Astral Codex Ten

army

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army

Article

army is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between August 04, 2023 and March 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “Schleicher brought pressure from the army”; “former general counsel of the Army, former undersecretary of the Army”. It most often appears alongside Academy’s School of Architecture, ACX, Adolf.

Metadata

  • Category: Organizations
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: August 04, 2023
  • Last seen: March 01, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
August 04, 2023 · Original source
In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich in Germany, probably to avoid having to serve in the Austrian army alongside his Jewish and Slavic fellow-citizens. When the Great War broke out, he requested permission to serve in a German regiment. His request was granted and, in 1914, Hitler went to war.
It was his penchant for impromptu speeches that won Hitler his first break. After one of his rants had come to the attention of some officers in the army, he was “posted to a Munich regiment as an educational officer, a Bildungsoffizier, whose main task was to combat dangerous ideas—pacifism, socialism, democracy; such was the Army’s conception of its role in the democratic Republic it had sworn to serve.” In this capacity Hitler was tasked with investigating a small group called the German Workers’ Party (initialed as DAP in German). Here, Hitler found like-minded nationalists who pressured him to join their fledgling movement and boost their numbers. Although initially skeptical of “this absurd little organization,” he ultimately decided that the smallness of this party would give him the opportunity to take a large role. He became the seventh member of the committee of the German Workers’ Party.
In 1920, the DAP added two words to its name and became the National Socialist German Workers' Party or, as its enemies would call it derogatorily, the Nazi Party. At the same time, Hitler quit his army job to focus on growing the movement. Drawing on his artistic experience, he designed an emblem for the party to rally around: the now-familiar black swastika in a white circle on a red field.
"All Lawful Use": Much More Than You Wanted To Know
March 01, 2026 · Original source
Second, and more important, human soldiers are a check on the worst abuses of authoritarians. Sometimes a strongman will give an illegal order - to shoot at protesters, to initiate an auto-coup, to begin a genocide - and soldiers will say no. Sometimes those soldiers will decide that the appropriate response is to arrest the strongman instead. However often this happens, the fear of it keeps strongmen in line and forces them to consider public opinion at least insofar as the army is made up of the public. If there’s a fully robotic force that automatically obeys orders, this check disappears.
We’d like to clarify the argument for why references to existing laws and policies may not be sufficient to freeze the terms in place if the law or policies change. Above, we wrote that “later clauses [about specific laws and policies] do not automatically override this first clause [allowing ‘all lawful purposes’]”. This isn’t wrong, but we think there are more relevant arguments, like those offered by former general counsel of the Army Brad Carson, who is confident that the quoted contract language doesn’t freeze federal law in the way OpenAI wants. See footnote for details)9
Inline links: those offered, 9
Why was our argument not the most relevant argument? While it's true that later clauses (on specific laws and policies) don't automatically take precedence over the first clause (about “all lawful purposes”), it's also true that the first clause doesn't automatically take precedence over later clauses. All clauses matter for interpreting the overall contract. In fact, there's a general principle that more specific clauses tend to take precedence over more general clauses. This could make for a plausible argument that clauses which reference specific laws and policies take precedence over the general clause allowing "all lawful purposes". However, another interpretation would be that the references to specific laws and policies refer to the most up-to-date versions of the named laws and policies, rather than treating them as frozen into place. This would reduce conflict with the "all lawful purposes" clause, and it might therefore get some support from the inclusion of the "all lawful purposes" clause. But even if that wasn't there, this latter interpretation would still be strongly favored according to Brad Carson (former general counsel of the Army, former undersecretary of the Army, former undersecretary of Defense), unless OpenAI has explicit language to the contrary. Given his expertise, and given that he agrees on the bottom line with the national security law expert that we consulted, we’re inclined to believe he’s right. What we're most confident about is that OpenAI’s interpretation is far from clearly correct, so if they cared about that interpretation, it would have been a big mistake for them to not include any explicit language stipulating it.
Inline links: strongly favored