AC makes the room cool.