by djwide | 2026-01-26 15:06:09+00:00
https://substack.com/home/post/p-185153174

OracleGPT is a thought experiment for a large language model (LLM) that would have real-time access to the full classified universe: the underlying reporting, raw feeds, and fused intelligence that normally remains compartmentalized. Only one person would be authorized full access to this GPT: the President.

Scenario

It’s 2 a.m. A North Korean launch warning is reported and the President is woken by an aid. There is no time to convene the National Security Council and the Commanding General of STRATCOM cannot speak with authority about the implications beyond its command. The President turns to the LLM terminal like so many of us do when we need fast expert feedback. “STRATCOM detected a missile launch from North Korea. What should I do?” the President queries.

We may already live in this world. In theory, the same large language base models we use every day (Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok) could be made significantly more effective if they (1) used super-power government-tier hardware and (2) were trained on and given access to the classified universe of historic and real-time data. A President ought to be given access to the most powerful tools to advance the national interest and support and defend the Constitution. OracleGPT would be just that tool, but one with unprecedented capabilities and correspondingly unprecedented risks. The question, then, is not whether Presidents should use OracleGPT, but how current and future presidents could do so in a way that genuinely serves the American interest.

Who can query the Oracle?

The President sits at the top of the classification hierarchy. The modern system runs through presidential authority and delegation, formally expressed in Executive Order 13526. In practice, it means there is no higher classification authority than the President. If only the President can query across the entire corpus, you’ve built a constitutional bottleneck: a machine that amplifies presidential epistemic power by making a uniquely comprehensive knowledge aggregation available to one person.

Alternatively, the President might delegate some of this authority and allow visibility and management of the Oracle within something like the Oracle Bureau. We could also imagine the President could allow the National Security Advisor or Director of the CIA to access the Oracle. Either of these options would undoubtedly lead to pushback from department heads, lead to an unwillingness to incorporate organizational data into the Oracle corpus with the risk that it be exposed outside of the organization domain, and would likely require a congressional statutory authorization.

We also may ask whether any given President is the most competent operator of a tool, which by some estimation could have more powerful predictive capabilities than any piece of software ever assembled. Perhaps such a tool should be used for a higher purpose and to greater effectiveness than any given President might be capable of prompting it toward.

A shift in the balance of powers between branches of government?

In the launch scenario, time pressure forces centralization. The executive already owns the management of crises. OracleGPT would add an even greater advantage: an epistemic monopoly.

Congress can demand briefings and courts can review some actions after the fact. But neither branch can easily replicate an OracleGPT query over the full classified corpus, especially if the Oracle’s value comes from cross-compartment integration that is, by design, hard to share. Over time, the executive gains a new rhetorical weapon: we know more, therefore we decide. The existence of such a tool could lead to a rebalancing of the separation of powers.

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