There's a really great YouTube channel called Desert Lore and he covers this topic in depth in this episode. It was really fascinating:

https://youtu.be/Vp4JlUEnPTs?si=j8gH0WnHRpeo1BJu

> Understanding that this is policy is crucial for comprehending how Israeli soldiers are expected to dutifully erase entire villages without questioning orders. By saying “200 NAZA” rather than “200 non-combattants killed,” the dehumanization process is handily condensed to four letters. And yet, despite being miles away from the drone attacks, the soldiers directing the strikes hear everything. The IDF listens to all Gazan phones, so they know where people are and whether children are home. They know who’s in an apartment just before the missiles hit, and they hear the screams after the explosions. They even coined a phrase — “Where’s Daddy?” — to describe listening in on a child’s phone, determining when their father will be home, and then sending a missile to kill them all. As one solider matter-of-factly says about a 12-year-old, “You hack her phone, and then you kill her.”

I think it depends on the person. I've been waiting for AI since I first saw Wargames as a child. As soon as I saw that agents could code at or beyond my level, it felt like the entire world was unlocked. Now I can explore so many ideas that I was bottle-necked on with my own time to write the code before.

I would consider myself a technologist and it's a very exciting time to explore what technology can do. I loved writing code, but mostly because creating something that tapped the power of tech was my goal. Now I can achieve that goal 100x and it feels like a superpower.

There are people far braver than me, but they were indeed fired. There are probably people covertly fighting the system from within but I didn't work close enough to any of these projects to know them.

So ideally people would do what you say and/or just be very open about their objections, but it's also worth recognizing the risk of industry blacklisting and how things like employer provided health insurance raise the stakes.

Congrats on getting out of a toxic situation btw, that's hard to do too if you're getting paid well. In a way I was similar, every morning started to be a real struggle for me.

I've debated exiting tech fully but I do have people to support. I think that's kind of an excuse though. I also tell myself that anywhere I go, if you follow the money far enough up the chain, it will be unethical. That's also kind of an excuse.

I'm not brave, but I do feel trapped. I think we need some sort of reckoning as an industry, a country and possibly a planet. I don't know what will happen but I'm trying to balance living in 2026 with making choices that I can live with in the future.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/microsoft-isra...

> In a wide-ranging conversation about threat monitoring and analysis, the interview also touches on monitoring activists. “Last year we had an executive travel into a major city when we received some intelligence through Samdesk about a planned protest,” Ellison said. The originally scheduled protest was moved up due to permitting issues. “Samdesk gave us about 60 minutes of advanced notice that the protest organizers had moved the timeline,” Ellison explained. “That extra hour was critical. Without it our executives would have departed their meetings, they would have ran right into the heart of the disruption.”

> In a wide-ranging conversation about threat monitoring and analysis, the interview also touches on monitoring activists. “Last year we had an executive travel into a major city when we received some intelligence through Samdesk about a planned protest,” Ellison said. The originally scheduled protest was moved up due to permitting issues. “Samdesk gave us about 60 minutes of advanced notice that the protest organizers had moved the timeline,” Ellison explained. “That extra hour was critical. Without it our executives would have departed their meetings, they would have ran right into the heart of the disruption.”

So they're monitoring activists outside of Anthropic's systems.

Says the guy creating a pre-crime global surveillance apparatus. Wonder why people don't trust him!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49627986

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