long post : Sam Altman's Faustian Bargain: The Agreement between OpenAI and the Department of War
In this matter, there are no more limits. First, one must read what Anthropic has to say about it:https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-comments-secretary-war
Next, read this: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/12/eliminating-state-law-obstruction-of-national-artificial-intelligence-policy/
This states that federal laws supersede local laws. Therefore, if this post serves as an official announcement ( https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175 as I can’t find anything for the moment at https://openai.com/news/ ), it means that Sam Altman is working directly for the government and is no longer subject to any constraints other than federal ones for the models he will provide to the Department of War. The company is no longer accountable to the restrictive laws that used to bind AI companies:
Disclosing how their models are trained.
Implementing highly restrictive ethical filters.
Giving regulators a right of oversight regarding security risks.
Therefore: this means that federal laws apply. But there are none! Congress cannot pass binding laws because Republicans are blocking all initiatives aimed at framing ethical guidelines with safeguards—such as prohibiting the use of AI to create pathogens... Since there are no laws, it is the President who, by decree, creates federal laws. This is what Biden had done by forcing companies to transmit training data and the way they placed barriers against requests that did not respect the law. With his decree, Trump has canceled Biden’s for federal departments and created a deliberate legal vacuum by political choice. Since there is no longer a legal framework, he is liberating the ethical and legal boundaries. Furthermore, as there are no laws, Trump’s Department of War can hide everything under his concept of "classified." NO ONE can monitor what is happening on the servers managed by the Department of War. Everything is permitted and hidden.
Where Sam Altman differs from Dario Amodei is in ideological and strategic notions. Anthropic refuses the "Any Lawful Use" clause. They advocate for an independent "ethics" governed by humanity. Sam Altman, on the other hand, is more into "entrisme" (infiltration). He believes he can redirect and influence from the inside. He "works" as a "defense contractor for the American military." But make no mistake, it is mercantile.
There is a major shift in the nature of the company, which is no longer at the service of citizens or "humanity" (just to pretend it’s important) but at the service of a state (totalitarian?). It is pragmatism for the company's interests. Moreover, despite the fact that he says the contract stipulates safeguard clauses, since it is secret, no one can monitor, supervise, or audit. Sam Altman knows this full well; he goes where the most money is—this is a contract worth billions of dollars—and he covers himself by simply saying: "I provide the raw models without ethical barriers because the federal state requires it, but I have nothing to be ashamed of, I respect the law, OpenAI is not the villain, the state is!"
He has just made a Faustian bargain... #openAI #SamAltman #AIEthics #ArtificialIntelligence #DepartmentOfWar #NationalSecurity #TechPolitics #Anthropic