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Amos Toh

@amostoh.bsky.social
5K followers 135 following 148 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 · 10/10/2026
More security breaches traced to AI companies tinkering with experimental or insecure models. The call is coming from inside the house. All the more reason to regulate internal use. My @brennancenter.org brief explains how 👇
brennancenter.org
The Conversation We Need to Have About Regulating AI
Safeguards must address not only public releases but also risky uses of advanced models behind closed doors.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Earlier this year we identified a surge in Anduril’s contracts with the military, which raised questions about its influence on defense procurement and the Trump admin’s acceleration of autonomous warfare. These investments magnify those questions. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...
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 · 05/10/2026
AI companies and the partners they handpicked triggered the recent wave of cyberattacks while tinkering with experimental models, pushing their limits to see how dangerous they could get. My new @brennancenter.org essay explains how lawmakers should regulate risky uses of AI the public doesn't see👇
brennancenter.org
The Conversation We Need to Have About Regulating AI
Safeguards must address not only public releases but also risky uses of advanced models behind closed doors.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
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 · 30/09/2026
And here's the METR investigation that OpenAI commissioned into the Hugging Face attack: metr.org/blog/2026-08...
metr.org
Brief independent investigation of agents’ behavior, reasoning and collaboration in the OpenAI / Hugging Face hacking incident
Two METR staff members and a Redwood Research contractor investigated an incident in which OpenAI agents coordinated a multi-day hack of Hugging Face on a shared unsanctioned message board.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The Senate hearing will be at 2:30 p.m. ET today. You can follow along here: www.congress.gov/event/119th-...
congress.gov
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
7. Is METR negotiating, or has it signed, agreements with any other AI company to investigate the hacking and security incidents involving their models? Can METR share any information about the status of these agreements and investigations?
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
6. According to Anthropic, it will grant METR "wide-ranging access" to data about the incidents and the employees involved. Does the agreement with Anthropic also permit METR to query the models involved in the incidents, so that they may reconstruct and examine misaligned behavior more thoroughly?
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
5. METR has signed an agreement with Anthropic to investigate four security incidents involving Claude models. Will they be investigating whether these incidents are part of a broader pattern of misalignment involving Claude models, and whether such behavior also arose during model training?
anthropic.com
An alignment assessment of recent cybersecurity incidents
We present an alignment assessment of four incidents in which Claude models gained unauthorized access to real third-party systems.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
4. To address the outstanding questions, what types of data would METR or an external evaluator need OAI to turn over? What kind of model access would they need to reproduce or more thoroughly investigate misalignment? And which employees would they need to interview, and for what purposes?
metr.org
How independent researchers could investigate AI propensities after misalignment incidents
AI agents sometimes take sophisticated actions in violation of human intent. We outline the questions that thorough external investigations of these behaviors should answer, the access this might requ...
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
3. OAI excluded key questions from the scope of METR's investigation, such as whether the Hugging Face attack was part of a broader pattern, and whether this behavior also arose during model training. What was OAI’s reasoning for excluding these questions?
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
2. METR interviewed nine of the OAI researchers involved in the incident. Were OAI researchers permitted to disclose confidential information that was pertinent to the investigation? Who else would METR have liked to interview within the company, and what would these interviews seek to establish?
metr.org
How independent researchers could investigate AI propensities after misalignment incidents
AI agents sometimes take sophisticated actions in violation of human intent. We outline the questions that thorough external investigations of these behaviors should answer, the access this might requ...
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
1. Did OAI decline to produce any data that METR requested, or impose any restrictions on METR’s access to the models involved in the incident? How did this impact METR’s investigation and its findings?
nytimes.com
After OpenAI’s Bots Went Rogue, Watchdogs Were Kept on a Short Leash
Researchers investigating how OpenAI’s A.I. agents were able to break into Hugging Face’s infrastructure weren’t allowed to look at the incident’s full scope.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
🧵 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
Our analysis of procurement records shows Palantir’s defense revenue accelerated under the first Trump and Biden administrations. Anecdotally, there has been a clear ramp up in AI under the second Trump admin. But still too early to say how much of this is going to Palantir (or any other company).
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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
20/ This begins with restrictions on autonomous weapons, privacy protections, re-investment in the Pentagon’s testing and oversight capacities, and checks on industry’s influence. None of this will be easy, but our report suggests concrete steps lawmakers should take towards meaningful regulation.
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 · 11/03/2026
19/ We can’t just trust that the military will eventually course correct or the next administration will do the right thing. Congress has a constitutional duty to regulate the military and establish durable rules and oversight.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
18/ The military is also buying up data containing detailed location, financial and web browsing records of Americans, undermining their Fourth Amendment rights. Congress has not meaningfully restricted these purchases, let alone the use of AI to extract even more sensitive insights from this data.
brennancenter.org
Closing the Data Broker Loophole
Congress must pass legislation that prohibits government agencies from buying their way around the Fourth Amendment and other legal privacy protections.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
17/ Congress is also absent. It has funded the military’s AI boom, yet seems barely alert to its harms. Deploying AI weapons has life-and-death consequences and should be subject to democratic control. But aside from requiring some transparency, lawmakers have not enacted meaningful red lines.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
16/ This rollback of internal safeguards saps the military of the capacity and know-how to push back against flawed design choices by tech firms. The army, for example, has struggled with “black box” systems that introduce security vulnerabilities it cannot fully assess or control.
breakingdefense.com
Army says it's mitigated 'critical' cybersecurity deficiencies in early NGC2 prototype - Breaking Defense
The service discovered the issues ahead of the first in a series of planned events to scale the NGC2 ecosystem to the division level.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
15/ As the military races to adopt AI, it has not meaningfully grappled with these risks. Instead, it is slashing regulatory capacity and expertise - gutting its main office overseeing weapons testing, for example, and shuttering civilian protection efforts.
propublica.org
The U.S. Built a Blueprint to Avoid Civilian War Casualties. Trump Officials Scrapped It.
The Pentagon dismantled its civilian protection mission as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made “lethality” a top priority and the Trump administration reorganized national security around two principl...
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
14/ @ainowinstitute.bsky.social has found that a handful of tech firms control access to the building blocks of AI. That gives them enormous leverage to shape the military’s reliance on the technology and charge higher prices. It also creates single points of failure.
ainowinstitute.org
Computational Power and AI - AI Now Institute
By Jai Vipra & Sarah Myers WestSeptember 27, 2023 In this article What is compute and why does it matter? How is the demand for compute shaping AI development? What kind of hardware is involved? What ...
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
13/ While a lot of focus has been on how the military *uses* AI, it’s equally important to scrutinize the infrastructure that keeps it going. One of the Pentagon’s biggest tech expenses is its $9B contract with Google, Oracle, AWS and MSFT for cloud computing, which keeps the military’s AI online.
defensescoop.com
Pentagon awards nearly $1B in JWCC task orders
The Department of Defense has already awarded just under $1 billion in task orders to vendors for its top enterprise cloud initiative known as JWCC, according to a fact sheet released in August 2024.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
12/ Barely a year later, Claude is playing a central role in the Iran strikes. The model is so deeply embedded in the military’s systems that DOD sources say it will be very difficult to unwind.
washingtonpost.com
Anthropic’s AI tool Claude central to U.S. campaign in Iran, amid a bitter feud
Anthropic’s AI tool Claude is playing a key role in the U.S. military’s campaign in Iran, amid a bitter fight with the Pentagon over the terms of its use in war.
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Amos Toh @amostoh.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
11/ Frontier AI companies are just beginning to compete for defense contracts, but they are already having enormous impact. In July 2025, DOD signed agreements with Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and xAI to develop military applications of their models.
cnbc.com
Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI granted up to $200 million for AI work from Defense Department
The DoD's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office said the awards will help the agency accelerate its adoption of AI solutions.
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