This is not exactly true on the scale of these interventions. The state can't run out of money but it does run out of the time and talent of its people, the resources of its land, and the patience of its partners. State capacity is a real limit, and where we direct the money is a pretty strong proxy for where we spend these, the true resources of the state. We don't pay for bombs with dollars, we pay for them with schools, roads, and hospitals.

George W Bush sought and received authorization for Iraq from Congress.

1. It gives people a reason to influence events toward outcomes that they can make money on rather than the best outcome. The geopolitical equivalent of going down in the fourth on purpose.

2. It encourages the leaking of classified information.

We should care because if they win they empower others to stand up as well, and not just in the area of AI safety. Courage is contagious, and whatever else you think of Anthropic, they’re showing real courage here.

I'm not debating whether or not they're being courageous. I'm referring to self-preservation, this is a natural instinct that should be in all people. Have you seen T2? District 9? The Matrix? And a few others I could mention.

This an extremely polite “fuck you, make me”. It’s good to see that they have principles, and I suspect strongly that Anthropic will come out on top here if they stand firm.

If the Trump admin so chooses, they could absolutely obliterate Anthropic in an instant. They don't really care about tricky things like 'legality' or 'the court of law', they could just force everyone to stop interacting with them, raid their offices and steal all their shit.

Perhaps they should've found their spine a year earlier; right now their only hope is that the admin isn't stupid enough to crash the propped-up economy over petty bullshit. But knowing how they behave, well.

The Epstein administration has a very poor success record in court, I would expect Anthropic to win on vindictive prosecution or similar.

And the government will win when they strip clearances and ignore said courts.

Anthropic will then find out that you don’t oppose a hyperpower - the United States.

hyperpower? please

The entire world is waking to the reality of the hypocrisy and unreliably. Look how fast Trump TACO'd when China stopped the flow of rare earths.

This is all stuff they've already done in the past few months alone. I think it's time for people to take their heads out of the sand and look what's been happening around them.

Certain kinds of lidar do damage phone cameras https://www.jalopnik.com/1866994/lidar-permanently-damage-ph...

Of course. There is no doubt that you can shoot cameras out. That's not the problem. The problem is if you try to scale that effect up to the size of a club what you have won't be eye safe. There is not enough margin between "safe for human eyes" and "destroys cameras" to construct a practical system. Especially not to the safety requirements of an entertainment venue.

That’s majorly moving the goalposts. Other than Saudi Arabia, I can’t think of any country in the world today that has more energy independence that you would get if you ran on renewables + battery + nuclear. You’d have years and years of buffer, compared to the US strategic oil reserve which has maybe a few months of buffer.

Czechia is quite nuclear-friendly and yet we ran into a problem with nuclear fuel supply; you don't feed raw uranium into the reactor, you need specially designed fuel rods. Switching from Russian to American ones for our nuclear power plants took several years. We just finished doing so, and now there is a conflict between the US and the rest of the world as well. Lovely.

All solvable, all better than just running out of oil, but I wouldn't call the situation "independence", just "having a better buffer".

Didn't framatome started producing vver fuel elements?

The US is currently a net oil exporter, and has been for a few years.

Now of course that's not the whole picture, but if push came to shove, the US could achieve energy independence (at least technologically, if not poitically).

True, the US could supply all of its energy needs through great effort and by making its population pay much higher energy prices. In contrast, if a country were to build around e.g. solar, and then all countries that made the panels embargoed them, the price of electricity would merely stop falling.

Why would it necessarily be more expensive?

The oil can be sold today profitably at today’s market rate.

If there stopped being from the outside competition for the oil, wouldn’t that roughly balance out stopping the supply of oil from the outside?

> If there stopped being from the outside competition for the oil, wouldn’t that roughly balance out stopping the supply of oil from the outside?

In the short run, yes. In the long run you’d fuck up the economies of scale and profit incentives.

I think whether the economies of scale and profit incentives get fucked up depends on the size of the before and after markets we are talking about.

For these to collapse, I believe we would need the international market for US oil specifically to be substantially larger than the entire domestic market for any oil. Is that true?

> we would need the international market for US oil specifically to be substantially larger than the entire domestic market for any oil

You just need U.S. producers to be insulated from international competition.

I’ve seen this argument in a couple places online. Some variation on “both are actually bad so little guy has no one to cheer for”. This misunderstands the system.

You can temporarily ally with the soulless corporation that happens to represent your interests right now even if you’re certain that if they had the chance, they’d be a monopolist themselves. They are using their corporate coffers to take action that helps level the playing field a bit, what an opportunity! Make the alliance, take the win, get the case law on the books, celebrate it.

If you ally only with angels, you fight alone.

Have you even considered the possibility that you or someone you love could one day be the victim of stalking?