At LessOnline, there was a big discussion one night around the picnic tables with @Eliezer_Yudkovsky , @habryka , and some interlocutors from the frontier labs (you’ll momentarily see why I’m being vague on the latter names).
One question was: “does DC actually listen to whistleblowers?” and I contributed that, in fact, DC does indeed have a script for this, and resigning in protest is a key part of it, especially ever since the Nixon years.
Here is a usefully publicly-shareable anecdote on how strongly this norm is embedded in national security decision-making, from the New Yorker article “The U.S. Spies Who Sound the Alarm About Election Interference” by David Kirkpatrick, Oct 21, 2024: (https://archive.ph/8Nkx5)
The experts’ chair insisted that in this cycle the intelligence agencies had not withheld information “that met all five of the criteria”—and did not risk exposing sources and methods. Nor had the leaders’ group ever overruled a recommendation by the career experts. And if they did? It would be the job of the chair of the experts’ group to stand up or speak out, she told me: “That is why we pick a career civil servant who is retirement-eligible.” In other words, she can resign in protest.
Yup. The fact that the profession that writes the news sees “I should resign in protest” as their own responsibility in this circumstance really reveals something.
At LessOnline, there was a big discussion one night around the picnic tables with @Eliezer_Yudkovsky , @habryka , and some interlocutors from the frontier labs (you’ll momentarily see why I’m being vague on the latter names).
One question was: “does DC actually listen to whistleblowers?” and I contributed that, in fact, DC does indeed have a script for this, and resigning in protest is a key part of it, especially ever since the Nixon years.
Here is a usefully publicly-shareable anecdote on how strongly this norm is embedded in national security decision-making, from the New Yorker article “The U.S. Spies Who Sound the Alarm About Election Interference” by David Kirkpatrick, Oct 21, 2024:
(https://archive.ph/8Nkx5)
Also of relevance is the wave of resignations from the DC newspaper The Washington Post the past few days over Jeff Bezos suddenly exerting control.
Yup. The fact that the profession that writes the news sees “I should resign in protest” as their own responsibility in this circumstance really reveals something.