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OpenAI and Anthropic have their systems in dozens of data centers, including using compute from the major cloud providers. Are you implying that all of these da

OpenAI and Anthropic have their systems in dozens of data centers, including using compute from the major cloud providers. Are you implying that all of these data centers (and many of their employees) are involved in helping the the US government secretly tap every single AI conversation by routing them through some unknown network/device? Or did a couple of companies with poor uptime records happen to have overlapping downtime? Occam's Razor heavily, heavily points us towards the latter.

forgetmypasswd 12d ago
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usernomdeguerre 12d ago
What makes you think they'd need to touch every datacenter? All of these endpoints use existing providers with decades-long history at this point, and network monitoring is already a proven 'feature' of the agencies they'd need to co-exist with over their lifetimes. If anything, Occam's Razor would point to a common denominator with all of them, given it wasn't network-wide, as far as i know.
- strictnein 12d ago
  Explain the system in which you could capture all of these chats with no knowledge of anyone in these data centers. How are they routed to this NSA system or through some NSA device when these companies' compute are spread over hundreds of data centers? > All of these endpoints use existing providers with decades-long history at this point That is just factually inaccurate. Their data centers aren't old and they lease a lot of compute from companies that didn't exist 5 years ago.
  - usernomdeguerre 12d ago
    >Explain the system in which you could capture all of these chats with no knowledge of anyone in these data centers. They all transit the same wires as all other traffic. Copy them at any regional bottleneck. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A. Additionally, i'd admit that maybe someone(s) at these companies knows. But if we think there isn't any person who would agree to do this then I think we're being naive. > Their data centers aren't old and they lease a lot of compute... Again, they transit the same wires as everyone else. Here i'll also add that these companies have been actively courting government relationships (and Anthropic attempting to repair damaged ones), why would they stand on principles here and not any of the other many frontlines they've visibly acquiesced? I just think it's easier to re-route their traffic than, as you say, touch every single datacenter and its employees in some way.
    - strictnein 12d ago
      > They all transit the same wires as all other traffic. Copy them at any regional bottleneck. Oh, is that all? > Again, they transit the same wires as everyone else Which shared wires does Google's traffic go across? Do they share that network with others or do they not function as a Tier 1 network? How about Amazon? And the NSA is doing deep packet inspection of all the traffic going to these places to pull out the data they are interested in? What systems allow them to do this at the scale that would be necessary to accomplish this task? Anthropic, OpenAI, etc have their models hosted and provided by these and other Internet giants. So you now have to be able to somehow also get access to every "regional bottleneck" that those places have. Google has 40+ regions alone, as does Amazon. And each of these regions don't just have a single point of inbound/outbound traffic, so now you're over 200-300 points of interception that you would need just to grab the data you're suggesting they are. And that's just the start of it. When I use Vertex or the Bedrock, my AI API requests from my instances doesn't leave their networks. So where does that traffic get intercepted? > I just think it's easier to re-route their traffic than, as you say, touch every single datacenter and its employees in some way. That would be really, really loud and really obvious. Messing with routes like that is very easily detectable. Or, maybe, they don't care about this traffic at all and doing all of the huge amount of work necessary to accomplish what you're proposing isn't worth 0.1% of the effort it would require. If the government needs the chat messages, the companies are already saving them. They can just request them through a variety of legal means. None of this vast conspiracy nonsense is needed. Just a couple lawyers and a willing judge. The NSA stopped their collection of phone metadata because they can just request what they need from the telecoms directly.
- deleted 12d ago
  [deleted]
svachalek 12d ago
I'd say Occam's Razor leans easily to the former as well, given the history of projects that Snowden revealed and were never shut down, plus all of the cooperation with the federal government that's being touted in recent announcements from both companies.
esseph 12d ago
Normally there are only a handful of employees on the payroll at each major company that exposes the US or US government to risk. It is not often the Executives or Legal even know, but sometimes they did. AT&T bent over backwards to help. This is standard behavior by the CIA and NSA, and has been for a long time. https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-documents-suggest-close-relationship-between-nsa-us-companies https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-documents-suggest-clo... https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/us/politics/att-helped-nsa-spy-on-an-array-of-internet-traffic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/us/politics/att-helped-ns... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/19/us-tech-giants-knew-nsa-data-collection-rajesh-de https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/19/us-tech-giants... https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/ https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hub...
VCFundedGenYer 12d ago
I don't think you're a sysadmin - because what you're saying really doesn't matter. It can still all fail at a single point.
- strictnein 12d ago
  I'm confused by your statement. Are you suggesting that these companies that have invested tens of billions in their networks and datacenters decided to create a shared single point of failure?
bottlepalm 12d ago
Ok, then where's the report? Don't they usually release a retrospective report after outages?
- strictnein 12d ago
  It happened yesterday.

forgetmypasswd 12d ago

[dead]

usernomdeguerre 12d ago

What makes you think they'd need to touch every datacenter? All of these endpoints use existing providers with decades-long history at this point, and network monitoring is already a proven 'feature' of the agencies they'd need to co-exist with over their lifetimes. If anything, Occam's Razor would point to a common denominator with all of them, given it wasn't network-wide, as far as i know.

strictnein 12d ago
Explain the system in which you could capture all of these chats with no knowledge of anyone in these data centers. How are they routed to this NSA system or through some NSA device when these companies' compute are spread over hundreds of data centers? > All of these endpoints use existing providers with decades-long history at this point That is just factually inaccurate. Their data centers aren't old and they lease a lot of compute from companies that didn't exist 5 years ago.
- usernomdeguerre 12d ago
  >Explain the system in which you could capture all of these chats with no knowledge of anyone in these data centers. They all transit the same wires as all other traffic. Copy them at any regional bottleneck. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A. Additionally, i'd admit that maybe someone(s) at these companies knows. But if we think there isn't any person who would agree to do this then I think we're being naive. > Their data centers aren't old and they lease a lot of compute... Again, they transit the same wires as everyone else. Here i'll also add that these companies have been actively courting government relationships (and Anthropic attempting to repair damaged ones), why would they stand on principles here and not any of the other many frontlines they've visibly acquiesced? I just think it's easier to re-route their traffic than, as you say, touch every single datacenter and its employees in some way.
  - strictnein 12d ago
    > They all transit the same wires as all other traffic. Copy them at any regional bottleneck. Oh, is that all? > Again, they transit the same wires as everyone else Which shared wires does Google's traffic go across? Do they share that network with others or do they not function as a Tier 1 network? How about Amazon? And the NSA is doing deep packet inspection of all the traffic going to these places to pull out the data they are interested in? What systems allow them to do this at the scale that would be necessary to accomplish this task? Anthropic, OpenAI, etc have their models hosted and provided by these and other Internet giants. So you now have to be able to somehow also get access to every "regional bottleneck" that those places have. Google has 40+ regions alone, as does Amazon. And each of these regions don't just have a single point of inbound/outbound traffic, so now you're over 200-300 points of interception that you would need just to grab the data you're suggesting they are. And that's just the start of it. When I use Vertex or the Bedrock, my AI API requests from my instances doesn't leave their networks. So where does that traffic get intercepted? > I just think it's easier to re-route their traffic than, as you say, touch every single datacenter and its employees in some way. That would be really, really loud and really obvious. Messing with routes like that is very easily detectable. Or, maybe, they don't care about this traffic at all and doing all of the huge amount of work necessary to accomplish what you're proposing isn't worth 0.1% of the effort it would require. If the government needs the chat messages, the companies are already saving them. They can just request them through a variety of legal means. None of this vast conspiracy nonsense is needed. Just a couple lawyers and a willing judge. The NSA stopped their collection of phone metadata because they can just request what they need from the telecoms directly.
deleted 12d ago
[deleted]

svachalek 12d ago

I'd say Occam's Razor leans easily to the former as well, given the history of projects that Snowden revealed and were never shut down, plus all of the cooperation with the federal government that's being touted in recent announcements from both companies.

esseph 12d ago

Normally there are only a handful of employees on the payroll at each major company that exposes the US or US government to risk. It is not often the Executives or Legal even know, but sometimes they did. AT&T bent over backwards to help. This is standard behavior by the CIA and NSA, and has been for a long time. https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-documents-suggest-close-relationship-between-nsa-us-companies https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-documents-suggest-clo... https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/us/politics/att-helped-nsa-spy-on-an-array-of-internet-traffic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/us/politics/att-helped-ns... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/19/us-tech-giants-knew-nsa-data-collection-rajesh-de https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/19/us-tech-giants... https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/ https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hub...

VCFundedGenYer 12d ago

I don't think you're a sysadmin - because what you're saying really doesn't matter. It can still all fail at a single point.

strictnein 12d ago
I'm confused by your statement. Are you suggesting that these companies that have invested tens of billions in their networks and datacenters decided to create a shared single point of failure?

bottlepalm 12d ago

Ok, then where's the report? Don't they usually release a retrospective report after outages?

strictnein 12d ago
It happened yesterday.