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Amos Toh

@amostoh.bsky.social
5K followers 134 following 145 posts

senior counsel, Brennan Center for Justice. interested in all the ways money in tech helps and hurts. he/him, 🇸🇬 in 🇺🇸

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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 12h
Senator Hawley just disclosed that Sam Altman turned down his invitation to testify at the hearing. (None of the AI developers are testifying.) Live video here: www.congress.gov/event/119th-...
congress.gov
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 15h
🧵 Congress is holding its first hearing today on the rogue AI cyberattacks. METR, which surfaced important facts about the Hugging Face hack, is testifying. But OpenAI limited its investigation, meaning that there could be a lot more we don't know. Here are 7 questions lawmakers should ask👇:
brennancenter.org
How Congress Should Investigate Threat from Rogue AI Agents
The government must evaluate systemic failures with an eye toward establishing meaningful regulation.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
@nytimes.com found that OpenAI executives pressured employees to fast-track model testing despite safety concerns. All the more reason for Congress to investigate how decisions to prioritize speed over safety contributed to the hacking incidents. Here's how 👇 www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...
nytimes.com
OpenAI Ignored Employees’ Warnings About Safely Testing A.I. Models
Employees and security researchers said that they had cautioned the company on safely testing its A.I. models and strengthening its corporate infrastructure, but that OpenAI did not listen.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Rogue AI or rogue AI industry? My latest for @brennancenter.org explains how Congress should investigate AI companies for the recent wave of hacking incidents. Lawmakers should focus on whether the race to build ever more powerful AI sidelined digital security:
brennancenter.org
How Congress Should Investigate Threat from Rogue AI Agents
The government must evaluate systemic failures with an eye toward establishing meaningful regulation.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
My latest for @brennancenter.org on why the Trump admin’s moves on AI and cybersecurity confound rather than clarify. Ban on foreign access to Claude’s most advanced models underscores the challenges of governing when the admin’s instincts are anti-regulatory: www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana...
brennancenter.org
Trump’s Chaotic AI and Cybersecurity Policy
The administration’s gutting of agencies, contradictory impulses on regulating AI, and susceptibility to outside interests undermine trust in its capacity to oversee artificial intelligence risks.
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Liza Goitein @lizagoitein.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
It is now crystal clear who is obstructing reauthorization. Cornyn & other reform opponents would rather see Sec. 702 expire than allow reforms to protect Americans’ privacy. Sen. Wyden offered an easy path forward for extending the law. Reform opponents would prefer sunset. 2/2
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Liza Goitein @lizagoitein.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Senator Cornyn just blocked a 9-month extension of Section 702 with a warrant requirement for backdoor searches. He then blocked a 5-week extension with no warrant requirement, just basic transparency measures. 1/2
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Nicholas Dawes @nicdawes.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
In the guise of an AI powered truth tribunal, Peter Thiel and Balaji Srinivasan are backing a new platform to supercharge attacks on the press and promote "justice" without judges or juries. Don't buy it: www.codastory.com/polarization...
codastory.com
Peter Thiel is building a parallel justice system — Powered by AI - Coda Story
His investment in Objection.ai points to a new model: private investigations, AI verdicts, and accountability mechanisms that operate outside democratic institutions.
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Brennan Center @brennancenter.org · 02/05/2026
The risks of military AI "are already existential," says @amostoh.bsky.social -- "both for civilians swept up in the violence and destruction of AI-enabled wars and troops that have to live with the consequences of potentially unsafe weapons they can’t control.” theintercept.com/2026/05/01/e...
theintercept.com
Musk Warns of Killer AI — While He and the Rest of Silicon Valley Cash In on AI That Kills
In his lawsuit against OpenAI, Elon Musk evoked a “Terminator” scenario. He said nothing about the people AI is already killing.
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Alix Dunn @alixdunn.com · 01/05/2026
What happens when the US military races to implement AI in war? I spoke with @amostoh.bsky.social, senior counsel at the @brennancenter.org, about what really goes on in these massive, secretive US military-tech contracts. Listen to the conversation here: www.themaybe.org/podcast/comp...
themaybe.org
Computer Says Kill: A License for Unlimited War w/ Amos Toh
Who’s in control of calling the shots on AI in war— the military or the tech companies that they’re licensing their tech from?
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
@theinformation.com just revealed key details of Google’s deal with the Pentagon to deploy Gemini in warfare. Charlie Bullock and I explain how loopholes in the deal pave the way for Gemini’s use in mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons - Google’s supposed red lines.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
critical intervention from @stevenfeldstein.bsky.social, on how Big Tech is resetting the terms of warfare. Steve foreshadowed the use of "good enough" drones as geopolitical chips - and look at where we are now foreignpolicy.com/2025/11/17/d...
foreignpolicy.com
‘Good Enough’ Drones Have Become Geopolitical Chips
In Sudan and elsewhere, regional powers have used the weapons for leverage.
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Noah Chauvin @noahchauvin.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
"The Capture of the Congressional Intelligence Committees" is forthcoming from the UC Irvine Law Review! It argues that Congress's intelligence oversight committees have become the intelligence community's biggest boosters on Capitol Hill. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
The SSRN abstract for Noah Chauvin's article "The Capture of the Congressional Intelligence Committees."
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Timothy Stewart-Winter @timothysw.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Very excited to share the cover of my forthcoming book, OUTED: LBJ’S CONFIDANT AND THE ARREST THAT TRANSFORMED A PRESIDENCY. Coming October 13 from University of Chicago Press! press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
Book cover with b&w photo of a man whispering in LBJ’s ear backstage under lights
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
SCOTUS may well affirm the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. But how we got to the point where this is even up for debate speaks volumes about the Supreme Court’s failures. Must-read 🧵 from @tomtmwolf.bsky.social 👇
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Elke Schwarz @elkeschwarz.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Glad to see you quoted @amostoh.bsky.social, but there shd be more emphasis on the fact that the tech elites placing the bets worked hard to make them pay off. It's not just a bet, it was an aim, enaced with millions of $s in lobbying & shaping policy over a decade. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
From blitzkrieg to blitzscaling: Assessing the impact of venture capital dynamics on military norms | Finance and Society | Cambridge Core
From blitzkrieg to blitzscaling: Assessing the impact of venture capital dynamics on military norms
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
A clear-eyed rebuke of executive overreach and a decisive victory for the First Amendment. But the administration shows no signs of stopping its crusade against "woke AI," the data brokers' loophole is still wide open, and thousands are dying or displaced in an AI-fueled war. Where is Congress?
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
We at @brennancenter.org found that Palantir’s defense revenue surged over the last decade. 2025 was their most profitable year ever. Numbers can mislead. But sometimes they just don’t lie. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...
Palantir’s Growth in Perspective: Annual defense revenue for Palantir and the 20 defense contractors with the closest revenues in 2011
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
Great post, particularly around the concept of “decision.” Decision has been used to describe what computers do going back at least to Shannon? And now it’s slipping to suggest that if an LLM makes a “decision” then a human has not. But a human is still making a decision about how to decide.
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Tom “T.M.” Wolf @tomtmwolf.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
”debased” (adj.): 👇
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Illuminating story from @sheeraf.bsky.social @nytimes.com, situating the Iran war in Silicon Valley’s decade-long push to transform warfare. Who stands to lose the most when industry bets big on war? Civilians and taxpayers. @brennancenter.org explains why: www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...
nytimes.com
Silicon Valley Bet on War. The Bets Are Paying Off.
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Brennan Center @brennancenter.org · 18/03/2026
The Dept. of Defense's headlong rush to adopt AI means overreliance on just a handful of tech companies and weak oversight, says the Brennan Center's @amostoh.bsky.social.
nytimes.com
Silicon Valley Bet on War. The Bets Are Paying Off.
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Matthew Guariglia @mguariglia.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
This is an incredibly valuable report and I recommend everyone read it and get a primer on how far down the rabbit hole of AI warfare we've traveled so far.
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Dr Heidy Khlaaf (هايدي خلاف) @heidykhlaaf.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
Note how the AI "recommendations" are completely obscured with little to no ability to actually verify or trace their outputs. This is what we mean when we say the distinctions between DSS and AWS are superficial in practice, especially when operators are given seconds to approve.
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Emile Ayoub @emileayoub.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
As @amostoh.bsky.social and I explain in our new report, the military has been ramping up its adoption of AI, while oversight and safeguards have failed to keep up. But the Pentagon’s dispute with Anthropic has brought a grave threat into focus: using AI to pry into Americans’ private lives 🧵 1/
brennancenter.org
The Business of Military AI
The Pentagon has been spending tens of billions of dollars to adopt new technologies at breakneck speed. Without oversight and safeguards, military applications of artificial intelligence could jeopar...
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Both things can be true: The Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic is an abuse of executive power. The daylight between the Pentagon and Anthropic is less than you think. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/01/t...
“Anthropic told the Pentagon that it was willing to let its technology be used by the National Security Agency for classified material collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”
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Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 12/03/2026
All this talk of advanced AI targeting and the U.S. still fired a Tomahawk at an elementary school where an outdoor playground has been visible on Google Maps since 2017 www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
washingtonpost.com
Iranian school was on U.S. target list, may have been mistaken as military site
The strike on an Iranian elementary school killed at least 175, many of them children, raising questions as to whether the military’s use of AI-enabled targeting was a factor.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
1/ As the US continues AI-enabled strikes on Iran, new @brennancenter.org research from @emileayoub.bsky.social and me examines how the military’s investments in the technology have been building to this moment. Congress must step up and reckon with AI’s dangers to life, liberty, and democracy 🧵:
brennancenter.org
The Business of Military AI
The Pentagon has been spending tens of billions of dollars to adopt new technologies at breakneck speed. Without oversight and safeguards, military applications of artificial intelligence could jeopar...
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Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Emile Ayoub and Amos Toh: Senior Counsels, Liberty and National Security Program, Brennan Center for Justice ( @emileayoub.bsky.social and @amostoh.bsky.social):
The dispute over the use of Claude in autonomous weapons also lays bare the dangers of lethal targeting without sufficient human oversight. The laws of war require the military to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and refrain from attacks that cause excessive civilian harm. These determinations are often context specific and may require judgment that AI is ill-equipped to exercise.

The Defense Department’s directive on autonomous weapons raises more questions than it answers about how the military addresses these risks. It requires senior Pentagon leaders to review whether autonomous weapons enable “appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.” But it’s unclear how this standard is satisfied when the weapon leaves no room for commanders or operators to override technical blind spots in life-and-death decisions. Congress should urgently impose safeguards to align autonomous weapons with the laws of war — and restrict the use of weapons that fall short.
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Dr Heidy Khlaaf (هايدي خلاف) @heidykhlaaf.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
In this Tech Policy piece, I criticize how framings of Anthropic’s & OpenAI’s negotiations with the US’s DoW overindex on myopic interpretations of human oversight, papering over what should be the real target of our scrutiny: that generative AI algorithms are a flawed and inaccurate technology.
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Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
The expanding war in Iran brought to the fore questions about the role of technology in armed conflict, including the controversial use of new artificial intelligence technologies. Tech Policy Press invited perspectives from experts on what they are watching for as the situation unfolds.
buff.ly
Key Questions on the Role of Technology in the Expanding Middle East War
Tech Policy Press asked experts working at the intersection of technology policy, security, and international affairs to share what they are watching.
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Emile Ayoub @emileayoub.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
As @amostoh.bsky.social and I explain, the Pentagon's dispute with Anthropic should not distract from the broader crisis at hand: Congress's failure to regulate some of the riskiest uses of AI - namely, amplifying surveillance and automating the use of lethal force.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Important 🧵on how the military’s use of Claude and other agentic AI could blow open the data broker loophole. @emileayoub.bsky.social, @jlkoepke.bsky.social and @jakelaperruque.bsky.social are all experts on this - follow them!
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Katherine Yon Ebright @ebrightyon.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Trump's "massive and ongoing operation" against Iran is a clear violation of the Constitution's separation of powers. In our democracy, the president does not have the kingly power to plunge the nation into war without democratic debate and sanction. /1 www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana...
brennancenter.org
Trump's Iran Strikes Are Unconstitutional
Congress must act.
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nitasha tiku @nitasha.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
new details about the Pentagon's fight with Anthropic are coming in fast and still under dispute, but this excellent analysis from @rightsduff.bsky.social and @amostoh.bsky.social from friday is very much worth your time. bsky.app/profile/just...
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
DoDD 3000.09 *does not* prohibit fully autonomous weapons. It’s a framework for *authorizing* autonomous weapons, including weapons that do not require human confirmation between target ID and firing. NSA surveillance sweeping up Americans’ communications overseas is also traceable to EO 12333:
brennancenter.org
Overseas Surveillance in an Interconnected World
The National Security Agency's overseas surveillance activities through Executive Order 12333, most of which remain shrouded in secrecy, pose a serious risk to Americans' privacy.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
Last July, we warned that the administration’s policy against “woke AI” would heap pressure on the tech industry to quash dissent. Today, it is pressuring industry to roll back safeguards aimed at preventing the mass surveillance of Americans, and lethal targeting without human oversight.
brennancenter.org
How Trump’s AI Policy Could Compromise the Technology
A new executive order says that the government will only buy artificial intelligence models that are neutral and nonpartisan, but in reality, the policy would require technology companies to conform t...
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Brennan Center @brennancenter.org · 27/02/2026
Guardrails don’t undermine military AI. In fact, they're needed to improve the tech’s safety and reliability, says @amostoh.bsky.social defensescoop.com/2026/02/27/p...
defensescoop.com
Experts raise questions and concerns about Pentagon’s threat to blacklist Anthropic amid AI spat
Some warned that such a move would mark an extreme response that could have a chilling effect on the broader frontier AI industry.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Anthropic will not cave to the Pentagon’s demands. The company’s restrictions on using Claude to spy on Americans and deploy fully autonomous weapons aren’t just its ethical red lines. They are also what a good faith interpretation of the Fourth Amendment and the law of war require. More in 🧵👇
anthropic.com
Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
A statement from our CEO on national security uses of AI
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
clarifying timeline by @techpolicypress.bsky.social on the fast-moving dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon on the limits of using AI in warfare
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Alan Rozenshtein @alanrozenshtein.com · 25/02/2026
The Pentagon is threatening to use the Defense Production Act against Anthropic. It's a terrible policy, but legally it depends on whether they're seeking to avoid Anthropic's terms of service or have Anthropic retrain Claude. My latest for @lawfaremedia.org. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what...
lawfaremedia.org
What the Defense Production Act Can and Can’t Do to Anthropic
The legal answer depends on what the government is actually demanding—and the statute's ambiguities cut both ways.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
The Pentagon is giving Anthropic until Friday to waive its restrictions on using Claude for mass surveillance of Americans and lethal targeting without human involvement, per @axios.com My thread below breaks down how these uses could be unlawful or unconstitutional👇
axios.com
Hegseth gives Anthropic CEO until Friday to back down in AI safeguards fight
"The only reason we're still talking to these people is we need them and we need them now."
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will meet tomorrow to discuss the terms of Claude's use, per @mccuri.bsky.social and Dave Lawler @axios.com. www.axios.com/2026/02/23/h... Here's what's at stake 👇
axios.com
Scoop: Hegseth to meet Anthropic CEO as Pentagon threatens banishment
Hegseth plans to present an ultimatu
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
1/ The dispute between Anthropic and DOD over the limits of using AI in warfare is escalating. I’ll have more to say on what these limits should be in a @brennancenter.org report out next month. But for now, here’s what you need to know, and what’s truly at stake 🧵: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/t...
nytimes.com
Defense Dept. and Anthropic Square Off in Dispute Over A.I. Safety
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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
You’ll never guess but the solution to people not having money is to give them money.
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Spencer Reynolds @sreynolds.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
Enough: The NAACP Legal Defense Fund calls to abolish ICE and the DHS infrastructure that enables its wanton, lawless abuse. This follows our earlier letter demanding sweeping cuts to DHS policing, intelligence, and other harmful programs. See LDF's statement here: www.naacpldf.org/press-releas...
naacpldf.org
LDF Condemns Egregious Killing of Alex Pretti by Federal Law Enforcement in Minneapolis
Today, a Minneapolis man, Alex Pretti, was fatally shot by a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agent, according to city officials. The 37-year-old was a U.S. citizen and intensive care unit nurse....
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
Brian’s book is a profound meditation on the privilege of making mistakes. Addiction, for example, is not a mistake or choice per se, but does involve frequently catastrophic mistakes and choices. Whether these lead to homelessness is largely shaped by economic forces beyond individual control.
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