---
type: source
title: "OpenAI on Surveillance and Autonomous Killings: You're Going to Have to Trust Us"
author: "The Intercept"
url: https://theintercept.com/2026/03/08/openai-anthropic-military-contract-ethics-surveillance/
date: 2026-03-08
domain: ai-alignment
secondary_domains: []
format: article
status: processed
priority: high
tags: [OpenAI, autonomous-weapons, surveillance, trust-based-governance, voluntary-safety, self-attestation, governance-architecture, Sam-Altman, Pentagon-contract]
---

## Content

Following OpenAI's Pentagon deal (February 28, 2026), CEO Sam Altman stated publicly that users "are going to have to trust us" on questions of surveillance and autonomous killings. The quote captures the governance architecture of OpenAI's approach: safety commitments are self-attestations with no external verification or binding legal mechanism.

The Intercept analyzed the differences between Anthropic and OpenAI's approaches:
- **Anthropic**: Sought outright contractual bans on autonomous weapons targeting and mass surveillance — hard red lines in contract language
- **OpenAI**: Allows "any lawful purpose" with added aspirational constraints — no outright bans, just stated commitments

OpenAI CEO Altman initially described the initial rollout as "opportunistic and sloppy" — suggesting the deal was driven by competitive opportunity (capturing market vacated by Anthropic) rather than principled governance design.

The amended contract language ("the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals") was criticized for:
- The "intentionally" qualifier providing a compliance loophole
- Surveillance of non-US persons not covered
- No external enforcement mechanism
- Contract itself not made public (opacity in governance commitments)

The Intercept framed the Anthropic/OpenAI divergence as: Anthropic pursued a moral approach that won supporters but failed in the market; OpenAI pursued a pragmatic/legal approach that is ultimately softer on the Pentagon.

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** Altman's "trust us" quote is the clearest encapsulation of the endpoint of voluntary safety governance without legal standing. If safety depends on trusting the AI company, and the AI company faces competitive pressure to accept looser constraints, the safety guarantee is only as strong as the least competitive pressure faced. This is the structural argument for why voluntary governance is insufficient.

**What surprised me:** Altman's self-criticism of the initial deal as "opportunistic and sloppy" — this is an unusually candid admission that the decision was driven by competitive timing, not governance quality. It suggests OpenAI leadership understood they were making a less principled choice under time pressure.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Any technical argument from OpenAI about why outright bans are worse governance than "any lawful purpose" with aspirational limits. The public-facing argument is pragmatic ("if we don't do it, someone less safety-conscious will") not principled (outright bans are wrong). This is the same argument Anthropic explicitly rejected.

**KB connections:** voluntary-pledges-fail-under-competition — Altman's "trust us" is the explicit admission that the governance architecture is self-attestation-only; coordination-problem-reframe — captures the multipolar dynamic where pragmatic safety creates competitive cover for abandoning principled safety.

**Extraction hints:** The "trust us" quote could anchor a claim about self-attestation as the governance endpoint of voluntary safety commitments — when external enforcement is absent, safety reduces to the CEO's public statements. This is a governance architecture claim, not a capability claim.

**Context:** The Intercept piece appeared March 8, after OpenAI's March 2 amended contract. By that point, the comparison with Anthropic's blacklisting was fully visible. The piece reflects concern from AI safety observers that OpenAI's pragmatic approach creates a template that normalizes government override of safety constraints.

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)
PRIMARY CONNECTION: voluntary-pledges-fail-under-competition — "trust us" is the endpoint this claim describes; institutional-gap — the absence of external verification is the gap
WHY ARCHIVED: Altman quote captures the self-attestation endpoint of voluntary governance; the Anthropic/OpenAI comparison is unusually explicit about the moral vs. pragmatic tradeoff
EXTRACTION HINT: The claim should focus on governance architecture, not company ethics: voluntary safety commitments without external enforcement reduce to CEO public statements. The "trust us" quote is the evidence.
