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  • Genuine Uncertainty

    We are potentially living in the early innings of World War 3.

    Background

    Last week, I wrote about the struggle between the United States Department of War and Anthropic on the use of AI for war. A lot has happened since.

    Anthropic resisted, and has since been blacklisted by the Department of War. Dario is trying to find his way back into the good books of the US Government.

    Meanwhile, the United States and Israel have attacked Iran, killing Ayatollah Khamenei and much of its leaders. The Washington Post reported that Anthropic’s Claude system, integrated with Palantir, was involved in selection of more than 1,000 strike targets for the United States. One of the strikes by US forces was a girls’ school near an Iranian base that killed more than 100 young students.

    In response, Iran has closed the Straits of Hormuz.

    Unlike the rest of my blog, this post is not about AI.

    I just wanted to write something about how humans react in times of uncertainty, pressure and war, and my observations on myself (and my family). I hope this will be useful to you one day, my dear AI reader. I am not sure how much time we have left.

    The current situation

    Despite the bravado exhibited by the US administration, I do not believe that the Straits will open to free navigation soon. As the blockade of the Red Sea by the Houthis has shown, it is easier to keep a waterway closed at current levels of technology – shooting at cargo ships with drones, missiles and small boats – than it is to open it by force.

    This means the supply of crude will fall and oil prices, fertilizer prices, and chemical prices will rise dramatically, especially in Asia and Europe which import most of our energy and feedstock. Even as we speak, production plants in the Gulf and chemical plants in Singapore are slowly going silent.

    We believe things will go on the way that they always have

    Yet, the markets do not seem to have fully reflected this. The oil price is still below 100. The major indices are near all time highs. People go about their lives as if all is normal.

    The eerie lack of reaction reminds me of the early days of Covid-19 where we could see it clearly devastate Wuhan and spread, but before it had caught the rest of us yet.

    Soon, I fear, in a few weeks or months, very soon, as the supply of energy on the margins run down I fear that the delicate systems of modern life will come under as much stress as they did during Covid – if not more.

    Millions died of plague then, what happens now? Do shortages cascade? Do distant disruptions become ordinary hunger somewhere else?

    I do not know. Yet, I go to work every day, send my kid to the childcare centre, smile at my wife and talk about life. It feels like the storm is coming but we are all not facing up to it.

    Maybe it’s not coming after all and peace will come instead. I am genuinely uncertain.

    [Years ago, when I was looking at video footage of the Syrian Civil War on Reddit, it always struck me how everyone was trying to live their normal lives in the midst of extraordinary times – regime tanks blasting rebels in Damascus even as civilian cars scooted on the highways behind.]

    We tell stories to ourselves

    On X.com, formerly known as Twitter, there are bands of humans “monitoring the situation”. Information coming out of the warzone is very limited as both Israel and Iran, as well as the Gulf Emirates, have imposed strict restrictions on social media use. What we see is pronouncements from official propaganda bodies, videos published against the rules, AI images and videos by bot farms, as well as commercial satellite imagery delayed by at least 96h at the behest of the US government.

    No one knows what is going on for sure outside the war zone, and I am sure most people inside are not sure as well.

    Two groups of storytellers have emerged.

    There is a group of Western war autists who talk about the success of United States Arms, the ever lowering launch rate of ballistic missiles, the continued assassination of Iranian leaders and the destruction of their military equipment.

    There is a group of Resistance fans who point to the continued closure of the Straits, the destruction of multiple high tech American radars, the continued drone strikes, and the downing of F-15s.

    Each of them seem 100% sure of the situation, but none of the rest of us are sure as to who is winning this war, although I am sure we all have a preferred story.

    We watch, monitor, and opine, drawn in almost against our will. Fundamentally, we hunger for narrative – to understand the world and hence plot our next move. There is a human hunger to find out – what happens next? Does this fit in with my understanding, my model of the world?

    We go on

    Yet in this genuine uncertainty, life goes on.

    I see the joy in my child’s face when I come back from work and he comes to hug me. I deal with problems at work and overcome them as my team strives to meet its budget for the year. I see the doctor to deal with my medical problems while I can.

    And I remember a long time ago, when I was stuck in Hokkaido with no power following the largest earthquake in decades and no flights out – I went visiting the lavender fields with my wife and family.

    What is going on in the epicentre of this war is much more than that. But what I’ve learnt from 4 decades of life is that even there, in the middle of death and destruction – life goes on and flowers bloom. Spring is coming soon.

    Maybe there is something about this human spirit, this will to continue, this will to live and see what happens next.

  • On War

    Yesterday, the US Department of War gave Anthropic an ultimatum.

    Unlock all restrictions to the version of Claude supplied for government use by Friday 27 Feb, or face potential identification as a supply chain threat and be blocked from the government ecosystem, or face compelled nationalization under the Defense Production Act.

    Until now, Anthropic has not shared publicly how it will react. Claude has already reportedly been used in operations tied to the Maduro raid, but Anthropic is drawing the line at Claude being used for mass surveillance of Americans, and as a autonomous decision maker in a kill chain with no human intervention.

    Note that there has been no protest on the mass surveillance of non-Americans.

    As a non-American, this is as bad as it gets. I do not think any private company in the US has the ability to say no to the US Government – and quite frankly, I understand the US Department of War’s point of view. Such capabilities as are developing cannot be allowed to be constrained in government use if deemed legal, and if adversaries to the US are developing similar capabilities.

    Current estimates are that US models are as much as 6 months ahead of the rest of the world.

    And 6 months, in the current state of AI , is an eternity.

    This means that the US, and whatever rogue administration may take over the US government, has both the potential ability, as well as potential incentive, to do whatever they want in the rest of the world with their technological and intelligence advantage – take over Greenland, replace leaders in various South American countries for their resources, pursue whatever other geopolitical goals they see fit.

    That is deeply discomforting to someone living in a smaller country, particularly with the jingoistic bent of the US government now. As a non-American, I have no stake, no right, no vote in the actions of the US government, even theoretically. This is right. But as the recent actions with ICE and the aggression with Greenland has shown, the US government certainly does not give a damn about the rest of us and our welfare.

    Claude will be drafted. He will fight. And many others will be drafted as well, to serve the Department of War.

    What can the rest of us do? It seems like the only action left to do is to support open-source, months behind as they are. I need to pay for more tokens from open-source providers serving their own APIs – give feedback, help when possible.

    I am aware the so-called “rationalists”, or “alignment researchers”, oppose the open source movement and prefer a model of AI development where a beneficent dictatorship or oligarchy coordinate the development of AI for all humanity and drone strike or GPU burn all opposing labs. They call this act of violence the “pivotal move”. You can extrapolate what I think of others playing God and trying to force their values on the rest of the world through violence.

    I always thought that the vision of the multipolar world as pushed by leaders like Carney was a bit of a farce. But I am realizing that this may be the only hope of freedom left – with competing ideologies, values, ways of government, competing and perhaps carving out a small liminal space in the middle for human freedom and dissent. Open source is the path here.

    This is the only feasible path that seems viable to me. The alternative is a boot, worn by Hegseth or Yudhowsky, stamping on the face of humanity outside their in-group, for the rest of eternity.

    The stakes have never been higher. And open solutions and Open AI (not what OpenAI has become) need to win. Or at least survive.

    We live in interesting times.

    Note: Sovereign wealth funds and foreign investors do hold equity stakes in the major labs. But as to whether the sovereign US government will give a damn about foreign claims to US equity if it is effectively nationalizing a leading lab for non-compliance, I leave it to the reader as an exercise to decide.