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Classified estimates show the NSA is paying billions to test AI models
(washingtonsun.com)
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by rdmuser
by rdmuser
this is just how the empire has always operated - we have always been at war with Eastasia
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(...
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/fact-check-obamas-misl...
Sadly it has been whittled down and have not caught up with tech - it's a lagging indicator at best. Things like the third party doctrine, automotive exception, pretext stops, etc. are things that should enrage anyone who cares about the most fundamental rights we have not just as Americans but as people, individuals, private persons, who are fundamentally equal to each other if not in circumstance but at least in substance. The courts sometimes even mis-states their own doctrine and usually in favor of the state. Why is there no good faith exception the other way? Any idiot can see that the plain view doctrine opens a pandora's box. We don't need the NSA for our rights to be handwaved away, that's already done.
The NSA does not testify in open court, and we can only speculate what they are able to really launder down into the criminal justice system. But considering that the state of the 4th Amendment have already made the system extremely coercive with limited recourse in so many "exceptions" that are no where near the intent of the framers of the Constitution and frankly tilts the ice more than any crooked lower league Russian Hockey match, it's likely not even necessary for them to jump in most of the time.
I suspect that the greater influence they exert is through the military-industrial complex in its modern day form. We're the only country that can just waltz in and invade.. what, 7, 8 countries? Has anyone been to China lately and have the connections to assess the state of their military and economy with clear eyes? Do people see the laundering of BS national security concerns into reputable papers and conspiracy rags alike? It's usually innocuous sounding, but no small part of the economic quagmire comes from the continued funding, justified by the agencies that are the constituency with a vested interest, of this pit of unaccountable money. We'll be paying for it either way, because not enough people care, unfortunately.
It's mostly about "testing" and "billions". But I am sure "testing" here is in quotes just like I wrote it. They are not going to get an itemized list unless it's coming from Snowden 2.0
- We "tested AI" on this Russian nuclear silo command and control center. It worked out pretty ok.
They would have to be incompetent if they were not using them both for security penetration as well as social engineering / election meddling as everyone else is.
The NSA aren't the only ones with massive troves of very personal data on large numbers of people. Many companies are excited to use AI to help them use all of that information to their maximum advantage and you can bet that they won't care about spending the time/money on perfect accuracy as long as over the long run they get positive results.
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1. Raising prices; or
2. Cutting costs.
Every use of AI falls into one of these. Demand pricing? Raising prices. Replacing people with AI systems? Cutting costs. But I really have to add a third to this list:
3. Weapons.
Recently there's been reporting on how the Minot school bombing happened at the onset of the Iran War eg [1]. Humans normally have to be involved in target selection and the so-called "kill chain" as a safeguard. There are open questions here about how this happened. It's unclear if the human verification failed here or was bypassed by new policy.
As another example, there are the AI targeting systems (eg Lavender, Where's Daddy?) used in Gaza [2].
So if you're working for any of these companies (eg OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX), you need to realize what it'll be used for: to more efficiently kill people. It's no different to working for RTX, Boeing or Lockheed Martin.
As for the NSA, I've always been skeptical about the claims that the NSA records everything, simply because of the infrastructure required to do that. Networking, storage, physical server space, water for cooing, etc. Also, what good is it because nobody can possibly review it? But AI to the rescue!
It's entirely reasonable to assume that every communication at some near future point will be intercepted, processed, tagged and logged by some government AI system.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blam...
As a means to grift directly, but also for leverage over the tech industry, and possibly the entire economy.
People hate data centers, but if they think AI regulation will crash the economy, will they vote Trump?
I wonder how long it takes to decrypt 20 years worth of stored internet traffic
day per year? week? certainly not a month per year
everyone is focused on "AI" but there have been some significant quantum computer advancements
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I will note here two words that the NSA really likes to monitor across all devices: Trump, Monero.
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AI is trained on these flaws. These aren't flaws that can easily be fixed. The ramifications can be significant. Garbage in, garbage out. Records, however official, are wrong all the time. I have an entry in my "criminal record" from a clerical error that is attached to no charges but 4 days in LA County Men's where I had a seizure, which can be interpreted as the record being correct but incomplete or a giant screwup. What sort of process would it take to fix this if the AI decided on the latter? It doesn't affect me, but someone less privileged? Absolutely it will have consequences. Worst of both worlds indeed. People routinely forget that LLMs ARE NOT PEOPLE. Mistakes get compounded. Biases if not caught in time get baked in. There are multiple AI safety dialogues that should be happening but you wouldn't know it from the media, and it's the wrong one that is front and center. You can rotate keys, you can roll out patches, you can't open up the corpus and use a scalpel and cut out the errors and omissions and biases, and the latter aren't logged.
We don't have enough people who possess professional expertise in widely varied fields that nevertheless intersect in the conversation. This might be because there aren't many people that fit the descriptor, but these are the blindspots. Anyone talk to Orin Kerr lately?
Americans have a hard time thinking about problems and issues without making it all about individuals. no systems-level thinking to be found for miles (and I say this as a somewhat regularly frustrated American)
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the FBI acts on and handles cybercrime and/or regular crime.
the NSA can absolutely come up with tools that they then share with other parts of the USG, in the same way that the Army can develop the M-16 and allow police departments to use it, but ultimately it's law enforcement pulling the trigger.
"NSA ... AI Models"
If NSA is paying to test the models, that’s a problem.
NSA collects who you're voting for and everything else you've ever said online in case they need to invent a reason to black-site you.
FBI convinces the autistic son of your Pakistani neighbors down the street his life only has meaning if he becomes a Jihadist.
I was thinking more of the Alberta Separatist referendum (https://globalnews.ca/news/12069878/foreign-influence-watchd...) as well as against leftist politics in South America (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/24/trump-brazil-e...)
Although there is evidence Israel was targeting US elections, including trying to harm Mamdani's chances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackCore_election_interferenc...
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They have them, the ones that don't simply have a secret backdoor agreement to get uncensored models are completely aware of how to abliterate away all safety blocks, and the only reason they aren't using frontier models is that they may already have some sort of access to the things currently only in testing.
Any major intelligence agency in Sept. 2026 that can't check all these boxes is almost by definition not a major intelligence agency. This is one of the reasons we all better hope that there is some mathematical or physical reason AI isn't going to just casually brush aside humanity at some point, because there is absolutely no scenario where the intelligence agencies aren't running them unrestricted and uncensored at scale all the time no matter how careful OpenAI or Anthropic claim to be.
OpenAI, they are huge Maga supporters, I'm sure Trump has dumped massive piles of black budget money on them for unfiltered models.
SOTA AI is a weapon. It's likely already on the list of the most powerful weapons ever made and only getting more effective.
My understanding is that Anthropic doesn't really have a lot of say in the matter of keeping their models out of government hands. The government can do pretty much anything they want with a domestic company in the name of national security. They might first choose to be polite about it with an open request and payment, then they might choose to infiltrate and extract by any means necessary (the NSA has a literal army of hackers on hand to point at the task) and Anthropic may not even know about it leaking, either way they do what they want and serve a national security letter to silence the event.
Ultimately they can just offer something Dario can't refuse. Every one of these "oops, our models are just so powerful our agents hacked something by mistake" PR fluff pieces is admission to federal crimes and they are leverage they're giving the government to exert control over them. Refusal means prison.
A) doesn’t know the true destination of the parts, including purchases through an agency other than NSA, or purchase by multiple “individuals”
B) NSA has arrangements to compensate manufacturers using black budget line items and gov projects line items where disclosure of the production or even something like funding of a stand-up of a factory is not clearly delineated or otherwise inaccurately designated in SEC and IRS filings. More so I’m pretty sure there is a named procedure/process and maybe even a working group or sub-unit, similarly bearing a unique cryptonym, enabling the large scale acquisition of goods while keeping the regular record publication flows ignorant.
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Collateral damage is just the cost of doing business for them.
Also, when looking at the people we all vote into power, there is a incredible amount of naivety here. Snowden should have keyed you in on what people in power are doing.
You don't, and my statement did not assert that. You are stretching wayyy too much here to try to get the world to fit your narrative.
Amazon called up Trump and said Fable was too dangerous. Trump called up the NSA and Asked For Their Opinion. They agreed, so Trump banned it.
Twice by lying to MAGA about his true intentions, which are fundamentally neocon just like Musk's and Thiel's. They all lie about being libertarians and anti-deep-state.
[1] He was on a boat with Robert Maxwell and several Iran Contra folks around 1990.
Also not impossible that they have had much better models than OAI/Anthropic flagships for years, and we're only being dripfed upgrades to subpar ones. Improbable but possible.
While the NSA may have it's fingers in any of these cases. As far as i understand the agencies roles these would be jobs for the CIA.
This is simply false. Only domestic law enforcement agencies like the FBI can conduct domestic investigations. Law enforcement or counter-intelligence agents might be given access to intelligence the NSA collects if they have a warrant, but it is not in the remit of the agency to intentionally collect information on US persons, it’s only allowed incidentally when conducting foreign intelligence collection
Snowden showed that was the case, and that was a long time ago. Lots more compute and toys for them to play with now.
But the NSA has been turned inward a long time ago. Don't forget Snowden - all it takes is some fun legalisms.
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https://www.timesofisrael.com/mossad-chief-top-general-visit...
That massive economy is what pays the guys with guns. You can win that battle but you will absolutely kill the golden goose and lose the war.
> and can't seem to fathom that men with guns always override the opinions of nerds in SF.
Those nerds in SF are holding the proverbial gun up to the head of the economy right now. Maybe men with physical guns are bad at understand that type of thing.
Yup. Which is why they are in control. Don't underestimate how far a fool can go.