I thought I was so clever for buying one of those things for like $190 and putting Lubuntu on it to make it usable. It worked - but the joke was still on me when it died a year later.
> For intelligence activities, any handling of private information will comply with the Fourth Amendment, the National Security Act of 1947 and the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act of 1978, Executive Order 12333, and applicable DoD directives requiring a defined foreign intelligence purpose. The AI System shall not be used for unconstrained monitoring of U.S. persons’ private information as consistent with these authorities. The system shall also not be used for domestic law-enforcement activities except as permitted by the Posse Comitatus Act and other applicable law.
My reading of this is that OpenAI's contract with the Pentagon only prohibits mass surveillance of US citizens to the extent that that surveillance is already prohibited by law. For example, I believe this implies that the DoW can procure data on US citizens en masse from private companies - including, e.g., granular location and financial transaction data - and apply OpenAI's tools to that data to surveil and otherwise target US citizens at scale. As I understand it, this was not the case with Anthropic's contract.
If I'm right, this is abhorrent. However, I've already jumped to a lot of incorrect conclusions in the last few days, so I'm doing my best to withhold judgment for now, and holding out hope for a plausible competing explanation.
(Disclosure, I'm a former OpenAI employee and current shareholder.)
Open ai, the former non-profit, whose board tried to fire the CEO for being deceptive, which is no longer open at all, isn't exactly about ethics these days.
Even on a personal level: OpenAI has changed it's privacy policy twice to let them gather data on me they weren't before. A lot of steps to disable it each time, tons of dark patterns. And the data checkout just bugs out too, it's a fake feature to hide how much they are using everything you type to them
Capital always wins because there’s an infinite line of psychopaths at the ready to screw everybody over for slightly less money than the previous person did
The board that fired him wasn’t really “the capital class” in the traditional sense. It was a nonprofit board with an unusual governance structure specifically designed to limit investor controlling. Ilya and Helen were acting on safety/governance concerns, arguably against the interests of capital (Microsoft, VCs).
Like literally he’s doing right now the thing that would not have been done had Ilya and the other board members retained their positions
I wish more people just honestly called out deception and liars like you do.
If we had a simple lookup community maintained system for this, would you use it? What do you think its design would need to be to be used, gain traction and be valuable?
So why would we want them setting policy for the DoD? Laws are enacted through a fundamentally democratic process defined over hundreds of years. Why wouldn’t that be the way to govern use of tools?
Why would we want to trade our constitution for, effectively, “rules Sam Altman came up with”?
Part of the problem is that due to a combination of the electoral college, gerrymandering, voter supression, propaganda, and Citizens United; America's government is not meaningfully democratic.
Even setting that aside, I don't think that people are saying that they want corporations to make the rules. Rather, what I think they are saying is that they don't want AI to be used for mass surveilance or autonomous weapons and cutting the DoD off at the corporate level is one way to accomplish that.
Voter suppression is not a large scale problem in American (neither is voter fraud.) I would be curious why you mentioned that?
America is an indirect democracy, which isn’t a flaw it’s a design choice. Things like the electoral college still follow a process where the people choose (same with the Supreme Court) it’s just staggered as a system that prioritizes stability over big swings/rapid change.
There’s a strong push right now to mandate voter ID requirements that could block married women from voting (if their last name doesn’t match their birth certificate).
And more stringent ID requirements are discriminatory against the poor, who often don’t have the time and resources to deal with the bureaucracy necessary to do things like travel to retrieve a new copy of their birth certificate.
> Voter suppression is not a large scale problem in American
So you aren’t a person of color who lives in the south I assume? I could also make a couple educated guesses about where you consume news from as well but I’m refrain.
Needless to say, it absolutely is an issue exacerbated by Supreme Court actions pretending it wouldn’t quickly become one.
The "funniest" thing about this is that in any other context, this administration absolutely insists that everyone should be called only by their legal name, not any other name that they prefer because they think it better suits their identity.
The point is, the name of the DoD is still the Department of Defense. Just like his dumb ass calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America didn't change the fact that it's still the Gulf of Mexico. All it meant is him wasting money on new letterhead to sooth his fragile ego.
He can make the executive branch call it The Dumpty Bowl if he wants. That doesn't mean he has renamed it. He has zero power outside the executive branch. Fortunately the United States isn't yet ruled by decree.
The names are decided by the United States Board on Geographic Names, which is under the Department of the Interior, which is part of the executive branch. So yeah, he can make them rename it for the US. Sure, you can pedantically say that he can only force the entirety of the federal government to respect the name, and the State governments could refuse to abide by that, but what would be the point? AFAIK none have outright refused. And obviously private citizens can call things whatever the heck they want, though if they get too creative they may have trouble expressing themselves in a way that others will understand.
The point is accuracy. He literally can only mandate the federal government. Everyone else knows it's the Gulf of Mexico in every state in the US and every English speaking country in the world.
I haven't heard of any states bothering to reprint maps. They all know his whole clown show charade will be over in the blink of an eye.
You could pretend he has more power than he does, but what would be the point?
Yes our democratically appointed government gets to tell contractors what to do not vice versa. I’d much rather that than have the contractors run things. You think Blackwater, Lockheed, Mark Zuckerberg should dictate how our military works? Who is the fascist here?
I'm fine with the Dept of Defense deciding the terms of the contract are not acceptable to them and therefore not doing business with Anthropic. Where it becomes very much not okay is when they retaliate against (or coerce) Anthropic by assigning them the supply chain risk designation. This is not telling a contractor what to do, this is attempting to put them out of business.
Sure sounds like congress renamed it. Those damn masses, exercising democratic power.
Trump will put a stop to that!
Loyalty to the constitution third, loyalty to the party second, loyalty to the president first. That's the order of things in a fascist society and Trump has made very exceptionally clear that he thinks that should be the way of it in the US...
Even outside of the US, a corporation is widely considered to be a company of people with their own agency and rights.
A person or group of people should be able to set their own boundaries without being subjected to immoral and unjust retaliation, i.e. corporate murder (https://x.com/i/status/2027515599358730315).
Also, ask any frontier model what Pete Hegseth thinks about democracy.
This is exactly what it says: the only restrictions are the restrictions that are already in law. This seems like the weasel language Dario was talking about.
Like by an administration who is constantly ignoring and violating both domestic and international law?
Like by an administration that likes to act extra judiciously and ignore habeas corups?
I wonder where we'd find such a government. Probably shouldn't give them the power to "do anything legal NOR 'consistent with operational requirements'". That's the power to do anything they want
No, executive orders can't change law and international law, unless ratified by congress, is not democratically legitimized and applicable law in the US to begin with
War Powers Resolution. Obviously, there’s a law of which multiple presidents have used. Congress can change this law but there is a law that does give the POTUS this authority.
Nope, the War Powers Resolution gives the president broad authority to respond to an active attack on the United States (which makes sense). But it does not allow the President to unilaterally start an aggressive war against some random country without Congressional approval.
Not that we live in country where laws or the Constitution matter much right now. It's theoretically possible that some people might someday be prosecuted for breaking laws or violating people's Constitutional rights. But even there, I world expect that many of the law breakers will simply be pardoned.
What about the argument that Congress has always gone along with this in the past?
I mean it isn't quite that stark, but the last president that actually asked congress for and got a declaration of war was Roosevelt. The last president that asked for and got permission for the use of military force was George Bush (junior) after 9/11 (obv. he meant against the Taliban).
Which means all US conflicts are "based on" George Bush's approval for use of military force, about 1 per presidential term: military intervention in Lybia, the campaign against ISIS, campaign against Syria and Iraq militias/continuation against ISIS, and now Iran. Iran is a different scale I guess, but ...
They do note that their contract language specifically references the laws as they exist today.
Presumably if the laws become less restrictive, that does not impact OpenAI's contract with them (nothing would change) but if the laws become more restrictive (eg certain loopholes in processing American's data get closed) then OpenAI and the DoD should presumably^ not break the new laws.
^ we all get to decide how much work this presumably is doing
Not that this means the big AI corps should relax their values (it truly doesn't), but I would be extremely surprised if the DoD/DoW doesn't have anyone capable of fine tuning an open weights model for this purpose.
And, I mean, if they don't, gpt 5.3 is going to be pretty good help
Given the volume fine tuning a small model is probably the only cost effective way to do it anyway
People often overlook how all the NSA-related activities and government overreach come with a nice memo from officials stating how "lawful" the questionable actions they're taking are.
> For example, I believe this implies that the DoW can procure data on US citizens en masse from private companies - including, e.g., granular location and financial transaction data - and apply OpenAI's tools to that data to surveil and otherwise target US citizens at scale.
Third Party Doctrine makes trouble for us once again.
Eliminate that and MANY nightmare scenarios disappear or become exceptionally more complicated.
This is hilarious. I see their lawyers got together to find the most confusing way they could word it to throw people off and let everybody claim it says whatever's best for their own PR.
"Shall not be used as consistent with these authorities"?
So they shall only be used inconsistently with these authorities? That's the literal reading if you assume there's no typo.
Or did they forget a crucial comma that would imply they shall not use it, to the extent this provision is consistent with their authorities?
Or did they forget the comma but it was supposed to mean that they shall not use it, to the extent that not-doing so would be consistent with their authorities?
You gotta hand it to the lawyers, I'm not sure I could've thought of wording this deliberately confusing if they'd given me a million dollars.
Previously Snowden leaked that the NSA and FBI accessed data directly from major U.S. internet companies. Now we have generative AI that can help identify targets much faster. IMO the government is amoral and interested in getting the best technology available, and integrating it into their systems. So the CEO etc can say one thing, and will do another.
Other nations including Israel and the PRC will also be working with their own implementations respectively because if they are not they know that everyone else is. So this is just basic game theory.
But the kicker is that 5y from now we will be able to run Codex 5.3x or Opus 4.6 on a $5000 mac studio, so nations states will want to immediately implement this kind of technology into their defense apparatus.
thanks for speaking out, and yes, that was my interpretation, as well, which I outlined below. This is nothing more than some sugar coating on "lawful use" despite what OpenAI says and the contractual "safeguards" they tout like the FDEs.
Surely this is the main issue - Doge and others have assembled massive databases of information about all Americans from across the government and now they want to use AI to start making lists.
i.e. Combing through public forums on the internet looking for evidence of thought crime, however, is fair game. The Trump admin will undoubtedly use tools like this to compile a list political enemies or undesirables, which they will then use to harass people or selectively restrict individual rights. They're already doing this and this is just going to make it easier for them.
> to the extent that that surveillance is already prohibited by law.
The problem with government contracts where you say "can't do anything illegal" is that THEY DECIDE WHAT IS LEGAL. We're lucky we live in a system where you can challenge the government but I think either side of the isle you're on you think people are trying to dismantle that feature (we just disagree on who is doing that, right?).
<edit>
THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT DARIO WAS ARGUING and it is exactly why the DOD wanted to get around. They wanted to use Claude for all legal purposes and Anthropic said moral reasons.
Also notice the subtle language in OpenAI's red lines. "No use of OpenAI technology for mass *domestic* surveillance." We've seen how this was abused by the NSA already since normal communication in the Internet often crosses international lines. And what they couldn't get done that way they got around through allies who can spy on American citizens.
</edit>
I think we need to remember that legality != morality. It's our attempt to formalize morality but I think everyone sees how easy it is to skirt[0]
> I believe this implies that the DoW can procure data on US citizens en masse from private companies - including
Call your senators. There's a bill in the senate explicitly about this. Here's the EFF's take [1]. IMO it's far from perfect but an important step. I think we should talk about this more. I have problems with it too, but hey, is anything in here preventing things from continuing to get better? It's too easy to critique and then do nothing. We've been arguing for over a decade, I'd rather take a small step than a step back.
> If I'm right, this is abhorrent.
Let's also not forget WorldCoin[2]. World (blockchain)? World Network?
I have no trust for Altman. His solution to distinguishing humans from bots is mass biometric surveillance. This seems as disconnected as the CEO of Flock or that Ring commercial.
Not to mention all the safety failures. Sora was released allowing real people to be generated? Great marketing. Glad they "fixed it" so quickly...
There's a lot happening now and it's happening fast. I think we need to be careful. We've developed systems to distribute power but it naturally wants to accumulate. Be it government power or email providers. The greater the power, the greater the responsibility. But isn't that why we created distributed power systems in the first place?
Personally I don't want autonomous unquestioning killbots under the control of one or a small number of people. Even if you don't believe the one in control now is not a psychopath (-_-) then you can still agree that it's possible for that type of person to get control. Power corrupts. Things like killing another person should be hard, emotionally. That's a feature, not a flaw. Soldiers questioning orders is a feature, not a flaw. By concentrating power you risk handing that power to those that do not feel. We're making Turnkey Tyranny more dangerous
[0] and law is probably our best attempt to make a formal system out of a natural language but I digress
(Disclosure, I'm a former OpenAI employee and current shareholder.)
I have two qualms with this deal.
First, Sam's tweet [0] reads as if this deal does not disallow autonomous weapons, but rather requires "human responsibility" for them. I don't think this is much of an assurance at all - obviously at some level a human must be responsible, but this is vague enough that I worry the responsible human could be very far out of the loop.
Second, Jeremy Lewin's tweet [1] indicates that the definitions of these guardrails are now maintained by DoW, not OpenAI. I'm currently unclear on those definitions and the process for changing them. But I worry that e.g. "mass surveillance" may be defined too narrowly for that limitation to be compatible with democratic values, or that DoW could unilaterally make it that narrow in the future. Evidently Anthropic insisted on defining these limits itself, and that was a sticking point.
Of course, it's possible that OpenAI leadership thoughtfully considered both of these points and that there are reasonable explanations for each of them. That's not clear from anything I've seen so far, but things are moving quickly so that may change in the coming days.
I don't understand how any sort of deal is defensible in the circumstances.
Government: "Anthropic, let us do whatever we want"
Anthropic: "We have some minimal conditions."
Government: "OpenAI, if we blast Anthropic into the sun, what sort of deal can we get?"
OpenAI: "Uh well I guess I should ask for those conditions"
Government: blasts Anthropic into the sun "Sure whatever, those conditions are okay...for now."
By taking the deal with the DoW, OpenAI accepts that they can be treated the same way the government just treated Anthropic. Does it really matter what they've agreed?
It looks like Anthropic likely wanted to be able to verify the terms on their own volition whereas OpenAI was fine with letting the government police themselves.
From the DoD perspective they don't want a situation, like, a target is being tracked, and then the screen goes black because the Anthropic committee decided this is out of bounds.
> From the DoD perspective they don't want a situation, like, a target is being tracked, and then the screen goes black because the Anthropic committee decided this is out of bounds.
Anthropic didn't want a kill switch, they wanted contractual guarantees (the kind you can go to courts for). This administration just doesn't want accountability, that's all.
It was OpenAI that said they prefer to rely on guardrails and less on contracts (the kind that stops the AI from working if you violate). The same OpenAI that was awarded the contract now.
I don’t know why more people don’t see this. It’s a matter of providing strong guarantees of reliability of the product. There is already mass surveillance. There is already life taking without proper oversight.
I think it's a bit more nuance than that. The government (however good or bad, just bear with me) already has oversight mechanisms and already has laws in place to prevent mass surveillance and policy about autonomous killing.
So the governments stance is "We already have laws and procedures in place, we don't want and can't have a CEO to also be part of those checks"
I don't think this outcome would have been any different under a normal blue government either. Definitely with less mud slinging though.
If you think a blue government would even consider threatening to falsely accuse a company of being a supply-chain threat in order to gain leverage in a contract negotiation, you're insane. There's nothing remotely normal about this, it's not something you see in any western democracy
Government's free to not like the terms and go with another provider. That's whatever.
Government's not free to say, "We'll blow up your business with a false accusation if you don't give us the terms we want (and then use defence production act to commandeer the product anyway)". How much more blatantly authoritarian does it get than that?
This is wise analysis. To summarize: appeasement of the Trump administration is a losing strategy. You won’t get what you want and you’ll get dragged down in the process.
Jeremy Lewin's tweet referenced that "all lawful use" is the particular term that seems to be a particular sticking point.
While I don't live in the US, I could imagine the US government arguing that third party doctrine[0] means that aggregation and bulk-analysis of say; phone record metadata is "lawful use" in that it isn't /technically/ unlawful, although it would be unethical.
Another avenue might also be purchasing data from ad brokers for mass-analysis with LLMs which was written about in Byron Tau's Means of Control[1]
The term lawful use is a joke to the current administration when they go after senators for sedition when reminding government employees to not carry out unlawful orders. It’s all so twisted.
To be clear, the sticking point is actually that the DoD signed a deal with Anthropic a few months ago that had an Acceptable Use Policy which, like all policies, is narrower than the absolute outer bounds of statutory limitations.
DoD is now trying to strongarm Anthropic into changing the deal that they already signed!
I’d like to see smart anonymous ways for people to cryptographically prove their claims. Who wants to help find or build such an attestation system?
I’m not accusing the above commenter of deception; I’m merely saying reasonable people are skeptical. There are classic game theory approaches to address cooperation failure modes. We have to use them. Apologies if this seems cryptic; I’m trying to be brief. It if doesn’t make sense just ask.
I wouldn’t put anything past them, but my impression is that they were just acting as a middleman for this transaction and taking a fee, rather than making a directional bet one way or another. Hedge funds have certainly been buying a lot of tariff claims, giving businesses guaranteed money upfront and betting on this outcome. But for an investment bank like Cantor Fitzgerald that would be atypical.
It’s not really excusing anything, just pointing out that Cantor Fitzgerald would be making money whether this Supreme Court ruling went for or against the Trump tariffs. So it’s not like they had to have any inside knowledge to be making money.
It's true that a volatile environment in general is good for certain types of investment banking business, including facilitating this trade. I nevertheless think it's unlikely - honestly, a galaxy brain take - that Cantor Fitzgerald or other investment banks with influence in the Trump administration would push for policies like unconstitutional tariffs just to drive trading revenue. Maybe the strongest reason is that other, frankly more lucrative investment banking activities, like fundraising and M&A, benefit from a growing economy and a stable economic and regulatory environment.
It stretches your imagination to conceive of a financier chasing short term gains over the long term stability of the investment bank they are part of? I seem to recall an event back in the late '00s that you may want to look into.
Ah yes, instead of applying the normal legal standard of “not even having the appearance of impropriety” we instead apply the monkey’s paw standard of waiting until they “no longer even have the appearance of propriety”.
I don’t see how constitutional changes would help. The constitution already creates separation of powers, limits on executive authority, and procedures for removing an unfit president or one who commits serious crimes. But these only matter to the extent that majorities of elected and appointed officials care, and today’s ruling notwithstanding, there’s no political will to enforce any of them. The plurality of American voters in 2024 asked for this, and unfortunately we are all now getting what they asked for and deserve.
I think you're misunderstanding at least a little bit here. The Constitution created separation of powers, but what it did not do is explicitly block a particular branch from either abdicating their duty or simply delegating their power back to the executive.
It's certainly an interesting situation that wasn't explicitly spelled out in the law. But as far as everything that's working, it's realistically all within the legal framework of the Constitution. There are procedures to remove an unfit President, sure; but there's no requirement baked into the Constitution that requires those parties to act upon those procedures.
In short, it's a whole lot of short-sightedness of the Constitution combined with willing participants across multiple branches of the government.
The problems unearthed and the damage being done will take decades to fix just our internal issues, and it's very likely we will never resolve our international problems.
I don't know what the future holds for the United States, but we are certainly going to be operating from a severe handicap for quite a while.
The basic fact that needs to be contended with is that the Constitution, however brilliantly it may be crafted or repaired, is a piece of paper. It has no agency to enforce or do anything else. It's always people who have to decide to do things, maybe under inspiration from this paper or another. So whether the Constitution say "Congress must impeach a President who is doing this or that" vs "may impeach", that would have 0 practical impact.
Consider that most totalitarian states have constitutions that explicitly forbid torture, discrimination, and many other forms of government suppression of people. This does little in the face of a police state bent on suppressing the people.
Wanted to reply though it's been 10 days! You are correct. But the one thing the words do is lend credibility to the eventual overthrow of the terrible regime, by allowing the words to be used to back that overthrow. In the hearts and minds of people, this is important.
I think in practical terms I think it helps limit the extent of the damage by giving everyone a social contract that they can point to in order to keep the "others" in check. In reality it's pretty variable. But I suspect having agreed upon social contracts tilt the odds towards the favored outcome over extended datasets. If that makes sense.
Worth mentioning, that goes the other way too... plenty of what should be executive power was delegated to congressional authority over the years as well. And it doesn't even begin to cover activist judicial practices.
The lines have definitely blurred a lot, especially since the early 1900's. And that's just between the branches, let alone the growth of govt in general.
>>And it doesn't even begin to cover activist judicial practices.
The Constitution created SCOTUS as a political body.
The sole role of a Supreme Court Justice is to cast votes.
The constitution places zero restrictions on how a Justice decides which way to vote. The Justice is not bound by anything in deciding how to vote.
That includes bribery or other corruption. If bribery is proven, the Justice is subject to criminal prosecution. But conviction does not remove the Justice from office. And removal by impeachment does not undo the cases decided by the corrupt votes of the Justice.
Every vote of every Justice in US history was an "activist judicial practice" in the sense that each vote was made for personal reasons of the Justice that we will never know (opinions only reflect what a Justice chose to say, which in no way means it reflects the personal reasons for the Justice's vote).
Your comment is a political statement about a political body - although you seem to incorrectly believe you are making some type of legal statement.
I didn't say SCOTUS or Justices? Even then, even if they are making political decisions, there's still the illusion of something resembling reason behind those decisions... that's far from some of the activist decisions further down the line at the district level.
I should be more careful with my terminology. By saying the constitution made SCOTUS a political body, I meant that the design of the constitution is such that SCOTUS is free to interpret the Constitution (and laws) as it sees fit.
The Constitution is designed such that it defines no rules and places no restrictions upon how Justices are to interpret the Constitution. The original design of the Constitution is that the Justices are to interpret the laws of the United States as they see fit.
There is no such thing as an "activist" Supreme Court.
The suggestion there must be an "Originalist interpretation" of the Constitution (e.g. it must be interpreted as intended by the Founding Fathers) is pure hogwash. If that were so, then by an "Originalist interpretation" the Constitution would already say so (and of course it doesn't). Nevertheless political conservative Justices actually made that part of their opinions that now impose the concept of "originalism" when interpretating the Constitution. A pretty neat magical trick by which the conservative Justices violate the philosophy of "originalism" to impose "originalism".
And as for "further down the line at the district level", there is likewise no such thing as an "activist" court - in the sense that lower courts, unlike SCOTUS, are constrained by the Constitution and statutes passed by Congress. There cannot be "activist" district courts to the extent that if they overstep their bounds, SCOTUS will be called upon to address it.
The phrase "activist court" is nothing more than a fictional invention of The Federalist Society. If there are actual politics being played in SCOTUS (this time I mean Republican vs Democrat), it is the Republicans through The Federalist Society and appointments to SCOTUS of Federalist Society Members. But now I am chasing down a rabbit hole that is best avoided.
"plenty of what should be executive power was delegated to congressional authority over the years as well"
Examples? The activist judges thing I can see, but I'm not so sure I'm concerned of a body with more singular authority (the president) delegating to a body with more democratic accountability and representation (congress), nor can I easily find any examples of it.
Paste from another reply: The fact that these "independent" bodies even exist outside executive control in the first place. The fact that a President signed the legislation that created these bodies is an example of passing executive power to the legislative.
I won't say you're alone on this one, but the position that the federal reserve should not be independent is extremely controversial.
So, if the president gave up his power to conduct monetary policy. Than good! But then that doesn't seem to correlate with Congress giving up their power so that they don't have to make unpopular votes and risk losing elections.
Federal Reserve (Fed): While created by Congress to be independent, critics argue its regulatory powers and management of money are inherently executive functions that should be under Presidential control.
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): As an independent regulatory commission, it oversees markets, yet some proponents of a unitary executive argue it should be subject to White House control.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC): A regulatory agency that, along with the Fed, has been subject to executive orders aiming to tighten oversight.
Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC): An independent agency that issues regulations and recalls, often cited in discussions regarding the scope of executive authority.
These are good examples of congressional power as defined in the Constitution. In each case the legislative branch created new agencies and delegated some power to the executive branch. But not the reverse.
Can you give any example of the opposite? A case where the executive has delegated power to the legislative or judicial branches?
The fact that these "independent" bodies even exist outside executive control in the first place. The fact that a President signed the legislation that created these bodies is an example of passing executive power to the legislative.
Signing (or refusing to sign) legislation is a good example of the President exercising executive power. I'm not aware of any occasion when the President delegated that power to Congress (or to the Supreme Court). Can you cite something?
Maybe we have a misunderstanding. I'm not asking a kind of broad speculative question like "hypothetically, what could a hardcore monarchist say to critique our constitutional system?"
I was asking for a plain old real-world example of delegation of power from the executive branch to another branch. In the real history of the USA. Agreed on one point, though: I can't think of one either.
> There are procedures to remove an unfit President, sure; but there's no requirement baked into the Constitution that requires those parties to act upon those procedures.
Bingo. The flaw in the constitution. The Executive holds the only enforcement mechanism in government: the FBI, military and other police forces.
Having majored in political science as an undergrad and then being a trial attorney for 40+ years, I would argue that my use of the word 'flaw' is probably misplaced. 'Flaw' implies it could (should) have been created differently.
Alas, I am unaware of ever reading a workable way to 'fix' our constitutional 'flaw'.
One possible solution is to intentionally introduce Ancient Rome's "Brittania Problem".
Specifically, fund a distant vassal state which requires a military so enormous to maintain peace that any general in charge of said military would pose a legitimate threat to the executive back home.
Enforcement could, then, simply be accomplished by Congress, et al. incentivizing said general to stage his coup.
Now that I think of it... this could be one practical way to accomplish something akin to Trotsky's "Permanent Revolution".
Seems rather unlikely to me that people who ignore the constitution for the sake of political advantage would start following the constitution if it were worded differently.
I'm not sure why Americans are so certain that their system of separation of powers is the right one. Most countries don't separate the executive and legislative like that. The executive is whoever can command the support of the legislative. If you think about the US system it makes no sense. An executive can just ignore the rules created by the legislative by just not enforcing it and the only means to stop that is a 2/3 majority in a body that by it's nature is not representative of the population but rather of States.
As far as I can tell the US system is designed for gridlock. Things like filibuster, lower house elections every two years, state elected upper body, electorate system are all designed to create girdlock.
While Americans as a whole are to blame for some of this they are working in a completely broken system. In tech we try not to blame a person when something goes wrong so we look at what process allowed this to happen. I think many of the US problems are explained by their underlying system which is basically a copy of the English one at the time of Independence with a monarch and a parliament. Unlike the English system though it barely evolved since then.
I think it's designed that way because it wasn't originally seen as one country, more as a federation.
Even by the time of the civil war, Robert E Lee decided he was Virginian ahead of his national identity.
If you have a bunch of sovereign states, then you need some state-level evening out. If everyone is a citizen of one large state, you can just go proportional.
On top of this, it was never going to be easy to gradually move from one to the other with the issue of slavery looming large, so they didn't fix it. This was still a huge issue in 1848 when a lot of Europe was grappling with how to do a constitution.
Yes I understand it was designed that way 250 years ago. What I don't understand is why so many Americans think that it was perfect. Why aren't Americans open to the idea that their system of "separation of powers" is fundamentally flawed. I went to an American school and separation of powers is talked about is as if it's the only possible right answer.
The US quickly realized that the loose federation wasn't going to work and centralized a lot of power. It should continue to evolve it's system.
It's worth noting that even the US doesn't think it's system is a good idea. When it imposes a new government on countries (like Iraq) it chooses a parliamentary system.
The fact that the US Constitution is basically more sacred that the Bible when you talk to the average American is even weirder. The Founding Fathers are the Original Gods (Gangsters?).
responded the same to the person you responsed to but perhaps this is a decent explanation.
because theres no example in history that has worked better. Its unclear how much of the success of the US should be attributed to the Constitution (what history would have looked like if the US had a canadian constitution for example), but what cant be argued is that the US is the most successful political body in world history and it is the old continuous Constitution in the world.
Under that lense it makes sense that Americans are fairly conservative about changing the constitution and why the founders are so revered. Its just fucking worked out great for us until now. Its really a miracle in many ways.
> When it imposes a new government on countries (like Iraq) it chooses a parliamentary system.
I'd avoid reading too much into this. The US simply tries to avoid making too many major changes to the system of government and Iraq was familiar with a parliamentary system already.
The Empire of Japan was a parliamentary semi-constitutional monarchy. Today it is a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. That doesn't mean the US loves kings/emperors.
By contrast, the Dominican Republic stayed as a presidential system.
> What I don't understand is why so many Americans think that it was perfect.
because theres no example in history that has worked better. Its unclear how much of the success of the US should be attributed to the Constitution (what history would have looked like if the US had a canadian constitution for example), but what cant be argued is that the US is the most successful political body in world history and it is the oldest continuous Constitution in the world.
Under that lens it makes sense that Americans are fairly conservative about changing the constitution and why the founders are so revered. Its just fucking worked out great for us until now. Its really a miracle in many ways.
There are plenty of examples from history and now of better governed countries. I don't know how anyone can look at the US and think it's success is because of constitution and not from being the 3rd largest country on earth with a land empire full of abundant resources that it's never given up and successfully assimilated via imported populations.
why would you muck with one of the most complicated systems humans have ever created on the off chance you fuck everything up when the current system has made you the most successful civilization in human history and has done so for 250 years.
i mean is it really hard to imagine why Americans might be wary to change things? maintaining a stable civilization is a pretty precarious undertaking.
> why would you muck with one of the most complicated systems humans have ever created
That system explicitly encourages mucking with it. We have elections every 2/4/6 years. It has an amendment process. Parts of it, like judicial review and qualified immunity, were just plain invented.
Per Jefferson:
“On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, & what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, & consequently may govern them as they please. But persons & property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course, with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, & no longer. Every constitution then, & every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years.”
so youre appealing to Jefferson to support your argument that we shouldnt revere the founders?
All im doing is explaining why Americans in the current moment are conservative about the constitution. Why are you failing to acknowledge this? Im not making a value judgement im explaining why people think this way.
I'm noting that the Founders weren't deluded or egotistical enough to think themselves as perfect as American conservatives treat them today. We should not revere them, and I think they'd agree with that.
The difference is in cases where the parliament chooses the executive is it leads to it's own collusion and corruption in terms of excessively growing govt... not that it's barely held the US from doing so. The point is to be in an adversarial context in order to resist overreach of govt.
For better or worse, our system today isn't quite what it was originally designed as... The Senate was originally selected by the state govts, not direct election... the Vice President was originally the runner-up, not a paired ticket and generally hamstrung as a result. The VP didn't originally participate in the Senate either, that came after WWII.
The good part about the constitution is there is a reasonable set of ground rules for changing said constitution with a minimum that should clearly represent the will of the majority of the population. (corrupt politicians not-withstanding)
Almost every country ranked for having the least corruption is a parliamentary system. Actually proportional parliamentary seem to be even better in terms of little corruption.
The reasonable set of ground rules seem to favor states over the will of the majority of the population. It is possible to change the constitution with states representing only 25% of the population. And remember you'd only need a majority in each of those states so could be way less of the population.
Overall the system seems flawed in that instead of having clearly delegated areas of responsibility to states and then doing the federal system as based on the population of the whole country it muddled areas and then made a federal system that couldn't respond to the population.
I include legislative anti-liberties as corruption. If you can be jailed for reposting a meme on twitter, for example... If you post a picture of your dog with a paw up, and make a nazi joke about it and risk winding up in prison as a more specific example.
There are clearly delegated responsibilities to the states... the 10th amendment specifies as much... that the govt has grown beyond this wouldn't have been stopped by a parliament any more than the current system.
I can understand your point in terms of negative liberty but I tend to hold positive liberty to be just as important. It is not sufficient to me that there is no law preventing me from having healthcare, I expect that the government should ensure I have the ability to have a healthy life.
The 10th amendment isn't clear. Too many areas are dual responsibility. That's never going to be clear.
So if there is nobody willing to be a doctor for the pay rate the govt is offering, what happens? Does your "right" to healthcare extend to literal slavery?
I'm being a bit hyperbolic only to make the point... I don't think anyone's "rights" should include forced labor of anyone else. So certain things, even food cannot be a right... I would think that public lands and a right to hunt/gather or even some level cooperative gardening/farming might be okay as a middle ground though.
> As far as I can tell the US system is designed for gridlock.
At the federal level the US system was designed for gridlock on purpose, with the premise that something shouldn't be federal policy without widespread consensus, and without that consensus it should be left to the states.
The problem is really that many of the gridlock-inducing measures have been thwarted, e.g. delegation of rulemaking power from Congress to the executive and direct election of Senators to prevent state-representing Senators from voting down federal overreach. But those things weren't just there to induce gridlock, they were also the accountability measures, so without them you put corruption on rails and here we are.
Any system designed for gridlock will lead to increasing anger and pressure that will eventually break out in bad ways. If people see the results of their own actions then they are not going to end up so extreme.
I'm not sure why Americans think that the creation of agencies is the problem when other well governed countries do the same. The idea that a legislative body could possible create appropriate regulation in a modern complex world is crazy. That's what a parliamentary system solves. It keeps the executive accountable to the legislative at all times.
> Any system designed for gridlock will lead to increasing anger and pressure that will eventually break out in bad ways.
Only if there is no other way to address the issues, but the system provides one. You adopt the policy at the state level instead.
> I'm not sure why Americans think that the creation of agencies is the problem when other well governed countries do the same.
The US at the federal level is larger than nearly all other countries. North Carolina has more people and a higher GDP than Sweden. California has almost as many people as Canada and a higher GDP. The US has the same order of magnitude in size and population as the whole EU.
Bureaucracies have diseconomies of scale. There is a point past which "larger" is no longer getting you significantly better amortization of fixed costs and is instead just increasing communication costs, adding layers of middle management, exacerbating the principal-agent problem and making you a more attractive target for corruption.
The US federal government is well past the optimal size for solving most problems; probably even California is too big.
>Bureaucracies have diseconomies of scale. There is a point past which "larger" is no longer getting you significantly better amortization of fixed costs and is instead just increasing communication costs, adding layers of middle management, exacerbating the principal-agent problem and making you a more attractive target for corruption.
You write this as a self evident truth but it isn't. In what way is having a single trucking standard for the entire country less efficient than having 50? In what way is having a single currency across the entire country less efficient than having 50? In what way is having a single standard for approval of medication less efficient than having 50?
The US's advantage is precisely because of it's scale. It provides a massive addressable market allowing companies to scale rapidly.
> In what way is having a single trucking standard for the entire country less efficient than having 50? In what way is having a single currency across the entire country less efficient than having 50?
This is why issuing currency and interstate commerce (meaning actually crossing state lines, not the modern interpretation of anything that affects commerce anywhere) are among the explicitly enumerated powers of the federal government.
> In what way is having a single standard for approval of medication less efficient than having 50?
It allows large states to set their own standards and smaller states to choose which of the standards to apply, e.g. Arizona says you can sell anything in Arizona that you can sell in Texas, without requiring everyone to agree on how the trade offs should be made, e.g. California can have more stringent rules than Texas. Meanwhile people in Texas could still choose not to consume anything if it hasn't been approved in California and people in California could go to Arizona to get things they think California is being too reserved by prohibiting.
> The US's advantage is precisely because of it's scale. It provides a massive addressable market allowing companies to scale rapidly.
Which in itself has the tendency to promote megacorps and market consolidation over competitive markets with larger numbers of smaller companies, and consolidated markets themselves have significant inefficiencies and costs.
Meanwhile why would that require the federal government to insert itself into local education policy or be issuing subsidies to oil companies etc.?
The structure of British government during the Hanoverian times was little different from what the UK has today. The monarch was effectively a powerless figurehead and executive decisions were made mostly by faceless very wealthy individuals in back rooms with the public face carried by a small set of charismatic figures who usually sat in parliament.
The US system was designed as a grand experiment. It made a certain amount of sense at the time: the country as a vast plantation steered by a benevolent master with policy set by wealthy landowners and businessmen who knew what was best for everyone. It was a system already in place in the Americas for generations and most national arguments could be hashed out at the club over some fine imported brandy or, for people like Franklin, some imported tea.
It's quite different. The House of Lords was much more powerful well into the 19th century. The monarch was hardly a powerless figure in those times. The Bill of Rights 1689 probably shifted the power more towards Parliament than before but the monarch was still very powerful. The UK system continues to evolve with notable precedents being set very recently like requiring a consultation of Parliament before embarking on military action and the limitation of prorogation powers.
The setup isn't the problem. The refusal to evolve is the problem.
I'd argue that it wasn't really the system in place. The system in place was one of states governing themselves. Before independence the states didn't really deal much with each other.
The filibuster isn't part of the system; it's not even part of the law. It's just part of the rules that the Senate chose for their own internal procedures.
It's just another thing that means people don't face the consequences of their own actions. If the extremeness of the elected party is blocked by the filibuster then people are angry at things not changing and so go even more extreme.
A similar problem in the United States is the excessive amount of law making by the Judiciary. In most countries the Judicary doesn't' make law it just tells Parliament that they need to change the law. This again means the consequences of who you voted for are not faced.
The pressure builds till there's a breaking point.
> The majority of American voters in 2024 asked for this
It was 49.8%, which is not quite a majority.
It's also worth noting that Kamala Harris received precisely 0 votes in the 2024 Democratic primaries.
[EDIT:] I see that the parent comment has now changed "majority" to "plurality."
If I could make one Constitutional amendment, it would be this: publicly finance all election campaigns, and make private contributions illegal bribery, punished by imprisonment of both the candidate and briber.
I think a competent opposition party would be great for the US. But regardless of the candidate, US voters had three clear choices in the 2024 Presidential election: (1) I support what Trump is going to do, (2) I am fine with what Trump is going to do (abstain/third-party), (3) Kamala Harris. I think it’s extremely clear 3 was the best choice, but it was the least popular of the three.
Option 4: I am not fine with what Trump is going to do, but I am also not fine with what Harris is going to do. And, since Harris said that she wouldn't do anything different than Biden, that could amount to "I am not fine with what Biden has been doing the last four years".
Was that less bad than what Trump has done in one year? Yes. But Trump in his first term was less bad than this, and recency bias means that what we didn't like about Biden was more prominent in our minds.
But my option 4 looks just like your option 2 in terms of how people voted. I'm just saying that the motive may have been different.
Oh man that hits the biggest nerve in me. Never again should we allow primaries to be skipped. I don't care if the incumbent is the most popular candidate in history - running a primary makes sure the best candidates will be picked and refusing to run an election and then having the gall to suddenly anoint a chosen candidate was an absolutely disastrous decision.
Democracy is a healthy process - I don't know why we buy the stupid line of "we need party unity" when what we need is an efficient expression of the voters will and having that expression is what best forms unity. There are some old Hillary quotes that make me absolutely rabid.
To be fair there were primaries, but the DNC only pushed Biden's candidacy. So there really wasn't any other candidates on all the ballots except uncommitted. When he dropped out in July their simply isn't enough time to run a functional primary and campaign for the vote in November. We can't really delay the election to have a primary. The delegates of the DNC do get to vote on who they want and by the time Kamala stepped in she did get the most votes.
It's really a problem of money though. The DNC really are the king makers when it comes to candidates. That and PAC money are the requirements to get a nomination. At least when it comes to presidency. Smaller elections you get more freedom to have a successful without such things. The whole system needs an overhaul unfortunately and I don't see any candidate from any party looking to fix that any time soon.
Other western democracies are much smaller or have much more uniform systems than the US as well. Not to say it's impossible, but it would take reworking the system. Right now the only elections that are highly publicized and known about are the ones every 4 years for president. Next is every two years election for congress and that's a big drop off in participation. Things like primaries you really have to go out of your way to know about them happening and when and where.
The first couple states really end up determining who usually wins the nomination and financial backing. It takes time to move a candidate between places and set up multiple events and fundraisers. Now in state and city elections the US can do those quickly as well. Smaller area to cover and campaign and the community stays informed. It doesn't help that national elections involve institutions like the electoral college instead of a popular vote. That's a different problem though.
My first thought when I read the Biden resignation letter was - Harris endorsement is brilliant fuck you to the Dem insiders that are ousting him. I am still lowkey convinced that he voted for Trump out of pure spite.
Fix some of the ambiguities that allowed power to be concentrated in the executive branch. Automatically start elected officials so things like avoiding swearing in don't happen. Limit the power of these executive orders. Introduce recall votes. Switch to public funding for all elections.
Theres plenty we can do. That's off the top if my head. I'm sure if smart people sat down to think about it there are lots of practical and clever ideas.
The majority didn't ask for this. 49% of voters did.
Or hear me out - the congress should start doing their job. The main problem is the congress has been MIA for decades and outsources their power to the executive via regulatory bodies. And probably a good idea for SCOTUS to return some power to the states. There is too much power concentrated in washington, the congress refuses to yield it and the result is imperial presidency. Which is exalting when the president is from your faction and depressing when it is not.
I agree, I think recall votes, term limits, higher pay, fixing election funding would help with that.
We need changes that address the kind of people that are running for these spots and winning then go on to do a bad job. Congress isn't incentived to be effective.
sorry, but that is not it, unless you think politicians are fungible within parties. The problem is that there is no real feedback mechanism between a what a congress person votes for and their electibility (within or across parties) because of money in politics.
how is it possible that congress has consistent single digit approval ratings and they vote for things 90% of their constituents disagree with and still get elected? This is the core problem of American politics. Politicians are beholden to donors not voters.
The local options for uncompetitive districts? They are fungible, except maybe minor differences on some pet issues.
They don't have to care about actually representing anyone. They can skip town halls, ignore requests, etc. Primaries are a very weak form of influence.
If you want numbers, reps in competitive districts hold more town hall meetings. And they also hold more personal staff (limited back in 1975) in their home states. This is kinda a no-brainer. If you have to care about re-elections, you'll try to help your local consituents.
> The problem is that there is no real feedback mechanism between a what a congress person votes for and their electibility
You would describe this as being different from competitive?
I doubt any amount of money would matter if we had 1 representative per 30k people as written in the constitution, NY State is about 20 M people so you'd need to bribe ~300 of the ~600 representatives in order to get your way (and also do that for every other state).
yes, is there any evidence purple districts represent their constituents better? whats the different between being primaried in a 90% red district and running against someone of a different party in a swing district?
Congress is largely the wrong people though. What sane person would build a system where getting elected requires you to be rich? Where a primary system ensures everyone elected is not roughly in the center of opinions?
>Or hear me out - the congress should start doing their job.
Well, we make them do their job by holding them accountable to the people rather than a billionaire donor class. Citizens United is at the root of all this.
The problems are a product of the constitutional system. I think the main problem is the elected king presidential system nonsense. Parliamentary democracy is the way to go.
I'd like to see a change in voting system to make voting for smaller political parties more viable. My country did this in 1993[1] so I've seen to some extent that it works. A lot of other issues in the US seem downstream from that top-level issue.
But sometimes I think about the fact that you guys don't even have the metric system yet...
The American constitution is riddled with problems that many later democracies managed to fix. In general, the founding fathers envisioned a system where amendments were far more common and they didn't realize they made the bar too high. And that doesn't even touch on the electoral college, first-past-the-post voting, vague descriptions of the role of the supreme court, and no method for no confidence votes. Of course, it would be next to impossible to fix these in America because it would require a significant rewrite of the constitution.
The only way this will change is if the rest of the world leaves America behind and the quality of life here becomes so bad that radical change becomes possible.
But you are right that Trump won the popular vote in 2024, so you can't blame that on the system. But a functioning democracy would have more constraints on him. Our legislative branch has been dead in the water for 20 years at this point.
The majority of American voters can be as dumb as they want - the two big failures here are the legislature and the judiciary. The judiciary let an obviously illegal thing sit for far too long while the legislature is too partisan to actually take actions against the administration (except in the case of the Epstein files which has been surprisingly admirable and a rare ray of light in the last year).
If the majority of American voters elect snoopy the dog snoopy can do all of the things snoopy wants to do within the bounds of the law. Snoopy can use his bully pulpit to fight against dog restrictions in restaurants and grant pardons to previous offenders. Snoopy can ensure efficient spending of money on public water fountains accessible to canines... but if snoopy starts issuing open hand-outs to the red baron (snoopy in a moustache) that's when the other branches of government are supposed to step in - we aren't supposed to need to wait four years for the next election to stop open corruption (especially since corruption is really good at funding more corruption so there's a vicious cycle that can begin if you let it fester @see the recent FBI raid on GA election offices).
Oh, they're absolutely responsible and will suffer a fair amount of consequences for their votes. But the legislature should have stopped the bleeding a long time ago.
I mean like that and dozens of other excellent examples that should have caused the legislature to remove him from office. Trump coin alone (including all the shady World Liberty Financial funding) should have been worth the boot and that happened on like day two of the administration.
Yes and no. It's a mistake to look at political representation as a pure expression of voters' will.
Gerrymandering keeps extreme politicians in office. Partisanship gets people to vote against their own interests. Media gravitates toward spectacle rather than substance, to the benefit of those that know how to use that; and social media in particular entrenches deeper into preconceived biases.
In short, manipulating voters is a profitable business. Electoral results are the output of that business, and voters are just the instrument.
1. Ranked Pairs voting for national elections, including eliminating the electoral college. Break this two-party duopoly of bad-cop worse-cop.
2. Enshrining the concept of independent executive agencies, with scope created by Congress, with agency heads chosen by the same national elections. (repudiation of "Unitary Executive Theory", and a general partitioning of the executive power which is now being autocratically abused)
3. Repudiation of Citizens United and this whole nonsense that natural rights apply to government-created artificial legal entities (also goes to having a US equivalent of the GDPR to reign in the digital surveillance industry's parallel government)
4. State national guards are under sole exclusive authority of state governors while operating on American soil (repudiation of the so-called "Insurrection Act"). This could be done by Congress but at this point it needs to be in large print to avoid being sidestepped by illegal orders.
5. Drastically increase the number of senators. Maybe 6 or 8 from each state? We need to eliminate this dynamic where many states hate their specific moribund senators, yet keep voting them in to avoid losing the "experienced" person.
6. Recall elections by the People, for all executive offices, members of Congress, and Supreme Court justices. (I don't know the best way to square courts carrying out the "rule of law" rather than succumbing to "rule of the fickle mob", but right now we've got the worst of both worlds)
0. Removing the nonsensical doctrines Presidential immunity the Supreme Court has created out of whole cloth, and drastically curtailing all pardon ability with something like requiring the approval of Congress.
(yeesh, I can't believe I forgot that. I started thinking about reforming sovereign immunity, concluded that was something more fine-grained that Congress could do that didn't need to be in the Constitution, and moved on)
Statutorily reduce the power of a rogue president by reinforcing the right of the administrative state to exist with some independence for the rank and file. Reduce conviction threshold in the Senate to 60. Eliminate the electoral college to guarantee the winner of a popular vote is the winner.
Importantly, prosecute every member of the Trump administration for their blatant respective crimes.
I agree with you that the Republican party has failed the country by allowing this to happen. But I think we can still do better.
More "big picture" ideas would be to fundamentally alter the House and Senate, and implement score/ranked voting to allow a multiparty system.
This is surely part of the story historically, but not recently. Women’s labor force participation rate peaked in the late 90s in the US, while total fertility rate is down ~20% since then. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002
There could be a rubber band effect, where it takes time to get a feel for things like paying for childcare. The reaction is going to come from those who are observing what's happening to the "early adopters".
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