No Stupid Rules

America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history.  B-2s, fighters, drones, missiles, and of course classified effects.  All on our terms with maximum authorities.  No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars.  We fight to win, and we don't waste time or lives.

-- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at a press briefing on the war with Iran (2 March 2026)

Craving For Black Magic

In short, I suggest that the programmer should continue to understand what he is doing, that his growing product remains firmly within his intellectual grip.  It is my sad experience that this suggestion is repulsive to the average experienced programmer, who clearly derives a major part of his professional excitement from not quite understanding what he is doing.  In this streamlined age, one of our most undernourished psychological needs is the craving for Black Magic and apparently the automatic computer can satisfy this need for the professional software engineer, who is secretly enthralled by the gigantic risks he takes in his daring irresponsibility.  For his frustrations I have no remedy.

-- Edsger Dijkstra (1930 - 2002), Dutch computer scientist, mathematician, software engineer, and essayist, "On the reliability of programs" (EWD 303)

[This reflects how I feel about software developed with the use of AI tools.  I'd like all of my software to flow directly through my fingers.  I don't want to debug code written by AI; I much prefer to debug code written by myself.  One often quickly recognizes the potential locus of a bug when one has one's product firmly in one's intellectual grip.]

In Good Conscience

Anthropic understands that the Department of War, not private companies, makes military decisions.  We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner.

However, in a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.  Some uses are also simply outside the bounds of what today's technology can safely and reliably do.  Two such use cases have never been included in our contracts with the Department of War, and we believe they should not be included now:

* Mass domestic surveillance. 
* Fully autonomous weapons.

To our knowledge, these two exceptions have not been a barrier to accelerating the adoption and use of our models within our armed forces to date.

The Department of War has stated they will only contract with AI companies who accede to "any lawful use" and remove safeguards in the cases mentioned above.  They have threatened to remove us from their systems if we maintain these safeguards; they have also threatened to designate us a "supply chain risk" -- a label reserved for US adversaries, never before applied to an American company -- and to invoke the Defense Production Act to force the safeguards' removal.  These latter two threats are inherently contradictory: one labels us a security risk; the other labels Claude as essential to national security.

Regardless, these threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.

-- Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, maker of the Claude AI, "Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War" (26 February 2026)

Thank Goodness

Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.

-- Edsger Dijkstra (1930 - 2002), Dutch computer scientist, mathematician, software engineer, and essayist, Dijkstra (1982) "A Letter to My Old Friend Jonathan" (EWD475) p. 101 

Meta 45

Meta.  Today it's been 45 years since the 24 February 1981 birth of Trvth.  I reflected on this a bit at the 40-year mark here.

I noted then that on 22 July 2019 I had counted 5450ish published Trvth entries.  Since that 2019 date another 1697 have been published, for a grand(?) total today, 24 February 2026, of 7147ish.

The most recent 4753 are all available at trvth.org beginning 3 March 2005 (more than 20 years on the Interwebs)

And, for your amusement, I present from the archives the original Trvth:

***** appearances ~appleman / chanute ~2/24/1981 ~13:50

While nothing may seem to be as it first appears, there
are in fact some things which appear to be as they are,
amidst the other things which only appear to be as they
aren't.

If We Don't Believe

If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

-- Noam Chomsky (7 December 1928 -), American linguist, cognitive scientist, political analyst, and human rights activist, interview by John Pilger on The Late Show BBC Television (25 November 1992)

Arguably The Worst

President Trump owes the Supreme Court an apology -- to the individual Justices he smeared on Friday and the institution itself.  Mr. Trump doubtless won't offer one, but his rant in response to his tariff defeat at the Court was arguably the worst moment of his Presidency.

This is the same Court that ruled Mr. Trump's way on presidential immunity, which was more personally consequential for this President.  Mr. Trump shouldn't have been surprised by the Court.  We warned from the start that this would be the result of his unlawful resort to IEEPA.  The fault doesn't lie with the Justices but with his own tariff obsessions.

-- The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal, "Trump Demeans Himself as He Attacks the Supreme Court" (20 February 2026), regarding President Trump's rant in which he "lit into the Justices who voted against him as traitors bought by foreign interest" after the Court voted 6-3 to overturn his signature "emergency" tariff policy