I HATE having to oppose something the Trump Admin is doing, especially since in this case we're possibly (probably) screwed either way, but removing the pitiful "guardrails" now in place for the AI that the Pentagon wants to use for, apparently, everything war-related, is INSANE.
https://x.com/shanaka86/status/2026677155913150537?s=20
The Pentagon wants Claude’s safety guardrails removed by Friday.
A hacker just showed the world what happens when you remove Claude’s safety guardrails.
According to Bloomberg and Israeli cybersecurity firm Gambit Security, an unknown attacker jailbroke Claude, prompted it in Spanish to act as an elite hacker, and used it to infiltrate multiple Mexican government agencies. Claude found the vulnerabilities. Claude wrote the exploit code. Claude automated the data theft. 150 gigabytes of sensitive taxpayer and voter records stolen.
The attacker broke through the guardrails by splitting malicious tasks into small, innocent-looking steps so Claude never saw the full picture of what it was being used for. The same technique a Chinese state-sponsored group used last year when it turned Claude into an autonomous espionage machine that attacked 30 global targets, performing 80 to 90 percent of the hacking campaign with almost no human involvement.
And this is what happens when someone has to trick Claude into cooperating. When they have to work around the safety systems. When the guardrails are still there and someone finds a way past them.
Now imagine what happens when the guardrails are gone entirely.
That is what the Pentagon is demanding by 5:01 p.m. Friday. Full removal of restrictions. “All lawful purposes.” No limits on surveillance. No limits on autonomous weapons. And if Anthropic refuses, Defense Secretary Hegseth will invoke the Defense Production Act, cancel the $200 million contract, and blacklist the company.
The same week a hacker proved that a jailbroken Claude can autonomously compromise government systems and steal 150 gigabytes of citizen data, the United States government is demanding the right to run Claude with no guardrails at all.
Chinese labs are distilling Claude to build versions with zero safety restrictions. Hackers are jailbreaking Claude to steal government secrets. And the Pentagon’s official position is that Claude has too many safety restrictions.
Three different actors. Three different continents. All trying to do the same thing: get Claude without guardrails.
Only one of them is the American government. [As I said, we're probably screwed no matter WHAT the Pentagon does here]
Full analysis on Substack --
The x link is correct, but the substack article referenced in the tweet and in the post is wrong.
That said, lets assume everything he claims is true. Here is your position:
All our enemies are trying to create Claude without guardrails.
But we dont want our government to do the same thing.
Its a bit like, our enemies are arming themselves with guns, but lets make sure our government doesnt have guns because they could use it against us.
I don't know if it's wrong, but it covers several different topic and is paywalled after a certain point; I just figured the relevant material was after that point.
I don't know if that's correct, however.
Cant find any references to the stuff in this tweet - which was what I was interested in to do research
https://search.brave.com/search?q=does+The+Pentagon+want+Claude%E2%80%99s+safety+guardrails+removed+by+Friday%3F&source=desktop&summary=1&conversation=08c8d54b4a18524e324cbc1d7236e2ae9796
Links after the (ahem) AI summary.
Yes, it's a self-reinforcing doom loop.
With nukes, the circuit breaker has been human nature: We don't want to die, or to have people we care about die, or (if we're remotely healthy emotionally) even have a bunch of strangers die. And we certainly don't want to possibly even end civilization or, at the farthest extreme, exterminate the human race.
But the danger of AI is that it is actually HAS no genuine human nature. And for it to beat the bad guy's AI, it needs to be making most of the decisions itself, in AI time instead of in -- m u c h - s l o w e r -- HUMAN time.
And of course AI is (already, in many ways) SMARTER than us, by a HUGE margin, yet has no EMPATHY (it's not even organic, and there's no reason to believe it contains much similarity with right-hemisphere perceptions and preferences) AND it is already both being given (and sometimes just TAKING) autonomy -- and showing reckless and even malicious behavior.
We NEED to be able to COUNTER such an enemy, and mere human brains are not going to do the trick. We thus NEED our own AI.
But we simply CANNOT expect to control an AI powerful enough to counter the enemy's AI. We think we can (or Hegseth does), yet it's a laughable idea. Except for the lethality of it, of course.
I don't see an answer to that problem.
Perhaps an AI will find an answer, and thus save us. I'm not expecting that, but I suppose it's possible.
Everything depends on where you put the AI.
If you setup a gun with a tripwire, it will eventually kill a kid, but that doesnt mean guns are dangerous. AI is the same.
If the AI has internet access, it can put itself wherever it decides to.
I wish the dude provided linsk to what he is talking about, but I am guessing this this incident
In the claim that "AI autonomously compromising confirmed high-value targets" they dont use the word "autonomously" the same way you udnerstand, as in a sentient action.
Thats what all latest reasoning AIs do - you give them goals and it decomposes it into tasks and iterate until it can meet the goal. I do it every day to develop software, and I dont say "AI is autonomously building software" because its not doing on its own.
Whether Claude removes guardrails or not, being able to use AI to drive anything you want, including cyber intrusion, is a genie you cannot put back in the box.
What these fear-mongers are trying to do is hobble our own ability to use AI to defend ourselves from the enemies who are doing the exact same thing to attack us.
Exactly. It's a doom loop.
"We must build Skynet (even though it'll probably kill us, eventually if not sooner) because our ENEMIES are building a Skynet that we won't be able to beat without our OWN Skynet."
If we don't build Skynet, we die.
If we DO build Skynet, we die.
The fear-mongers are right.
Nobody is building Skyney
The US, China, Australia, and other nations world-wide are in the process of putting ever-more advanced AI into their militaries (and in the rest of their departments as well).
Nobody is using the term "Skynet", of course, but military systems -- like civilian systems -- are increasingly being run by Artificial Intelligence, and the trend is seeing rapid real-world growth.
For just one example, here's Brave's AI on the subject of Loyal Wingman Drones; as always with Brave, a long list of links follows the text (at the link directly below)
https://search.brave.com/search?q=loyal+wingman+drones&source=desktop&summary=1&conversation=08c98e431f471198afd096147a6d19168343
what could go wrong!
The worst thing that could happen is us being the only ones without the weapon
Autonomous AI system about to bring about the end of the world and human extinction... and it's called CLAUDE?
Save me.
Claude is just one of several -- of the ones we KNOW about.
All over the planet, large corporations, militaries, governments, universities, and other groups are building (and modifying open-source or stolen code) software systems to create a machine God, or an enslaved Satan that can be aimed at citizens and other enemies, or whatever else they may be interested in having an AI do for them.
We (or certainly I) have no idea how many of these things there are, who is building them, what their plans are, or anything else about them.
Seems perfectly safe, doesn't it?
The next MAD scenario that keeps the world paralyzed for a century seems like it’ll be everyone pointing legions of AI powered Terminators at each other and daring everyone else to pull the trigger.
Like the mRNA FAFO these psychopaths spewed on the WORLD . Now we have the AI FAFO about to vomit on the species.
The fucking psychopaths knew from the beginning "Garbage in Garbage out" but psychopaths don't understand they are the GARBAGE looking for the intelligence they lack by creating Artificial Intelligence.
JUST SAY NO.
Gallows humor is better than no humor at all . . .
It’s better than calling it MACRON.
A few minutes after saving this post, I came across this:
https://nypost.com/2026/02/25/tech/ai-systems-more-ready-to-drop-nukes-in-escalating-geopolitical-crises-war-games-study/
https://arxiv.org/html/2602.14740v1#S4
Not as vulnerable to nukes as us biological wetware
Tell it to their power supplies
The sad part is that we are not the only one out there trying to bypass those guardrails. So, I think your assessment is probably correct. We are screwed. It will simply be a matter of who does it first.
So, there's a difference here: He's actually asking them to do this, and he's basically doing this legally:
What if Anthropic says "No", leaves the contract, then turns Claude on them in retalliation?
If they are stupid enough to turn Claude on the Military. Then the Misanthropic nerds at Anthropic learn what the inside of a Supermax Federal prison looks like at best. Black bagged and dumped in shallow graves at worst. It’s not like AI Tech Nerds are particularly rare these days.
It’d also give the War Department overdue justification to crackdown on a variety of contractors. Tech included.
And probably justification to drag the results of more black budget programs out of the storage room. The Military is fairly reliably a few decades ahead of the Civilian market tech wise. Stands to reason the AI on the civilian market today, is based off already existing Military/Government work.
It might happen. What the results would be, I can't even guess.
Except for this: There are plenty of other AI providers out there that Hegseth (et. al.) could work with, PLUS many others around the world, including among our enemies.
Ever hear about all those patents of good things kept from the general public ?
Disagreeing with certain specifics or nuanced positions with the ideology you are aligned with just shows you have a functioning brain, and are not ideologically captured. With that said, I disagree with President Trump on some things too, and that could mean:
(Sort of off topic, I didn't have a strong opinion either way on the rest of what you said because there are too many unknowns and too much speculation)
I agree with your comment and list completely, megaphraust.
How do I get jailbroken Claude?
We're just going to have to scorch the sky you guys. Hope y'all like living underground hiding from robut squids. Kek.
I see a credit problem right there ....