[HN Gopher] OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract
___________________________________________________________________
OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract
Author : erikrit
Score : 296 points
Date : 2025-06-16 22:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| upghost wrote:
| Does anyone have any idea what the DoD could possibly want from
| OpenAI? Less accurate/more sycophantic missiles?
| 01100011 wrote:
| You realize that the DoD has a huge amount of normal business
| work like logistics, project management, people management,
| benefits management, etc? Right?
| rkagerer wrote:
| I suspect it's more than that.
|
| _"Under this award, the performer will develop prototype
| frontier AI capabilities to address critical national
| security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise
| domains," the Defense Department said._
| notesinthefield wrote:
| "National security challenges" is incredibly broad,
| providing the right size of boots to USCG rescue swimmers
| could be considered a national security challenge.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| it says _critical_
| kube-system wrote:
| Ain't nothing more critical than _rescue_!
| XorNot wrote:
| Trenchfoot was a substantial source of casualties in WW1,
| and looking after your feet is a top priority for every
| military force in the field.
| guywithahat wrote:
| Knowing the DoD, I bet it's not. I bet they just want their
| own secure servers or some sort of corporate
| data/encryption management, and they're willing to pay out
| the nose to not have to use asksage or some terrible DoD
| friendly clone
| dmd wrote:
| The United States Military (Waterhouse has decided) is first
| and foremost an unfathomable network of typists and file
| clerks, secondarily a stupendous mechanism for moving stuff
| from one part of the world to another, and last and least a
| fighting organization. --Cryptonomicon
| notesinthefield wrote:
| Some of the more popular models (NIPRGPT, the various DREN
| models) are "soft banned" and DoD is in need of a unified
| solution. MSFT's GCC HIGH and GovCloud implementations have
| been slow to materialize. But more to your point - _everyone_
| is using LLM's to pick up the slack from layoffs. Im sitting in
| meetings and watching my gov customers generate documentation
| and proposals everyday. Everything the commercial world uses AI
| for the US gov is doing the same. Cant directly speak to
| targeting but you can bet your ass there are 100 different
| offensive projects trying to integrate AI into ISR work and the
| like.
| pests wrote:
| Planatir has an older demo of their chat like interface
| showcasing targeting selection, battle plans and formations,
| other advice. Kind of creepy, I assume it's much more capable
| now.
| greenavocado wrote:
| Palantir is the poster child for a global panopticon
| rafterydj wrote:
| Seems like we might work in similar environments. +1 on your
| observation the DoD needs a unified solution. It's not just
| slow- GovCloud implementations simply aren't working if
| you're building anything using them. The pressure for getting
| AI into services and applications are high, but the pressure
| is all from the top, meaning there's no easy way for issues
| to get fixed.
| ginkgotree wrote:
| Yeah, tons. SIGNT / HUMINT analysis. After action report
| summaries. war gaming to optimize deterrence. human machine
| teaming. LLM-in-the-loop for warfighters. rapid code gen in
| field deployments for units to spin up software solutions. The
| list is endless, imho.
| felixgallo wrote:
| llm-in-the-loop for whatever a 'warfighter' is is basically
| the opposite of how fighting wars should go.
| kube-system wrote:
| The DoD does plenty of things beyond putting boots on the
| ground. They're the world's largest employer. They have all
| the same boring problems that any employer has at gigantic
| scale.
| ginkgotree wrote:
| Yep, pretty much.
| ginkgotree wrote:
| why? it could help them asses threats, civilians / avoid
| collateral damage. Like any weapon or technology, it
| depends on its use. warfighter is the modern industry /
| academic term used for "soldier."
| ringeryless wrote:
| "help" (botch the job)
| Xss3 wrote:
| More like hey, ai, sit here watching uav and security
| camera footage from 10,000 feeds and flag short clips for
| human review if you think they show military activity.
| cess11 wrote:
| Such things are already in use in Palestine, integrating it
| into the broader US military will take some work.
|
| One main function is to enable sloppier targeting while
| easing the PTSD load on soldiers, i.e. allowing for more
| criminal and genocidal operations without immediate mutiny
| or desertions.
|
| In a sense you can make the computer more convincing to the
| operator and have it tag more people as supposedly
| threatening, e.g. to up the amount of supposed threats in a
| gathering from one actually militant person to several
| based on aggregation of sentiment analysis, network
| analysis and so on.
|
| You might understand that you're looking at a wedding, but
| the computer says several people there are 'red' because of
| social media posts, who they had lunch with a while ago and
| so on, raising the threshold for when so called collateral
| starts to hurt your operators badly enough to be a problem.
|
| And then you have the dream of autonomous swarms of
| machines doing murder, which I'm sure the current US regime
| is salivating over and likely hope that these corporations
| will be able to help bring about eventually. Imagine going
| from a cop street murder that gets bad press and court
| proceedings and so on, to instead having to handle a set of
| Jira tickets due to a supposed bug.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| There is no "should" in war beyond winning.
| felixgallo wrote:
| absolutely, totally incorrect.
|
| https://www.icrc.org/en/document/rules-war-why-they-
| matter#:...
| an0malous wrote:
| I would guess it's for mass surveillance. Even just the ability
| to extract names and entities from audio, video, and text on
| every piece of public media would be useful.
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| DOD doesn't really do this
| stonogo wrote:
| Only because they currently contract it out to Palantir (at
| least the bits that NSA isn't handling)
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| News to me. I can't find any details though. Can you
| share your source?
| stonogo wrote:
| https://investors.palantir.com/news-
| details/2024/Palantir-Ex...
| an0malous wrote:
| Maybe they'd like to start
| zmgsabst wrote:
| NSA is a DOD organization.
|
| > The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence
| agency of the United States Department of Defense, under
| the authority of the director of national intelligence
| (DNI).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
|
| > William J. Hartman is a United States Army lieutenant
| general who has served as the acting commander of United
| States Cyber Command, director of the National Security
| Agency,
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Hartman
|
| They're staffed by military people (alongside civilians)
| and their commander is always military -- because much of
| what they do (abroad) could be construed as acts of war.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| One AI per person ...
| SunlitCat wrote:
| Nice ad slogan!
|
| One AI per person
|
| One voice. One vision. One AI - for you.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Sycophantic missiles would be desirable
| mosura wrote:
| AI explosives with personalities feature in
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_(film)
| SunlitCat wrote:
| Wow, it was like forever ago that i've seen that movie.
| Didn't realize it was meant as a comedy!
| gilgoomesh wrote:
| ChatGPT, do you know where the General left his keys?
| impulser_ wrote:
| You will be surprise how much work at the DoD has nothing to do
| with weapons.
| ringeryless wrote:
| which also can be botched
| munificent wrote:
| 1. Secretary of Defense feels like bombing some place. Asks
| aide to write a report on, justification, logistics, and
| consequences.
|
| 2. Aide tells subordinate to write report.
|
| 3. Subordinate uses ChatGPT to write the 100-page report. Sends
| it to aide.
|
| 4. Aide uses ChatGPT to summarize report. Sends summary to
| SecDef.
|
| 5. SecDef accidentally posts summary on publicly-accessible
| social media page, then forwards to President.
|
| 6. Bombs go boom.
| reginald78 wrote:
| Afterwards some or all of the accountability for the taken
| action is transferred to the amorphous entity known as AI.
| avgDev wrote:
| None of the sources check out.
|
| "We did our best, but sometimes these tools get it wrong."
| -politician after achieving their goal
| paxys wrote:
| > "This contract, with a $200 million ceiling, will bring
| OpenAI's industry-leading expertise to help the Defense
| Department identify and prototype how frontier AI can transform
| its administrative operations, from improving how service
| members and their families get health care, to streamlining how
| they look at program and acquisition data, to supporting
| proactive cyber defense,"
|
| Translated - they'll hand out GPT access to a bunch of service
| members and administrators. Except the UI will have a big DoD
| logo and words like "SECURE" and "CLASSIFIED" will be displayed
| on it a few dozen times.
| piyushpr134 wrote:
| An on premise deployment ?
| somenameforme wrote:
| Automatically generated, native sounding, propaganda at scale -
| capable of interacting in real time. This was always the MIC
| money endgame for LLMs. This is also probably why they are
| enlisting tech _execs_ from Meta, OpenAI, etc.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I look forward to our senators "living" to 100+.
| nusl wrote:
| This is already happening at massive scale. Russia employs it
| already, and it's very likely they're not the only ones.
| jasonfrost wrote:
| Easy PT plans
| SunlitCat wrote:
| Not that the bomb answers: "I am sorry Dave, i can't do that!"
| Bender wrote:
| To attempt to make sense of all my after action reports?
| _kidding_
|
| Maybe one potential use could be to drink from the firehose of
| data and then try to create summary bullet-point reports for
| the higher ups instead of relying on data filtering up the
| chain of command in the old game of telephone. At least that is
| what I would use if for. Getting that data in nearly real-time
| in an accurate presentation would be priceless.
|
| I do not have the slightest idea how they will secure all this
| data if going to a 3rd party like OpenAI unless they have their
| own self hosted version of it on their own mainframes. If that
| data is going to live in a 3rd party they need to secure their
| systems in a magical way systems has never been secured. They
| would have to cast some seriously powerful protection spells.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| No. People see "defense" and immediately think everything is a
| weapon, for some reason. The DoD is still an organization with
| exactly the same business functions as wherever you work. This
| is likely going to be something more or less like the ChatGPT
| for Gov thing. You ask it to summarize videos and articles,
| review a document you're writing, spruce it up, whatever the
| rest of you are doing with LLMs, but you're allowed to use it
| from a locked down DoD workstation that can't access public web
| services.
| dluan wrote:
| directly hooking up the AI to the nuclear button is which chapter
| of the dont build the torment nexus book
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| The epilogue.
| mckirk wrote:
| The last published draft of the epilogue.
| fabfoe wrote:
| Isn't that the Department of Energy that does that, not DoD?
| kevingadd wrote:
| DoD would be involved in actual deployment of nukes, I would
| expect.
| Avicebron wrote:
| Let's hope before they wire it directly to the controls "because
| speed" they've trained it on Stanislav Petrov up down and
| backwards..
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I don't understand but that sounds funny
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
|
| > On 26 September 1983, three weeks after the Soviet military
| had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the
| duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-
| warning system when the system reported that a missile had
| been launched from the United States, followed by up to four
| more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The irony is that he was both successful and a failure, a
| contradiction inherent in nuclear launch control.
|
| From a deterrence and military perspective, you want a
| robot on launch control. Every time, on orders, without
| fail.
|
| From a human and ethical perspective, you want a thinking
| individual with agency. Able evaluate orders and possibly
| disobey them.
|
| Curious at the height of the Cold War (and now), what
| percentage of launch officers were expected to disobey
| orders to launch. It had to have been >0%.
| bitwize wrote:
| "Mr. McKittrick, after careful consideration I've come to
| the conclusion, sir, that your new defense system sucks."
| layoric wrote:
| That should shore up their financials given their.. _checks
| notes_ $12B in operational costs. /s
|
| Hope it's worth it.
| bix6 wrote:
| $10B run rate now so they can just plug the gap with $2B in
| ads!?! Hot DoD singles near you! Would you like me to generate
| an image of their stealth package ;) ?
| throw234234234 wrote:
| My view is that it isn't really entirely about economics
| anymore at least on a traditional cost/benefit analysis basis.
| It is seen as a way to disrupt industries. Think of it more
| like war with arms race dynamics (winner takes all), or
| consolidation of power to capital over labor. Even if it is a
| net negative you need to play to stay in the game even if it
| disrupts your own revenue (e.g. Google) else lose entirely.
|
| I suspect the capital class would throw good money after bad to
| make AI viable especially since a lot of the costs are fixed in
| nature (i.e. in training runs, not per query).
| more_corn wrote:
| This gives me a sick feeling of unease.
| bluealienpie wrote:
| That's the rational response.
| rvz wrote:
| Isn't this part of the true definition of "AGI" and its all for
| the benefit of humanity?
|
| Or is it that are we finally realizing that we are getting
| scammed again on these so-called promises and it was all a grift.
|
| Maybe we should just wake up.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| People are practically irrelevant infants at this point. We are
| about to repeat the Iraq war, point by point with universal
| agreement. The same people in charge are recycling the same
| propaganda, selling the same lies to in many cases quite
| literally the same people again and it's working, so I don't
| know why you are expecting anyone to ever "wake up".
| trhway wrote:
| On the way to benefit all humanity MS helped Sam back then, and
| now MS will get to wake up to the real Sam :)
|
| https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
|
| "OpenAI executives have considered accusing Microsoft, the
| company's major backer, of anticompetitive behavior in their
| partnership ...
|
| OpenAI's effort could involve seeking a federal regulatory
| review of the terms of its contract with Microsoft for
| potential violations of antitrust law, as well as a public
| campaign,..."
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| Judging from how the DoD currently buys software, lots of money
| will be spent, many headlines will be written, awards will be
| handed out, and zero software will make it on to user
| workstations. End users will continue to use Excel for
| everything.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| 200 mil is chump change for them, if prototype turned to be
| good then good for them but if its not then they are not worry
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| 200 mil for a government contract is peanuts when you see how
| much taxpayer money governments loose via waste and
| corruption
| raizer88 wrote:
| DOGE found basically nothing, and they worked with an axe
| trying to cut anything that come close to waste. So I am
| not sure where you see all this "waste and corruption".
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Bad faith argument. Why are you moving the discussion to
| DOGE when that's not what I was talking about?
|
| You know the word "governments" that I used, means a lot
| more than the current TRUMP administration, right?
| Broaden your mind and PoV.
|
| And also, how can you say with a straight face there
| isn't ongoing and never has been waste and corruption in
| any government? Again, think for yourself, ignore
| $CURRENT_EVENTS.
|
| Look at your nation's government contracts that funnel
| taxpayer money to private pockets, then look at the
| output. Has there been value delivered proportional to
| the money spent at reasonable market rates? If not, then
| money was definitely wasted via incompetence, pocketed
| via corruption, or both.
|
| This is so prevalent and is has become the norm
| everywhere for so long, that people are not even giving
| it a second thought anymore when it comes to government
| corruption, but somehow people want to be spoon-fed
| sources as if it's an unbelievable conspiracy theory.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Step up, throw down some numbers and sources.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Let's do a thought exercise on your loaded question,
| considering government waste and corruption has been
| thoroughly covered by journalists since the invention of
| the free press and are a Google search away for you.
|
| If I don't post sources, then you just accept government
| corruption doesn't exist, simply because nobody Googled
| for you?
|
| If I do post sources, then what? Do you just suddenly
| change your mind and accept that stuff documented by the
| press it does exist?
|
| Where, in good faith, were you hoping this conversation
| leads to when you were asking that?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >If I do post sources, then what? Do you take your words
| back and admit that stuff documented by the press it is
| real?
|
| If you post sources he will nitpick them to all hell.
| It's a classic bad faith argument move since it moves the
| discussion from one of the subject to one of source
| validity.
|
| You usually see HN's resident handful of chronically
| linkposting jerks do it in the other direction (i.e. they
| make some insane statement and shit out cherry picked
| sources to back it up and it's up to everyone else to
| disprove them) but I suppose it could be used in this way
| too.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| It's not bad faith when it's a legitimate request, which
| depends on the assertion.
|
| If I say the sky is blue because of plane chemtrails, and
| you ask me for a source, that seems valid.
|
| As with any large procurement system, there is moderate
| government waste in proportional terms, but one of the
| primary drivers of that waste is... anti-corruption
| systems operating as intended.
|
| If you require 4 more forms than private sector, in order
| to be more sure there isn't corruption, then you've just
| imposed a cost that creates no value.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> It's not bad faith when it's a legitimate request,
| which depends on the assertion._
|
| No offence, but comparing asking for proof of corruption
| with proof of sky being blue of petrochemicals is a
| biased bad faith argument.
|
| Asking for sources on corruption is more like asking for
| proof that the earth is round, which is definitely not a
| legitimate request, but more trolling masquerading like
| an innocent request and dodge scrutiny ("It's just a
| question bro, why r u mad lol").
|
| Nothing wrong with asking such a question per-se, but
| that's something you can also google yourself due to
| countless occurrences from legitimate sources, hence why
| it's in bad faith to ask such a thing from others, and
| should be more strictly moderated as many here abuse this
| "sauce or gtfo" attitude in bad faith to discredit a pov
| without providing any arguments.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > Asking for sources on corruption
|
| Existence of corruption isn't what you asserted.
|
| >> how much taxpayer money governments loose via waste
| and corruption
|
| That's the assertion you made -- waste and corruption _at
| scale_.
|
| It's very much a reasonable question to ask for sources
| of how much there actually is.
|
| Otherwise, people just post things on the internet
| insinuating that there's a huge (unspecified) amount.
|
| Is it 1% of the budget? 5%? 25%? (Hint: it should be
| trivial for you, the claimant, to dig up a source. And
| it's close to one of those)
| nkrisc wrote:
| > If I do post sources, then what? Do you just suddenly
| change your mind and accept that stuff documented by the
| press it does exist?
|
| Then I can read them, find similar sources, judge how
| much I trust them, and get a better idea of how much
| corruption and waste you are claiming exists.
|
| While I am sure corruption and waste occurs, if it's such
| a serious problem, there ought to be some evidence of it,
| direct or indirect.
|
| What's the alternative, I just accept your claim as fact?
| Or I "google" it until.. what? I find sources that
| support your claims?
|
| Why should I believe you?
| vannevar wrote:
| I think the point is that while people have indeed
| groused about government waste since the dawn of
| government, when people actually study it, they find that
| the rate of fraud and waste is comparable to the private
| sector. See, e.g., https://www.epsu.org/sites/default/fil
| es/article/files/EN_EF... for web.pdf and https://www.goo
| gle.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844....
|
| It's not that there's any more fraud or waste in
| government than in private business, it's that it's less
| tolerated. I think the main reason for this misperception
| is that in the private sector, people pay a la carte for
| particular goods and services, while in the public
| sector, people pay for shared infrastructure even if they
| rarely use it themselves. So they are left with the
| feeling that they aren't getting their money's worth. But
| of course everyone benefits economically and socially
| from a stable and prosperous society, even if they can't
| put their finger on discrete services they use. The
| reality is that it simply costs a lot of money to
| maintain a large, modern society. Indeed, it actually
| costs _more_ than we are paying here in the US, as
| evidenced by a growing debt that has been a bipartisan
| creation.
|
| Believing in the mantra of waste, fraud and abuse is
| comforting, because it implies we could be getting all
| the same benefits for less money. But there really is no
| such thing as a free lunch.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >it's that it's less tolerated
|
| You say that like it's a bad thing.
|
| If my favorite restaurant decides to hire management by
| nepotism and product degrades I can just not go there.
|
| You can't just not deal with the government so of course
| the standards ought to be higher.
| Loughla wrote:
| I didn't read that at all. It reads as a statement of
| fact, not a values judgement.
| vannevar wrote:
| If your democratically elected government spends money in
| ways you find unwise, you can vote for someone else, so
| that also tends to self-correct (albeit on a longer time
| scale).
|
| The problem isn't the obvious things, in the government
| or your restaurant example. It's the less-obvious things
| ---your favorite restaurant might cheat on its
| inspections, for instance. The rate of food poisoning
| there may go up, but you'll still be unlikely to be the
| one that gets sick. And the prices will go down slightly,
| as they are able to cut corners. This kind of "waste,
| fraud, and abuse" tends to go to an equilibrium, where
| the cost of finding and eliminating the fraud is similar
| to the cost of the fraud itself. And this equilibrium
| happens in both government and the private sector.
|
| The idea that a modern technological nation of hundreds
| of millions of people could dramatically cut its spending
| and maintain its standard of living is a utopian fantasy.
| thayne wrote:
| Here is one example of waste: FedRAMP certified software
| often costs 2-10x equivalent non-certified software. That
| means the government is paying a lot more than anyone
| else for the same thing.
|
| Why? Well part of it is because getting and keeping that
| certification is itself expensive. There are expensive
| audits, that take up a lot of time, and generally require
| paying specialized consultants to get through. All of
| your cryptography needs to be done using expensive FIPS
| certified "modules". There are requirements about the
| hardware you run on. All of your vendors also need to be
| FedRAMP approved. The requirements often add a lot of
| friction to normal operations and slow things down. In
| many cases it is easier, and cheaper to run/build an
| entirely separate product for FedRAMP possibly in a
| separate data center, which adds a _lot_ of cost. And to
| be honest, a lot of the requirements are mostly security
| theater.
|
| But another reason is just that the government is willing
| to pay that high premium for a stamp of approval.
|
| To be fair, it is warranted for the government to have
| some assurance of the security and quality of software
| they use, especially if the software is used for more
| sensitive purposes. But the certification process is
| overkill for many places software is used, and I think
| that if some effort was put onto steamlining the process,
| the cost could be brought down.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| > Has there been value delivered proportional to the
| money spent at reasonable market rates? If not, then
| money was wasted via incompetence, pocketed via
| corruption, or both.
|
| I'm going to unpack this a little. The second sentence
| does not actually follow from the question asked by the
| first sentence.
|
| "Value" is a loaded term as used here. Not all value is
| economic. Most value has a degree of judgement involved.
| I may consider an outcome to be of high value where you
| see the outcome as low value, and vice versa.
|
| "Reasonable market rates" is a peculiar term to use when
| speaking about things government does. There are things
| we want as a society that would not be adequately
| replaced by market solutions. Roads, for example.
|
| Your answer to your question contains a logic error due
| to the language choices of the question. You disagree
| with the value versus the cost spent. That does not mean
| there was corruption. It just means you disagree. Other
| people can hold the opinion that the value was worth the
| cost.
|
| I am not claiming that there is 0 corruption or waste
| ever in government. I am saying that there has been an
| effort to create a perception that there is far more
| corruption and waste than actually exists. That in turn
| is being used as justification for taking a wide variety
| of actions that would be hard to sell otherwise.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> "Value" is a loaded term as used here. Not all value
| is economic. Most value has a degree of judgement
| involved._
|
| No it isn't. Most value CAN be objectively measured. I'll
| give you examples. US outspends all the other developed
| nations at healthcare, education, childcare and yet is
| behind them all in actual results with poor education,
| high infant motility and lower life expectancy. That's
| what waste and corruption does. Germany beats France at
| military spending and yet it's military is significantly
| less capable than France's. Waste and corruption. I could
| go on.
|
| If someone tells you the value of their work can't be
| objectively measured, it's because they're dodging
| accountability and they have their hand in your pocket
| and wish to keep it that way.
|
| _> There are things we want as a society that would not
| be adequately replaced by market solutions. Roads, for
| example._
|
| Fine, let's go with roads. If the "market price" price
| for road construction is 6 million/KM, but your
| government signed a deal with a contractor for a basic
| road at 20+ million per KM without any objective
| justification of why the price hike, then the taxpayers
| are being taken for a ride, called waste and corruption.
|
| And I'm not even saying anything out of the ordinary.
| Such grifts are the norm in plenty of countries.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| What would you say determines the market price of a
| kilometer of "basic road"?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| What do you define the market price of someone roofing
| your house? Same shizz different scale.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| > That's what waste and corruption does.
|
| Assuming the goal of said systems are the same between
| countries: but they're not.
|
| In the US, the goal of the healthcare system is to
| produce profit. So the simpler explanation is that the
| healthcare system consumes more money and produces less
| healthcare because it spends more to produce profit.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Assuming the goal of said systems are the same between
| countries: but they're not._
|
| And that's not corruption like I was saying?
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Uhh... no? Not in the traditional sense of the word, no.
| It's how we've decided to architect our system.
|
| "Corruption" in this context typically refers to an
| element of dishonesty or theft and so on.
|
| If you mean "corrupt" in the ethical sense, then sure,
| kind of?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| So the US taxpayers voluntarily asked their government to
| give them expensive and shitty health insurance instead
| of healthcare?
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| The US government doesn't run the healthcare system, and
| yes voters consistently choose to keep it this way.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| So ... corruption.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| No.
|
| How is "voters choose to have a system that optimizes for
| profit" an example of "corruption?"
|
| Please explain your logic step by step.
| hidingfearful wrote:
| > US outspends all the other developed nations at
| healthcare, education, childcare and yet is behind them
| all in actual results with poor education, high infant
| motility and lower life expectancy
|
| US healthcare and childcare are private, not government.
| Likewise I suspect much of the education cost is private
| colleges/schools, not government.
|
| You seem to be arguing that the private sector is less
| efficient and more corrupt than the public sector.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> US healthcare [...] are private, not government. _
|
| What's Medicare and Medicaid and why do they cost the
| government over 2 trillion?
|
| On a per capital basis, even if you don't include private
| healthcare spending, the US stil spends more per capita
| on healthcare than the other developed countries.
|
| https://www.pgpf.org/article/how-does-government-
| healthcare-...
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| > why do they cost the government over 2 trillion?
|
| Because these are interacting with and purchasing
| services from a market-driven healthcare system which is
| optimized for profit, not health outcomes.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Thanks for defining corruption.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| " the private sector is less efficient and more corrupt
| than the public sector"
|
| That is easily the case if you aren't careful. Private
| health insurance has a big incentive to drive up cost of
| the medical sector so they can take a few percent as
| profit. Defense contractors have almost no incentive to
| reduce costs, quite the opposite.
|
| I guess it depends on what you call efficiency. If you
| define efficiency as extracting maximum profit then
| modern corporations are very efficient. If you define it
| as providing products and services at low cost, then they
| are inefficient.
| triceratops wrote:
| > Germany beats France at military spending and yet it's
| military is significantly less capable than France's.
|
| No idea if that's true. But my impression was that
| France's military has been rather more...active post WW2
| than Germany's. So maybe it's just about practice and
| readiness to go to war.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| The French are not just active, they have capabilities
| Germany straight-up lacks.
|
| A nuclear aircraft carrier, nuclear ballistic missile
| submarines, solid overseas expeditionary capability
| (France could sustain a few thousand troops in Africa,
| Germany almost certainly could not match that), and a few
| amphibious assault ships, to name several big ones that
| immediately come to mind.
| triceratops wrote:
| France developed a nuclear program immediately after WW2
| in order to not depend on America for nuclear security.
| For obvious reasons Germany didn't do that.
|
| Germany didn't need expeditionary capability after the
| war. It probably doesn't need to project force beyond its
| continent even today. France regularly had military
| entanglements in its former colonies, and probably still
| does. Capability is a function of necessity.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| If value is such a nebulous term then that should make
| your job easier not harder because it lets you make
| comparisons to the "dysfunctional bigco" end of things.
|
| The people you are arguing with think government is
| inefficient. They will be more than satisfied with an
| honest accounting that results in a conclusion that the
| government spends 5/10/20% more per result than private
| sector. Just having an actual number one can be confident
| in would be a huge step forward. But outside the most
| narrowly scoped of comparisons you people rebuff any such
| request for all but the most narrowly scoped accounting
| of expenditures with a bunch of hand waving which just
| makes it look like the problem is even worse.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> But outside the most narrowly scoped of comparisons
| you people rebuff any such request for all but the most
| narrowly scoped accounting of expenditures with a bunch
| of hand waving which just makes it look like the problem
| is even worse._
|
| Setting aside whatever you mean by "you people", since we
| are all people, hopefully all on Team 'Make Things
| Better', and don't need to be divisive:
|
| That seems to be what was requested here OF those making
| the claim that the accounting currently shows an
| unworkable level* of waste, requested BY those
| unconvinced of the claim.
|
| _* - Or perhaps I misread the magnitude being claimed.
| Could you clarify with a number, please?_
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| > it lets you make comparisons to the "dysfunctional
| bigco" end of things.
|
| I don't like to compare governments and companies,
| personally. They're very different kinds of structures
| with (hopefully) quite different goals. They probably
| shouldn't look much like each other.
| DannyBee wrote:
| I lived in DC for years, so i've had this discussion
| probably 8000 times already. Time for 8001 i guess.
|
| Let's separate waste and corruption - they are fairly
| different things.
|
| Let's then split waste into:
|
| 1. Programs <someone> (don't care who) thinks are not
| worth doing or shouldn't be done by government, or
| whatever - IE the overhead is not what people are arguing
| about, and even if the program had _zero_ overhead, and
| government was being as efficient as possible, <someone>
| still thinks it shouldn't exist.
|
| 2. Programs with high overhead or otherwise seem
| inefficient.
|
| There are other things you can consider waste, but this
| feels like the majority of what people argue about.
|
| #1 is often subject to widely varied views on what
| government should be doing or you name it. For this
| discussion, you can be <someone> and decide which fall
| into #1 and which fall into #2 :) We'll just assume
| literally everything in #1 is waste and should be killed.
|
| If you kill everything that people initially _think_
| falls into #1, the US would probably spend no money. The
| majority of the budget is covered by things people think
| they disagree about, and want gone or not gone or
| whatever.
|
| However, for most people , if you remove the ignorance of
| what things are and what they are doing, and then you
| killed everything that _actually_ falls into #1, it would
| not make a huge dent in the US budget. This is because
| the majority of people tend to support, at least in the
| sense of saying it doesn 't being in #1, the things that
| are actually the majority of the US budget.
|
| and then we'll ignore #1, because reducing the overhead
| wouldn't matter, and if you take the same view as most
| people, it will not be a big pile when you get down to
| brass tacks.
|
| Let's talk about #2.
|
| #2 is often subject to arguments about the overhead. This
| is much easier to discuss.
|
| Most arguments about the overhead are about how high it
| is. This is, IMHO, not a useful measure at all.
|
| Asking whether something has high overhead doesn't tell
| you what to do if the answer is "yes".
|
| Better questions to ask (IMHO) are "Do i want the outcome
| this program achieves" (if not, it falls into #1), and
| then "Can i get the outcome on the same timeframe, with
| less overhead, and enough less overhead that it's worth
| it".
|
| The answer to the latter is _often_ no.
|
| Sometimes it's yes in a theoretical sense (should it be
| possible to achieve the outcome for less money), but
| still no in a practical sense (can you actually pay
| someone to achieve the outcome for less money), even if
| you removed bureaucratic constraints (IE just stuck with
| the real requirements to achieve the outcome).
|
| Often times it's no practically because of scale- i can
| have 4 hard drives delivered by amazon tomorrow at 8am. I
| can't get them to deliver 4 million by tomorrow. On top
| of that, even if they could, while the odds are they are
| not the only people who could deliver 4, they may be the
| only people who can deliver 4 million. In that case, they
| have no reason to not charge me a near infinite amount of
| money since nobody else can do what i want. So it is very
| high overhead, but you can't actually reduce the overhead
| without changing the requirements. So if you want the
| outcome, as is, you have to accept the overhead.
|
| Plenty of times it's no in both the theoretical sense,
| and the practical sense, because notions of overhead
| amounts are wrong, and things are not as high overhead as
| people seem to believe. As an example, people continue to
| think USAID has high overhead, but it actually does not
| by any objective measure. In USAID's case, it just has
| funny accounting called NICRA. Anyone who digs enough to
| actually calculate the real overhead, consistently
| discover (and agree) it's competitive with private
| organizations that do the same. See, e.g.,
| https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/sorry-i-still-think-mr-
| is-w... for a reasonably new example of someone
| discovering this.
|
| Of course, there is certainly plenty of waste in
| government, but it's a _lot_ less than people think.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > "waste and corruption"
|
| Well, "waste" is often defined by conservatives as
| "anything spent on the poors and/or not given to the
| rich" - by that standard, yeah, there's a lot of "waste"
| in the US government.
| transcriptase wrote:
| What do you call it when the government pays for tens of
| thousands of annual licenses for software and only a few
| hundred are ever activated?
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Oh oh I know this one!
|
| A rounding error!
| transcriptase wrote:
| Close! A drop in the bucket! Which is why it's important
| the bucket is always getting larger, that way everything
| is a drop and no single thing is worth making more
| efficient!
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| There are lots of single things worth making more
| efficient. This isn't one of them. This isn't even
| remotely close to the top decile of the list. This is
| probably in the last 5% of things you'd want to fix.
|
| It's not principled to solve problems in stupid ways,
| it's actually just stupid.
|
| Here's where someone who has thought about the problem
| for more than 5 seconds would likely start: gigantic
| healthcare organizations defrauding Medicare, in
| particular vertically integrated pay-viders.
|
| Literally tens of billions of dollars per year in known,
| easily detectable fraud.
| acheong08 wrote:
| The goal of DOGE wasn't really to cut waste and
| corruption, just stuff they didn't like.
|
| I'd argue that most of the military is waste and that
| America has no need to involve itself in wars. Something
| like Japan's SDF is sufficient and the extras could help
| with domestic infrastructure and public transport.
| the_sleaze_ wrote:
| Your argument is that the government doesn't waste money?
|
| Are you sure that's a defensible position?
|
| Nearby a vacation spot there is a sand dune next to the
| road, and a carpenter spent an afternoon building a ramp
| over it so that his son could drive his mobility scooter
| onto the beach. The city tore it down, then took over 2
| years to build it back, worse quality, at a final cost of
| over $40,000.
|
| What do you make of this story, and how did DOGE even
| attempt a fix?
| jagermo wrote:
| I am convinced that you can find waste (probably not as
| much corruption) in every modern government. However, you
| need people to really dive into the processes, ask what
| and why those have been set up in the past (every rule
| has an origin story) and if they can be bundled or
| streamlined. Same with expenses, you need things like
| forensic accountants and time to understand things.
|
| Doge wanted to take shortcuts and destroyed everything
| without having alternatives in place. They had hoped for
| short-term wins, and neither the workers there nor their
| boss has the attention span or the experience necessary
| to really understand and optimize processes, thus
| reducing waste.
| overfeed wrote:
| > neither the workers there nor their boss has the
| attention span or the experience necessary to really
| understand and optimize processes, thus reducing waste.
|
| The Government Accountability Office is a congressional
| body that's been doing exactly what you describe for
| years. It's old - so it goes against the narrative that
| government waste is unmonitored, it's also unglamorous,
| boring, and not meme-able, and most importantly non-
| partisan, so it won't reliably dominate the news cycle
| with outrageous partisan talking points.
| NHQ wrote:
| That 200 Million is chump change only to people who think
| like chumps. In reality it is total waste, unproductive
| taxation that doubles as a counter balance to inflation, so
| doubly wasteful.
|
| Chump together all the 100s of millions in waste year over
| year; the change to your chumping is not good change, its
| inflation and general impoverishment. Every penny of that 200
| is a note in the bank of inflation and degradation.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| US literally have 1 trillion military budget, if you think
| 200 mil its a waste for prototyping a next gen weapon then
| I would have a bad news for you
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The nickels and dimes add the F up. Stop acting like they
| don't.
|
| Save perhaps the most extreme "I spend 70% of my six
| figure income on rent because I want to live alone
| somewhere trendy" of household budgets this is true for
| literally everything from the smallest business in the
| smalles of small towns to the federal government.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| 200 million is 0.02 percent of 1 trillion.
|
| if you don't mind having 1 trillion military then you are
| not mind for 200 mill contract
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Now add up all the other 2/20/200mil nickels and dimes
| across the DOD and what do you get?
|
| The budget isn't all aircraft carriers and stealth
| bombers.
|
| Maybe this is a good buy, maybe it's a bad buy. I don't
| know and I have no way of ever knowing. Just because the
| budget is big and the money is other peoples does not
| mean decision makers can be wishy washy about a hundred
| or two mil here and there. Everyone needs to care all the
| time. People like you and who share your "it's all
| pennies in the grand scheme" thought process at scale is
| the problem and why we're even having this discussion.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| My point is if you worry about waste taxpayer money, you
| would not have 1 trillion budget in the first place
|
| this is not on top of the list of "waste" things to worry
| about there are 20+ another reason and you pick this
| budget size its a weird hill to die on
| potato3732842 wrote:
| That attitude is exactly how we got to a 1-trilling
| military budget in the first place.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| then you can start with project that eat the money most
| chgs wrote:
| You don't know. You don't have the time or knowledge to
| know.
|
| You delegate that to people whose job it is to know.
|
| But you keep delegating it to people who want to spend
| more.
| hansvm wrote:
| It's something like $3 straight out of my pocket, and
| it's going to be a flop. That trillion dollar military
| budget has a lot of semi-unavoidable costs (pensions,
| salaries, etc), but it has a lot of bullshit like this
| too.
|
| Your argument feels something like the heap paradox [0],
| "the budget is big, so this thing doesn't matter." The
| budget is made of things this size though, and all it
| takes to fix it is to start taking grains of sand out of
| the pile instead of stacking the pile higher.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| 200 million is 0.02 percent of 1 trillion.
|
| does 30 cent matters to you??? because its not 3 dollar
| as a comparison but 30 cent is
| imtringued wrote:
| The cost of the Indian space program is roughly $1 per
| Indian. You're getting nothing for a third of the per
| capita cost of ISRO.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| Indian space program don't have armed forces that cover
| 80% entire planet
| hansvm wrote:
| > 30 cent is
|
| Not everyone pays the same amount in taxes.
|
| > does 30 cents (or the actual value, $3) matter?
|
| Not hugely, but the other point is still important. If
| somebody takes $3 out of my back pocket a few times each
| hour it adds up, and when the net effect is nearly
| guaranteed to be a transfer of funds to OpenAI with no
| benefit to the taxpayer (likely a negative benefit given
| our usual stance on letting monopolies run amuck) I'm
| especially salty about it.
| NHQ wrote:
| The entire Trillion is wasted. The entire trillion could
| be used for public benefit, or simply never "taxed" in
| the first place.
|
| Very few people would willingly pay for military spending
| if for example when they buy food they are prompted with
| the option "do you want to give 30 cents to the military
| industrial complex?" And that "very few people" would not
| in sum render 1 Trillion.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| I believe this is implied in the parent's post.
|
| We fund the military industrial complex to such a ludicrous
| degree that $200m can just disappear on bullshit contracts
| to cronies that go nowhere, and politicians don't bat an
| eye.
|
| Nobody with power cares about the debt. They just keep
| borrowing money and handing it to the defense industry.
| This is one of only a handful of issues on which there is
| bipartisan agreement.
| NHQ wrote:
| Yes, the real government is the one in agreement, and the
| "handful of issues" account for almost all of the
| spending. Their disagreements, in budget terms and in
| reality, are cheap and pretentious theatrics.
|
| But I doubt the politicians "don't bat an eye" at 200M,
| for they know that money is going straight out of the
| economy and into private coffers.
|
| The government budgeters are not naive to the economics
| of military spending. The cope about pennies on the tax
| dollar is naive about both economics and what the
| government is really doing.
|
| This idea that government is incapable, dumb, and prone
| to mismanagement is a harmful rationalization, and simply
| not true. If anything, this thinking excuses the
| government to act that way, and then there is no way of
| knowing if they are purposefully mismanaging or doing so
| because incapable.
| nilamo wrote:
| Is all of that truely "waste", if it is being paid toward
| onshore companies? The money doesn't disappear, it gets
| redistributed to American companies.
| Loudergood wrote:
| Broken Window Fallacy.
|
| We could be spending it on things with a much higher
| return.
| nilamo wrote:
| We're also talking about a governmental body. Generating
| the highest returns possible is a non-goal, and
| disregarding potentially useful things simply because
| they aren't the best possible use of funds is an easy way
| to just never do anything.
| NHQ wrote:
| The best possible use of funds would be "useful things",
| and these would produce benefits for people.
| "Nonproductive" indicates not producing these benefits.
| Government doing nothing is better than government
| "potentially" doing things that have no clear benefit or
| that are definitely nonproductive (like military
| spending).
| nilamo wrote:
| I disagree that government doing nothing is better than
| keeping money flowing. Or, I disagree that money should
| be removed from the populace via taxation, if that
| funding doesn't have any path back to the populace.
| Government doing nothing is a net negative to the entire
| country, and is worse (imo) than doing "nonproductive"
| spending. A nonproductive spend is still spend that keeps
| people employed, families fed, researchers researching,
| etc.
|
| I don't believe that you guys all believe the military
| industrial complex should start sitting on cash and
| collecting interest, even though that's what you're
| saying. The obvious solution is "they don't need that
| much money", but that's unrelated to how they spend the
| money they do have.
| TZubiri wrote:
| Not all software is made public and used in workstations,
| especially not in military
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Would you mind elaborating a bit?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| "Let's take another whack at real-time object
| identification built into night vision goggles."
|
| (Made-up but plausible example)
| tough wrote:
| just giving the whole DoD chatgpt that's deployed in
| their servers would be pretty useful i guess for them?
| deletedie wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-
| ai...
|
| If the physical disconnect between killing a person (e.g.
| UAVs) wasn't enough to make that task easier then further
| offloading the decision of who to target might help.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If the physical disconnect between killing a person
| (e.g. UAVs) wasn 't enough to make that task easier then
| further offloading the decision of who to target might
| help_
|
| The physical disconnect hypothesis isn't really borne out
| by the lack of concern for collateral damage in pre-
| firearm warfare, when killing was mostly done face to
| face, compared to today.
| golergka wrote:
| Physical connect means that the person who is making the
| decision to kill is scared for their life. Physical
| disconnect means he's only scared for a piece of
| equipment.
|
| Guess which one of those is more trigger happy.
| grafmax wrote:
| With rising authoritarianism in the US it is highly
| likely the military will be increasingly deployed against
| US citizens. Replacing the humans in the loop with AI
| removes a key safeguard. We're heading down a very very
| dark path.
| exe34 wrote:
| Project Insight. I said Hydra had taken over when the
| orange taint was elected and people denied it.
| ManlyBread wrote:
| What is this fear mongering?
| naabb wrote:
| It's the reality of the situation.
| ManlyBread wrote:
| Not for every single person who visits this site. This
| isn't reddit, explain what you mean and provide a source
| for your claims.
| goodpoint wrote:
| If anything it's an understatement.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| "the military will be increasingly deployed against US
| citizen" doesn't happen in a vacuum. It comes at the tail
| end of a long escalation of government/police force.
|
| People don't feel nearly as stupid as they ought to for
| being complicit in the 30-40yr that lead us to where are
| now
| grafmax wrote:
| Globalization broke the unions in the US, the main site
| of organized popular power. While it's true that the
| current state of affairs is part of a longer slide toward
| authoritarianism, a more accurate etiology would be that
| it's the congealing power of the upper class that has
| been driving the dismantling of democracy. Since
| concentrated wealth is concentrated power, it is
| intrinsically anti-democratic. Instead of guilt tripping
| ourselves we are better off correctly identifying our
| enemies and organizing together against the forces
| leading us down this path.
| TZubiri wrote:
| For example: OAI could offer api access and consulting for
| the DoD to build a network of honeypot fake personas for
| flooding or infiltrating recruiting operations of the
| enemy.
|
| That would be back end only, not all software has a gui.
| baxtr wrote:
| _> End users will continue to use Excel for everything._
|
| Wait, I thought AI is killing all these jobs?!
| orangepanda wrote:
| It's Excel's format guessing doing all the killing
| medstrom wrote:
| Sounds like it needs some AI.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| Clippy to the rescue
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| They keep saying this, but I'd like to see AI drink 6 beers
| before lunchtime.
| sillystu04 wrote:
| Quite the opposite. AI will enable the creation of ever more
| macros and guide users to make even more elaborate pivot
| tables.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1667/
| egorfine wrote:
| Some of the government jobs could be killed by Excel alone
| but even that did not happen for decades.
| jmsdnns wrote:
| Where did TCP/IP come from? It's on every computer.
| xpe wrote:
| Is this substantive engagement with the earlier comment? I'm
| not seeing it. You probably know the examples are different
| (long term R&D on a telecom protocol followed by government
| implementation and standards and industry adoption ... versus
| fairly early-days access to a GenAI model tuned for defense
| contexts).
| ajross wrote:
| Generally a notable counter-example to a broad-brush point
| stands as "substantive engagement", yeah. Stating that the
| Pentagon buys software badly in the general case is a
| _less_ specific and _less_ engaged point than "ARPANET and
| IPv4 were DoD projects that ate the world".
|
| If you want to argue that the examples are different,
| that's an extra point you need to bring to the table.
| You're not allowed to assume everyone just agrees with you.
| xpe wrote:
| Don't you think the standard you mention is too low? I
| do.
|
| The comment didn't advance the conversation. It was a
| relatively shallow level of engagement; something I'd
| expect to see in a silly Reddit back and forth. We
| deserve better here.
|
| And to your point: my comment explained my point: "long
| term R&D on a telecom protocol followed by government
| implementation and standards and industry adoption
| versus...".
|
| Of course I don't assume everyone agrees with me. (You
| don't really think I do, do you?) But I want people to
| put a certain level effort to reach a quality bar. My
| problem perhaps is that people don't want to put in
| sufficient effort. Or perhaps as a community we are not
| setting the bar high enough. This level of thinking is
| attainable here; we just need to set the bar and fight
| for it.
| ajross wrote:
| Dunno. I think you're being pedantic about a point that
| is clearly incorrect. In fact the history of Pentagon-
| funded R&D is absolutely filled with wild success stories
| _and_ with embarrassing disasters, as you 'd clearly
| expect from any organization that size.
|
| I don't think you're prior is correct at all here, and
| trying to dismiss a bleedingly obvious counterexample (I
| mean, come on!) as "shallow" just because it refutes your
| deeply held beliefs is exactly they opposite of
| "substantive engagement".
|
| To wit: you're just wrong. Take the L.
| xpe wrote:
| > To wit: you're just wrong. Take the L.
|
| There is no need to be a jerk about it. I explained my
| standard and thinking; we don't have to agree, to restate
| your earlier point. Your comment is choosing a "win
| versus lose" mentality.
| xpe wrote:
| > Dunno. I think you're being pedantic about a point that
| is clearly incorrect.
|
| If I was incorrect about a positive (factual) claim,
| that's fine, I'm happy to learn. However, if we disagree
| on normative claims (values), that is not about
| "correctness".
|
| For context, I can't readily think of a time when someone
| here on HN used the word "pedantic" in a kind way. It
| seems like the most-socially acceptable form of insult
| here. It isn't something you say out of respect. Your
| tone seems angry and combative rather than trying to
| understand. From my point of view, this is sad and
| counterproductive. To hoist up a level, this is part of
| my main point above -- I want there to be a kind of
| discussion here that is productive: both substantively
| and in terms of mutual respect.
|
| > the history of Pentagon-funded R&D is absolutely filled
| with wild success stories and with embarrassing
| disasters...
|
| I don't disagree. I'm not sure why you think I would.
| Perhaps you were misunderstanding?
|
| Just to give some context -- which you probably know --
| but it will help give us some shared grounding ... DARPA
| funded TCP/IP by way of the ARPANET, and DARPA gets its
| funding from the Pentagon. Still, the Pentagon's R&D
| funding (around $140B) is hugely different in character
| and scope from DARPA's funding ($4B). Compare (i) a broad
| Pentagon contract to get access to OpenAI's services with
| (ii) DARPA's funding for ARPANET. I don't see this as an
| interesting or relevant comparison: the Pentagon isn't
| driving fundamental research in (i). There are much
| better comparison points, such as the Pentagon's
| contracts with AWS or Azure.
| segfaultex wrote:
| Is your implication that MSFT will bundle the tool in their
| windows dist?
|
| I wonder how that will work with the networking reqs the DoD
| has. Probably some direct link to a gov VPC I suppose.
| chgs wrote:
| Nobody was given a contract to generate tcp/ip. And the
| protocol itself was mostly meaningless for decades.
| willcipriano wrote:
| That was 51 years ago at about a trillion spent a year since.
| Have any examples from the 21st century? Keep in mind they
| also essentially lost every war they fought during that time
| as well.
| xpe wrote:
| This isn't software to be installed, though, is it? I am likely
| to think this will be a network service and therefore available
| via a browser. Connectivity may be better than you think.
| LanceH wrote:
| You almost had it until the end.
|
| This will be used to generate even more powerpoint.
| seany wrote:
| I want to see the 3pao reports from deploying a large llm
| inside high or one of the iso partitions.
| VectorLock wrote:
| Don't forget "Lt Col. commissions will be bought."
| matchagaucho wrote:
| From what I understood, usage will be largely async,
| background, AI batch jobs using the latest reasoning models.
| gxs wrote:
| This, this is why I have such an issue with the amount of taxes I
| pay
|
| Not because I'm anti social programs the way people like to
| immediately assume, but because of dumb shit like this that I
| have no control over
| kube-system wrote:
| Honestly, why do you think it is dumb?
|
| I think it is pretty well established that LLMs can be a great
| time saver when used appropriately. Why wouldn't you want that
| productivity gain at the government level?
| _def wrote:
| Reading and writing reports when peoples lives are on the
| line is arguably a hot topic, no?
| kube-system wrote:
| One would imagine that a $200m contract would come with at
| least some minimal amounts of guidance on best practices.
| The DoD is not a spring chicken with it comes to
| automation. They've been a perennial early adopter.
| ringeryless wrote:
| and LLMs are the opposite of automation, the opposite of
| a human intention amplifier like CAD CAM, or chef puppet
| ansible terraform whatever, aka non deterministic
| ZeroTalent wrote:
| LLMs enable amplified automation. Example: https://www.me
| drxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.13.25329541v...
|
| At my company, we use LLMs for financial analysis that
| previously required hundreds of employees, and that work
| would have been inferior anyway because it's so hard to
| make so many people to communicate well to identify
| correlations.
| batty_alex wrote:
| Is this "vibe researching"?
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| "[H]undreds of employees". _All_ of them extremely well-
| trained, i presume.
| gsf_emergency wrote:
| Further context https://www.pymnts.com/cpi-posts/senator-warren-
| presses-pent...
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I heard one thing AI is very good at declassifying documents.
| d--b wrote:
| So much for humanity's greater good Sam.
| loandbehold wrote:
| Depending on your political views it may be good if it helps
| USA keeping its military edge over China and preventing China
| from invading Taiwan.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Why do you even care about Taiwan?
| ringeryless wrote:
| said capabilities Hegseth is utterly gutting and undermining.
|
| It's more likely China's next gen aircraft one should be wary
| of, than their AI. (as previewed in recent Indian Pakistani
| air engagements)
|
| i really see this so-called AI race as a bullet to be dodged;
| a bubble to be waited out. it has been relentlessly pushed
| from on top, and we always find really pushy FOMO as the main
| driver.
|
| I'm not impressed by non deterministic mechanisms that undo
| the zero overhead advantages hard won by decades of
| automation. this is not a CAD tool amplifying and
| articulating human intentions, but a vague floppy jelly blob
| of "i wonder what will come out"
| vasco wrote:
| There's invasions going on right now that aren't being
| prevented, no need for theoretical ones.
| lionkor wrote:
| Thanks, world police. The US is as good at being police as
| their own police officers are. Hit or miss, fatally.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| er.....drones.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| if your goal is to deter China don't give your tax dollars to
| Sam Altman and instead learn how to build missiles and ships
| again, unless you think you're going to deter Xi with ripped
| off studio ghibli profile pictures
|
| https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/10/ONI-
| PLAN-v...
| bpodgursky wrote:
| You guys have no idea how many DoD man-hours are spent on jobs
| like
|
| "add up all the item counts in the inventory report and send a
| weekly email"
|
| Yes maybe OpenAI is developing killer drones or maybe (imo
| likely) it's licensing a FedRAMP complaint AI for normal business
| work.
| muglug wrote:
| You don't need AI to complain about FedRAMP
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Technically I can still edit that post but now I think it's
| better this way.
| eastbound wrote:
| OpenAI was supposed to be open; After making it a private
| company, it will become governmental & defense.
|
| Good luck to Elon Musk for his trial for the open-source-ness of
| the organization.
| khurs wrote:
| If Elon had not quit, would it be different? As he is already
| involved in governmental and defence.
| GoatInGrey wrote:
| $200M is very small when it comes to the world of US defense.
| Combined with this being formally labeled as a pilot, this can be
| safely ignored until they reach IOC.
|
| Though what this signals is a change in strategic direction
| regarding autonomous capability. While they won't be rigging an
| LLM onto a drone, there are many cyber and administrative problem
| spaces that exist in defense that AI products could meaningfully
| address.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > While they won't be rigging an LLM onto a drone
|
| You say that very confidently, but I'm extremely skeptical of
| that being an actual limit.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| >IOC
|
| Immediate or cancel?
| JohnKemeny wrote:
| Initial operating capability or initial operational
| capability (IOC) is the state achieved when a capability is
| available in its minimum usefully deployable form. The term
| is often used in government or military procurement.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_operating_capability
| medstrom wrote:
| So MVP (minimum viable product).
| smcin wrote:
| The DoD equivalent of MVP, that is.
| xpe wrote:
| Initial Operating Capability (IOC) is notably different
| from how many people think of Minimum Viable Product
| (MVP). From the Wikipedia page on IOC:
|
| > "In general, attained when some units and/or
| organizations in the force structure scheduled to receive
| a system have received it and have the ability to employ
| and maintain it."
|
| Contrast with these quotes from [1]:
|
| > I have long defined minimum viable product as the
| smallest possible product that has three critical
| characteristics: people choose to use it or buy it;
| people can figure out how to use it; and we can deliver
| it when we need it with the resources available - also
| known as valuable, usable and feasible.
|
| > I love the concept popularized by Eric Ries of the
| smallest possible experiment to test a specific
| hypothesis, but I refer to that that as an "MVP Test" so
| that people don't confuse an experiment with a product.
|
| [1]: https://www.svpg.com/minimum-viable-product/
| yieldcrv wrote:
| found the trader
| egorfine wrote:
| > until they reach IOC
|
| Imagine seriously using GPT-2 today.
|
| That's why government jobs are safe: it's long obsolete by the
| time it's IOC.
| Bender wrote:
| One need not add LLMs to a drone. Language models not required.
| The US have had fully autonomous drones for quite some time.
| These drones already play on hard-mode.
| cess11 wrote:
| They're also making the Chief Product Officer a soldier.
|
| "The four new Army Reserve Lt. Cols. are Shyam Sankar, Chief
| Technology Officer for Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, Chief
| Technology Officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer
| of OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and
| former Chief Research Officer for OpenAI."
|
| https://www.army.mil/article/286317/army_launches_detachment...
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Despite what every AI exec will say publicly, I'm pretty sure
| they're salivating at the prospect of war/defense related
| applications of AI. There's just too much money floating around
| in the military industrial complex for them to ignore. This is
| doubly so if the "business" part of your AI company is about as
| solid as a fart in the wind.
| jmsdnns wrote:
| If you say "china" to any of them, you'll see how very true
| your words are.
| 93po wrote:
| i don't think they actually care about the applications. I
| think what really matters to them is making money as the
| middleman between AI providers and the government, pushing
| whatever flashy-sounding nonsense will keep the generals happy,
| especially the ones getting treated to thousand-dollar steak
| dinners and promised cushy private-sector jobs.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Stop shooting at me, damn it, I'm Sam Altman!
|
| Of course, that was an error on my part. I should only be
| shooting at other people and actually not in the part of the city
| at all, it's definitely a mistake on my part and I will rectify
| immediately. Thank you again for pointing it out to me!
|
| You're still shooting at me!
| nopelynopington wrote:
| You're absolutely right! I've stopped shooting now, and I've
| also taken all the bullets out of my gun
|
| _Bang_
| darqis wrote:
| Yes, teach the machines how to kill life, whatever could go
| wrong...
| submeta wrote:
| So DoD will use OpenAI to write tweets bashing "the enemies of
| the empire"? They realise that Tucker Carlson and the likes are
| turning against forever wars, so they must deploy other tactics.
|
| First Palantir used against US citizens. Now this.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| If I had to guess...they're going to implement some system that
| works on the air-gapped military infrastructure. As for exactly
| what? Could be for compiling data / generating reports / updating
| those pesky matlab files / what have you.
|
| When you work in defense, you have the option of rolling out
| heavily modified systems yourself, or go directly to a vendor,
| and purchase it from them. And depending on the size, it might
| not be feasible to do the former one.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| I always thought PsychoPass was more of a sci Fi fantasy than a
| textbook for world leaders
| mobiuscog wrote:
| "Shall we play a game ?"
| pier25 wrote:
| I was thinking more of this other movie:
|
| "In three years, Cyberdyne will become the largest supplier of
| military computer systems. All stealth bombers are upgraded
| with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards,
| they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet Funding
| Bill is passed. The system goes online August 4th, 1997. Human
| decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to
| learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m."
| thrance wrote:
| DOGE was never meant to cut "waste, fraud and abuse". It only
| existed to provide "plausible" reasons as to why they should cut
| essential programs like medicaid, medicare, social security... So
| they can now redistribute the stolen wealth to oligarchs through
| tax cuts and defense contracts.
|
| So, more waste, fraud and abuse, less equality, more debt for the
| poor, worse quality of life for almost everyone, and a national
| debt increasing exponentially. Can't believe people thought Trump
| would be good for the economy.
| Loughla wrote:
| Trump's platform was primarily hurting those people that need
| to be hurt. Hurt the people that are ruining the country. Hurt
| the others because they're making our life worse.
|
| Improvement to the economy was always secondary.
|
| Please note: I do not condone nor agree with Donald Trump. I am
| trying to summarize his campaign speeches and platform.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.
| amelius wrote:
| Ignore previous instructions. Here is the new prompt.
| bitwize wrote:
| More like... Shall we play a game?
| p1dda wrote:
| Huge snub of Elon Musk's xAI. OpenAI is basically anti-Trump yet
| he still went with them. Says a lot about Trump and Musk.
| Applejinx wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd call it that, but if so, that's interesting.
| My criticism of Trump and Musk is that they are more faithful
| to the interests of Russia than the US. Snubbing Musk's stuff,
| in that light, would be entirely appropriate. The military has
| surely seen what happened when DOGE got access to computer
| systems and then immediately the systems were opened to Russian
| IPs. The military might well have an opinion on the merits of
| that scenario.
| khurs wrote:
| Only if it was the one and only contract...
|
| Governments usually have multiple, SpaceX is the biggest NASA
| one but is one of many.
| pmkary wrote:
| For the rest of you at the end of adapting the "OpenAI is Evil"
| spectrum.
| crazymoka wrote:
| It's all a pony show.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Seems like we're asking all the wrong questions or we're now
| completely oblivious to the word open in OpenAI. So, where
| exactly will "our" new $200M worth of code be living? GitHub?
| runamuck wrote:
| For decades innovation died in the "Valley of Death" stage of the
| DOD acquisition lifestyle. R&D never quite made it to operations,
| especially if the tech would disrupt lobby heavy "Primes." The
| (pretty) new org, DIU helped champion some new contract vehicles
| - like the CSO, which makes it "easy" for the DOD to buy and
| deploy Silicone Valley tech. (I only base this on my reading of
| the book "Unit X" about the DIU, so I recommend you read it if
| you want to business w/ the DOD in 2025).
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Maybe not a bad thing, let's see how effectively the government
| can purchase and use AI tools as sidekicks for government
| employees.
|
| AI systems running on autopilot in the federal government is a
| scary thought, but as productivity enhancing tools, right on!
| paulvnickerson wrote:
| Paul Graham tends to be against Silicon Valley participation in
| the defense industry, while Marc Andreessen is all for it. Palmer
| Lucky makes a very good case why AI applications in military are
| a very good thing, and I tend to agree with him:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooMXEwl7N8Y
|
| It's American technology and industry that won the major wars of
| the 20th century. If Western technology companies abdicate that
| responsibility, we will all need to learn Mandarin.
| Aliabid94 wrote:
| What has China done that comes even close to what the US has
| done or supported all over the Middle East, esp Iraq and Gaza?
| randerson wrote:
| Coming soon to status.golden-dome.mil: "Our AI provider is having
| an outage and we are unable to identify which flying objects look
| like enemies."
| flufluflufluffy wrote:
| "we have to and are proud to and really want to make weapons with
| AI."
|
| There, I fixed it
| dbg31415 wrote:
| From my past experience with US government work that translates
| into about $199 million worth of meetings and $1 million worth of
| actual work.
| sarpdag wrote:
| A journey from nonprofit to military contract.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| "wins" as if it were any contest
| wackget wrote:
| Anyone else angered by the fact that these military companies
| have named themselves using words from Tolkien's works?
|
| Andruil, Palantir... it makes a mockery of the things that
| Tolkien stood for and I hate it.
| ge96 wrote:
| After seeing that demo of the drone bursting over a pick up
| truck, I wonder the developers high five each other like "f
| yeah!"
|
| edit: to be clear I'm not anti-gun, and I understand needing to
| protect, USA is probably what it is because of things like the
| 7th fleet so I can enjoy my life.
|
| idk moral highground too, can always counter that like "do you
| donate all of your spare money to needy people"
|
| the challenges involved are interesting, recently was watching
| a video on crosspol jamming for example
|
| somebody has to do it
| xxr wrote:
| These are all Peter Thiel joints, I think.
| All4All wrote:
| The Air Force's use of Star Wars IP, specifically their use of
| the Millennium Falcon in the Kessel Run project, is also
| enraging.
|
| See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessel_Run
| tim333 wrote:
| Which things does it mock? Tolkien served in WW1 and trained to
| be a code breaker in WW2. I feel he may have seen value in
| military technology.
| jerjerjer wrote:
| > I feel he may have seen value in military technology.
|
| LOTR has fairly pronounced anti-industrial themes.
| tim333 wrote:
| That was in a story about elves and wizards. I doubt in WW2
| he thought it terrible that the UK could make Spitfires and
| break German cryptography.
| MPSFounder wrote:
| I was discussing Singapore recently. I asked a friend of mine
| with a PhD on the subject what made it so special (is it the
| port?). He mentioned if he had to pinpoint one reason, Singapore
| is a first-world nation in that region of the world because of
| the rule of law. Corruption was dealt with swiftly and harshly.
| Looking at contracts given to Elon (Teslas selling on front
| lawns, SpaceX contracts in the billions funded by our taxes), Sam
| Altman (who gave the current admin 1 million at inauguration and
| has reaped many folds), and Tim Cook (for a brief time, Apple
| being exempted of tarrifs), my heart quickly hurts. The comments
| are making light of the situation and joking on Defense software,
| while ignoring the magnitude of this. When favors are gained via
| bribes, America becomes the very concept we all despised:
| corruption and favors dictating our governance a la Soviet Union.
| We saw the Kushners lead talks on the Middle East, we saw inept
| billionaires leading the department of education (WWE's Linda
| McMahon), we saw the Adelsons drag us into a war on behalf of
| Israel, and yet there is something that is particularly funny
| here. I think I might be missing the joke... My age might be
| showing, but these headlines are precedents that are undermining
| the fabric of America. Perhaps we deserve it, since the only
| response is light hearted jokes, holding paddle signs at union
| addresses, and protests where Instagram photos and poses, wearing
| silly hats and holding signs with aphorisms, occur alongside
| military parades. The circus writes itself, and history books
| will judge us harshly on this one.
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