[PaulDavisThe1st]

There is no "DoW". Federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, are named by Congress. Just because the current administration wants to use a different name means nothing ... unless everyone just complies in advance. Will Congress actually rename it? Hard to say, but it doesn't seem very likely.

[mikkupikku]

"Defense" is a harmful euphemism that misleads the American public, so in this case I'm happy to humor the admins decision.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I agree that, given the actual history of the US military and foreign policy, it is a harmful and misleading euphimism.

It is also, however, the official name of the department, as determined by the US Congress who are empowered to determine such names.

In no case I am happy to humor this administration's decisions, especially when they are illegal/extra-legal/paralegal. If they wanted to actually rename the department, there's a clear process for that, and then perhaps we could "humor" that effort. As it stands, there's nothing here to humor, since there is no decision, only illegal aspiration.

[thejohnconway]

Indeed, “defence” so obviously an Orwellian term for these departments, I’m very much in favour of the change.

[troyvit]

Getting off-topic here but it was irritating that Anthropic's original announcement called them the Department of War. What was that even signaling?

[rhfjfkfkf]

The signalling in that post is about as clear as it can be.

They’re aggressively signalling that they are cooperative, and that they are not being belligerent. They are using the preferred language and much of the framing that the US government would use, to make it as clear as possible what the key points of their disagreement are, by leaning into alignment on everything else

This is textbook. People are reading this as some kind of confusing, inexplicable framing when it’s how any sensible person would write in their context. When you’re up against an authoritarian regime, that’s willing to abuse all the levers of power against you, you very carefully pick your fights and don’t give them any reason to complain about anything that isn’t essential.

Quibbling about the name of the department would be among the stupidest things I could possibly imagine. As it stands, I’m seeing lots of folks online who generally support the administration saying that Anthropic is correct here. If you gave them a bunch of stupid talking points about how anthropic is being disrespectful, you would lose those people. It doesn’t make sense, they’re obviously terrible people without a soul, but that’s reality.

[crystal_revenge]

This is such a silly point to argue over. From 1789-1947 we had a "Department of War", which then merged into "Department of Army" under the newly formed (in 1947) National Military Establishment (NME) which was changed in 1949 to "Department of Defense" because N-M-E sound like "enemy".

It's not like these names are part of some sacred part of American identity, and "defense" has always been laughable as a euphemism. The DoD refers to themselves as the DoW [0] now, so it's completely reasonably to refer to the department as DoW. And of all the places to put your political energy, defending a laughable euphemism of a name that was used because the previous iteration of the name sounded funny seems like a sub-optimal use of that a energy.

0. https://www.war.gov/

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Under US Code, it is the US Congress that names departments. It is not up to an individual officer in the US military, or the administration, to rename them.

I'm expending a fraction of a fraction of 1% on this, and I am in no way defending the euphimism. I am defending the actual written down, legal way in the US government is supposed to operate, which despite its many failings, seems worth defending to me.

[TimorousBestie]

> There is no "DoW".

There’s no Obamacare either. Come on, this is about as pedantic as the “the DoD is not the Pentagon” debate downthread.

It’s a colloquial name, and how the executive branch wants everyone to refer to it. This forum isn’t an official document. Move on.

[vharuck]

If the title doesn't make a difference, then there's no point to insist on it. People say "the Pentagon" as shorthand for "military leadership in Washington." Not using the shorter term wouldn't do much beyond making news articles longer.

This administration says "Department of War" because they want to project an aggressive image. I support anyone who uses the legal name "Department of Defense" in an effort to reinforce an aspirational goal for the department and to remind others that the Executive Branch shouldn't be allowed to remake the entire government at will.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

"Obamacare" is a colloquial name.

"Department of War" is not a colloquial name; at best it is an attempt by the administration to create a colloquial name.

Not doing what the executive branch requests is a noble American tradition, and even more noble at the current time.