Yep. It's the difference between "Don't do these things, regardless of what the law says." and "Do whatever you want, but please follow your own laws while you do it".

As Paul Graham said, "Sam gets what he wants" and "He’s good at convincing people of things. He’s good at getting people to do what he wants." and "So if the only way Sam could succeed in life was by [something] succeeding, then [that thing] would succeed"

Easy way to summarize it: "You're not allowed to do these things, except for all of the laws that allow you to do these things."

Brings to mind the infamous line from Nixon:

"When the president does it, that means it is not illegal".

This was during the Frost/Nixon interviews, years after he had already resigned. Even after all that, he still believed this and was willing to say it into a camera to the American people. It is apparent many of the people pushing the excesses going on today in government share a shameless adherence to this creed.

Each of those clauses have a DoD policy carve out as an exception which says basically they can do whatever they want if they want to do it, but won’t be able to if they don’t want to do it.

This is the same government caught spying on its citizens by Snowden so I don’t trust them at all.

That seems exactly what it should be. The United States military should be able to do what the law allows. If we don't think they should be allowed to do something, we should pass laws. Not rely on the goodness of Sam Altman.

This implies that OpenAI must build and release and maintain a model without any safeguards, which is probably the big win and maybe something Anthropic never wants to do.

I have never used AI to generate an answer for HN but just this once I thought it would be good to hit ChatGPT specifically and ask it for 'a list of times Sam Altman has gone against his word.' Here was its response:

Shift from Nonprofit Mission to For-Profit Orientation – OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit with a charter focused on “benefit to humanity,” but under Altman it created a capped-profit subsidiary, accepted large investments (e.g., from Microsoft), and critics (including Elon Musk in a 2024 lawsuit) argue this departed from that original mission. A federal judge allowed Musk’s claim that Altman and OpenAI broke promises about nonprofit governance to proceed to trial.

Nonprofit Control Reorganization Drama (2023) – In November 2023, the original nonprofit board cited a lack of transparency and confidence in Altman’s candor as a reason for firing him. He was reinstated days later after investor and employee pressure, highlighting internal conflict over governance and communication.

Dust-Up Over Military Usage Policies – OpenAI initially had explicit public policies restricting AI use in “military and warfare” contexts, but those clauses were reportedly removed quietly in 2024, allowing the company to pursue Department of Defense contracts — a turnaround from earlier language that appeared to preclude such use.

Statements on Pentagon Deal vs. Prior Positioning – In early 2026, Altman publicly said OpenAI shared safety “red lines” (e.g., prohibiting mass surveillance and autonomous weapons) similar to some competitors, but hours later OpenAI signed a deal to deploy its models on classified military networks, leading critics to argue this contradicts earlier positioning on limits for military use.

Regulation Stance Shifts in Congressional Testimony – Altman has advocated for strong regulation of AI in some public settings but in later congressional hearings opposed specific regulatory requirements (like mandatory pre-deployment vetting), aligning more with industry concerns about overregulation — a shift in tone compared with earlier support of regulatory frameworks.

So you want OpenAI to create “laws”?

I for one do not want ai labs to designate what is legally ok to do.

I much prefer the demos to take care of that.