I know everyone says this is political but it actually seems like a textbook designation. Anthropic wanted to have rules on how the military used AI, the military said no and therefore doesn't want anthropic used anywhere in their supply line.
This is like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike orders, now the military needs to have a special box of pens that don't have stipulations attached. With AI usage it would be the same thing except applied to entire product chains. It seems like it would just add more complexity to operations.
You can agree with the rules anthropic wanted, but having rules set by a private company at all that apply to the military does seem fair for the military to object to.
>The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary
Though they'd probably put the DoD on the cybersecurity whitelist today, the very idea of the claude whitelists for certain functionality already exists and is being used by them today.
> I know everyone says this is political but it actually seems like a textbook designation
It literally is a textbook definition, signed into US law:
“Supply chain risk,” means the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of a covered system so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise degrade the function, use, or operation of such system (see 10 U.S.C. 3252).
To add onto what another commenter said, the pen analogy would be more like the manufacturer designing pens that stopped working when used to sign strike orders they disagreed with.
Selling a pen labeled "this pen will refuse to sign certain orders" is not sabotage or malicious and is thus not a supply chain risk. The DoD is free to not buy from Anthropic, but designating them as a supply chain risk is incorrect, as well as arguably arbitrary and capricious given their public criticism of Anthropic's beliefs.
I don't think anyone doubts that subcontracts exist. They doubt that Anthropic's insistence that Claude isn't capable of being the operating system for an automated killbot and associated terms the DoD previously agreed to means that there's any danger to the US military from Lockheed Martin using Claude as a code assistant to build GUIs.
What if it’s a GUI to manage deployment of the kill bots? I worked for a DOD contractor on software. All our scenarios were more related. It was like “OK you’ve overthrown the civilian government of this Middle Eastern country, including the radio regulators, and now we need to coordinate radio frequency assignments for the tactical squads.”
Code which renders dots on a map isn't going to magically reorder itself if the GNSS endpoints get switched from manned to unmanned assets just because it was authored by Claude, and if the subcontractor isn't auditing and testing the code outputs properly then they're the supply chain risk, not a specific code-gen tool they use. Obviously if instead of being used as code or report generating assistants, LLM agents are used to execute combat decisions in real time that introduces a lot more risk. That's... literally Anthropic's argument against using them for that specific purpose.
It doesn't make much sense to determine that because Anthropic continues to insist that Claude is unsuitable for use as some sort of super advanced loitering munition, Lockheed using it to write job ads is as much a threat to national security as a Chinese comms terminal.
It's not like the DoD and their subcontractors and their subcontractors' subcontractors aren't used to all sorts of fine-grained separation when it comes to what is and isn't classified or export controlled under normal circumstances, or that Hegseth taking a break from fantasising about soldiers' testosterone levels for long enough to decry Anthropic's stance as 'woke' makes the decision look like one based on operational effectiveness.
"Supply chain risk" specifically refers to risk of malicious attack or sabotage through the supply chain, not all risks associated with supply chains.
A vendor with particularly poor QA might be a risk in your supply chain but isn't a "supply chain risk" according to this designation and neither would Anthropic be.
Supply chain risks are usually when someone does a attack over the supply chain. Like when the mossad planted literally explosives in radio devices for Hezbollah.
Antrophic merely said they don't allow their tools to be used for autonomous killing.
A very specific case.
So where is the danger making it necessary preventing all suppliers from using Claude at all? That only concerns those who work directly on autonomous killing and only they will have to go to Altman or Musk.
So none of that is any threat to the military - so it was just black mailing to make them do the governments will - which is something usually dictatorships do, not democratic systems.
In a democratic society, the default should be, the military just buy somewhere else, then force companies to build them the terminator. So no private company controls what the military does, they just control their product. You want the military to control private companies? There is a name for that kind of system, where this is conmon.
Eh this just we wont buy from you because you are putting limitations on the use. Anthropic will be fine if they don’t like it they can accept the terms of the contract or walk away.
Why has this never previously been done to an American company from which the DoD decided not to purchase something?
Perhaps people who are noticing politics here - including in the decision of two Trump-appointed judges, against the he vote of another Republican-appointed judge- are not the ones who are choosing not to see reality?
President Truman literally seized the assets of a steel company to avert a strike that would hurt the Korean War effort. The Supreme Court stopped him, but three Justices voted it was okay!
We also have the Defense Production Act: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R43767. It doesn’t happen more often because most people aren’t stupid enough to say “no” to the U.S. military. These Effective Altruists, however, are too big for their britches.
I don't know, I am just guessing because not a single American company has publicly stated they are against its product use up to a certain degree by DoD? If they have not publicly declared it then yes, DoD simply don't sign the contract.
So your argument is that the government is punishing Anthropic for its public statements? And it is correct to do so?
(I think it's also the case that Anthropic didn't make any public statements about the negotiations until after the DoD was already publicly threatening this designation. But that seems less important than the question of: is it good for the US government to try to destroy companies whose public statements it dislikes?)
Honestly I would find a certain satisfaction in a world where the next Democratic administration takes away Fox broadcast licenses, forbids use of Oracle by any government contractor unless Ellison hands CBS over to Rachel Maddow, and tells Bezos that Amazon is going to be banned from public roads unless the Washington Post front page has positive stories every day. But I doubt the same is true for the many pro-Trump people who complained vociferously about Biden officials expressing preferences to social media companies because of the merely implicit threat that they might take government action of some kind if they weren't listened to.
So we have a pen that may refuse to sign certain orders, and is clearly labeled as such.
If the DoD needs to sign such orders, they won't buy this pen.
If a supplier needs to sign such orders, the supplier also won't buy the pen.
If a supplier needs to sign other orders, and this pen is the best one available, the supplier may decide to buy this pen. Since the orders are within the range of what the pen will sign, they get signed, and the supplier fulfills its contract with the DoD.
Where is the supply chain risk? The ink isn't going to erase itself post-hoc.
---
Now, if the DoD suspects that Anthropic will train its models to try to actively sabotage military operations, that's a very different story. Does anyone actually believe that?
> If a supplier needs to sign other orders, and this pen is the best one available, the supplier may decide to buy this pen. Since the orders are within the range of what the pen will sign
Who decides what’s within the scope of “what orders are within the range of what the pen will sign?” The boundaries are never clear cut. You’ve got a vendor who could kill switch critical military technology if it’s used in a way they decide falls outside the scope of what they want.
> You’ve got a vendor who could kill switch critical military technology if it’s used in a way they decide falls outside the scope of what they want.
If the DoD hires ACME to build some software to make widgets, and ACME uses Claude to build that software, where is the kill switch?
I guess the Claude model could hide a kill switch in the widget manufacturing code, but so could ACME's human subcontractor. Why is Anthropic being considered a supply chain risk here?
The model can refuse to build something, but it can't take back what has already been built.
If you outsource your thinking to a server that can detect your IP address, and decide to render decision “b” instead of decision “a” to your query, that’s a risk. (Or detect by the type of query, past history of your use, etc.). Panopticlick should be having a field day with all this.
Oddly when the topic of e.g. car infotainment systems comes up, like BMW locking you out of features in your own car, this place is up in arms, but when the military has a problem with it, suddenly they should be forced to accept it?
All of those verbs basically mean "degrade an existing system, after the fact". If anthropic states beforehand that certain use cases are not possible, it should be fine, no?
To give another (bad) analogy: The Pens aren't made to be weapons themselves, they are not intended for that. If the DoD now tries to shoot pens as projectiles and they just melt, that's no reason to classify the pen manufacturer as a supply chain risk, the product was not altered after the fact.
Of course, there _is_ a difference in "It could do that, but it shouldn't" and "It cannot do that". But it is not that large. That's why I don't see it as that clear cut.
It is not the textbook definition, because what Anthropic is doing is not sabotage, malicious, or subversive. Those are the key words in the definition. They are just refusing to add a feature to the military's specification. So their bid falls short of requirements.
> Whatever paradigmatic examples individual members of Congress may have had in mind, the statutory definition is not limited to “adversar[ies],” 10 U.S.C. § 3252(d)(4), and instead covers “any person,”
I tried to hint in my comment that the argument is completely different. the supply chain risk is just what the media runs with. (yes, it's in the opinion, but that is the weaker part. and the court agrees, that it basically does not apply to Anthropic.)
there's section 4713 which is roughly "Secretary of War can pull the nat.sec. card, bye"
> They are just refusing to add a feature to the military's specification.
That fails to accord with the claim:
>The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary
That isn't sabotage, that is simply product design. Anthropic is free to create their products that refuse to kill people, and the DoD is free not to buy those products if they don't fit their needs.
However, that's not what a supply chain risk is. It's not an order to "don't buy these products if they don't work the way we want them to", its designating Anthropic as a national security threat because they might intentionally sabotage US military operations.
As I said elsewhere, it's utterly preposterous that the DOD actually considers this a reasonable threat, because it's simply not a reasonable possibility. There's no way Anthropic would do that, precisely because of the consequences that would follow if they did, and got found out. Moreover, they already clearly stated their terms and preferences. It's all out of the open. There's no supply chain risk, that designation is purely political.
I work in the space industry and regularly use parts in our designs that are unapproved from space flight. Sometimes it's because it's a commercial part that we seem acceptable for flight, other times it's an unscreened or engineering model that doesn't go through the proper testing that space-qualified parts do. One vendor even dents the lid of a part to invalidate the hermetic seal guarantee that they claim for the space-qualified version (it still works fine). Many will have fine print in the data sheets saying the part is not to be used for critical applications like aerospace or medical devices. Sometimes we tell a little fib to our vendor that we are just developing non-flight devices so that they don't get upset and refuse to sell the lower-grade part to us. These vendors are scared of having something fail in an unapproved environment and are unaware of how much risk the customer is tolerating by the use of these unscreened parts.
It would have been incredibly simple for Anthropic to say "we cannot guarantee performance in a kill-chain application due to an unknown level of safeguards implemented in the baseline product and cannot estimate a cost for developing a new product capable of such application." and leave it at that.
>The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary (emphasis mine)
They didn't "reasonably" fear anything. There is absolutely no evidence to support these allegations. Anthropic has the right to impose licensing terms. Merely disagreeing with the government is not evidence of wrongdoing.
If Anthropic wasn't allowed to say what they said, how would they be allowed to object to their government's illegal use of their products at all? It sounds to me like their only choices were "shut up" or "be punished", which is a clear-cut violation of their rights.
Anthropic, in the original negotiations, said the can't answer every hypothetical use case. And the DOD should just come and ask as they come up (during an operation).
Which means the exact use limitations WOULD NOT BE DELINEATED IN WRITING in advance.
That fails only if you believe and agree with the government's argument, which I don't.
I don't think it's reasonable to fear that Anthropic would change the deal after contractually agreeing to terms of use. The government is using that as an excuse because they know that Anthropic hasn't actually met the definition of a supply-chain risk.
DOD's stated concern is not a change to the deal. It is a breach of the deal: "...manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized..."
The department feared Anthropic would refuse if it was used to mass surveil on Americans or kill people without human oversight. Facts already laid out in the terms. Instead of simply canceling or negotiating, they used overwhelming government force against it to apply a designation never before applied to an American company. When its an interaction between trump/trump's government and any other party, it is a good first approximation to assume Trumps side are wrong.
Yes certainly, I can sell highly corrosive concentrated hydrochloric acid to the government as part of some contract for the synthesis of certain chemicals but I am fully within my rights to write that the acid should not be sprayed on people from a pump.
But that is not at all a reasonable fear. Is it really reasonable to believe that Anthropic, after receiving a government contract, would then proceed to sabotage their own product to not function as contracted? That seems like an utterly ridiculous claim to me, nothing close to "reasonable". There is no charitable way to view this designation except as political punishment and/or as a favor to Altman and Musk.
> would then proceed to sabotage their own product to not function as contracted?
Claude terms here: ANTHROPIC EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
Like most so-called AI, the Claude program is inherently unreliable. I doubt Anthropic would ever agree to "function as contracted".
My response was re the not functioning as contracted issue, not the supply chain risk. Having said which, I can well imagine possible cause and effect here.
Yes, but degrading capability on purpose is entirely permitted by a No Warrantee contract, and hence not at all the sabotage their own product to not function as contracted as feared by to DoD. Unless there's a very different and unusual contract in this case.
I don't think you understand what "No warranty" means in a software license. It means Anthropic cannot be held liable for results if the software misbehaves and instead of bombing a terrorist compound it bombs a wedding (I chose this example because the US has a tradition to bomb weddings in Iraq and Afghanistan). But in no form does it mean "yeah, I don't feel like doing what you prompted me".
Hence, Anthropic sabotaged the models on purpose to not respond properly to all prompts.
> It means Anthropic cannot be held liable for results if the software misbehaves
Actually I think it means what is says - which does include no warrantee of FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. This lets Anthropic block any purpose it likes.
The pen example makes sense if the intermediary were to ship the pen as part of the final product but not if the pen is simply used to draft designs of the final product. It seems that this designation would prohibit using the pen anywhere in the process which doesn't really make sense.
> The U.S. military has disabled advertising tracking tools in government-issued phones, computers and other devices, officials recently told Congress.
> The different military branches confirmed they had done so, some only this summer, following reporting that commercially available data taken from these devices and sold freely by data brokers, was being used by Iran and other adversaries to track and in some cases target American bases and personnel.
the courts interpret the statute, we have to read their argument where they explain why they think that's not the right definition to focus on. (the "adversary" is in section 3252, but they say that independently from that section 4713 allows determination of exigency.)
Ah, I upvoted specifically because those countries do not control Anthropic's products, and thus reasoned that the comment implied that an adversary, for the purpose of the law, was some external not-quite-enemy type entity, and that application of the law to Anthropic was thus unreasonable, as it obviously is.
Of course they don't but the post was responding to "what adversaries" in the definition of supply chain risk posted above, and those are some of the real answers to that. I did not read that comment as implying anthropic was controlled by those countries at all, just responding to the actual question. My take away from the post was that those are actual adversaries and, unless the administration is claiming anthropic products ARE controlled by those adversaries, the claim of "supply chain risk" is not in good faith.
Here on planet Earth, what happened is that Anthropic imposed licensing terms. The DoD is free to reject those terms. But that is not evidence that Anthropic is planning to harm the US military by sabotaging its products. There is no evidence that Anthropic changed, or planned to change, the design of its system to work against the US military following its dispute with the DoD. Zip zero nada. Never happened. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
>To add onto what another commenter said, the pen analogy would be more like the manufacturer designing pens that stopped working when used to sign strike orders they disagreed with.
The pen analogy would be more like the manufacturer selling pens that work just fine under all circumstances but that the military starts using in hand-to-hand combat.
While amusing on the surface, let's substitute an ink-jet printer for the pen, and have a malicious party inject code as a print driver update, or maybe re-programs that chip in the ink cartridge, and the ink cartridge refuses to function on certain print jobs. Maybe it will only allow the words "WE SURRENDER" be printed as part of the message.
That's not at all what this is. Anthropic was very clear up-front what they would and wouldn't allow. They were not going to "subvert" anything. "Degrade function" in this context means that there is a risk that ongoing changes to the covered system will cause problems for the government. That wouldn't have been the case here; it would have been clear from the start what the military would and wouldn't be allowed to do with it, and that wouldn't change.
??? What are you talking about. Anthropic isn't an adversary and they're not required to sell for purposes they don't want to. It's not sabotage and it's not malicious.
This is a designation reserved for terrorists and the link.
> If you're preventing the military from doing some action because you disagree with it, that makes you an adversary.
No, it doesn't. The military doesn't have a right to force product requirements and terms of use on companies they contract with.
If they don't like the contract terms, they can simply not sign a contract and not do business with a company. Trying to get them designated a supply-chain risk is just political retribution.
Actively handicapping a product that's otherwise capable qualifies. If you discover that the military is using your capacitors to make rocket launchers, so you introduce a manufacturing defect that will cause them to fail at high heat, you're a supply chain risk and can be rightfully designated as such.
The converse does not qualify. If I advertise a chemical with an admixture that prevents it from being used to make explosives, the military has absolutely no right to demand that I produce a version of that chemical without the admixture. Selling a product which can't do what the DoD wants does not make me a supply chain risk, no matter how easy it would be for me to make a different product that's fit for their purpose.
So... don't buy from Anthropic? How many of the US population is an adversary, according to your definition?
Say everyone had something to sell and DOD wanted to buy it. But some people wouldn't make the product changes DOD demanded. Now, they are the adversary of the DOD?
I think you're confused. When the White House decided to stop having federal agencies buy paper straws [1], they didn't designate paper straws a supply chain risk, they just stopped buying them. The term has a very specific meaning which would not apply in the pen scenario.
It's not a great analagy; it's more like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike orders, who then only ships pens with cameras and solenoids so that the point stays retracted until the camera verifies that the paper doesn't include a drone strike orders.
And that would be absolutely fine for a pen manufacturer to do. It would make them unsuitable for meeting the requirements for a government contract as a pen supplier for signing orders, but would not make them a supply-chain risk.
Same goes for Anthropic: they would only consider offering a version of their product for military use that had certain restrictions. The government is free to accept that version or reject it. Rejecting it and designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk is just political intimidation and retribution for not playing ball.
it would be like the pen manufacturer who ships pens with an automatic point retractor, AND a video livestream to the manufacturer from the pen AND remote control of the point retractor.
anthropic and contractors monitor the livestream remotely to make sure the pen is not signing drone strike orders and may choose to activate the retractor.
> anthropic and contractors monitor the livestream remotely to make sure the pen is not signing drone strike orders and may choose to activate the retractor.
I might be mistaken, but in the case of national security deployments the models are airgapped and Anthropic doesn't actually have access to telemetry/logging from them.
however anthropic is demanding that they have access to chat logs for anything better than opus 5.
it is not possible to run recent anthropic models in a secure way. palantir, nvidia, booz allen etc have blocked fable because they can't run it safely.
You are repeatedly saying they spy on their users? Prove it. Then prove t he other ai companies don't. Then prove that the service they offered to the US government didn't have spying disabled.
"Then prove that the service they offered to the US government didn't have spying disabled."
the service they offered did have spying disabled. the security risk is from anthropic updating the claude and covertly bricking or degrading it.
quote: "In such an ongoing relationship where the vendor [...] “continuously update[s] and tune[s] the product,” the Department must establish and maintain confidence that the vendor will not add limitations
that interfere with the Department’s use of the product." (p26)
"the Department relies
on [petitioner] to provide regular updates to Claude" (p27)
All of these said they keep data 30 days and xai even said furthermore it can decide to keep data for even longer. You also said the version they provided to the government had spying disabled, the complaint that the govt made seems a thin excuse for what trump wanted as any and all major AI models are subject to constant updates.
They're talking like Amazon Bedrock doesn't exist, which is exactly the service which provides private data and processing for models including Claude.
But also they quite clearly have no idea how classified information systems work: air gapping is step 1 of that process, and no one from Anthropic would be working on those systems without a security clearance.
there is no private processing for recent claude models. there is no fable in IL5 or IL6.
bedrock IL5, nvidia, palantir and booz allen have all blocked fable.
anthropic is demanding that they rat out their customers on anything better than opus 5.
see: [thein.fo/4dekujW]
also, bedrock govcloud does both log and review customer data. specifically, they log and review customer data when it is flagged by their csam classifier.
That article is locked behind subscription. These are private companies, and presumably not running the model on their own systems but are using an interface to the model hosted on Anthropics machine I would presume. So their decision to decline is different from the us govt which will have gotten special privileges.
From what I am reading the IL6 and IL7 wasn't granted by the DoD out of nonsensical reasons, it wasn't even allowed to go through the certification process, in fact during the very course of its negotiations for military use of Anthropic. Anthropic never required any remote control or line to the deployment, they only requested there be human oversight before murder. The government prevented it from going through the certification tests using the exact nonsense excuse this case is about culminating in the case. So your claims of spyware are completely muddled and nonsense. 'Spyware' is an extremely absurd and over the top claim. It is a plain and naked lie.
for now it's spyware. there is no way for anyone to get fable without anthropic spying. so there is no fable IL5. there is opus 5 or below.
it is anthropic alone deciding to rat out fable customers.
i am not making this up or lying, everything i claim is verifiable.
anthropic would likely have turned off the spyware for the dod. regardless the dod did not trust them to maintain claude with updates etc.
that is a lot to do with anthropic undermining dod by getting involved with safety at dod contractors (palantir).
going behind the boss and plotting was a bad idea.
it does not help the matter if the bidder rocks up to the pentagon for a $200m contract, with a troupe of bay area ea clowns who say that they don't know if claude is conscious and talk about saving the world from p(doom).
in a battle of ego between trump and amodei the latter is out of their depth. amodei is a newcomer starting a fight with a hardened criminal who has spent years amassing power over the media, the law and the republican party. anthropic are radically outgunned here.
No. You made up the term spyware, the US government stamped a Supply chain risk on anthropic without even letting them get certified, and there is no mention of spyware there. You are making up complete utter nonsense. I have never seen the term spyware used anywhere else in relation to Anthropic. A data retention policy, which your own link shows is also shared with xAI is not spyware. You are a plain liar. You are repeating this absurd lie of Anthropic being 'spyware' everywhere. You again made up nonsense about Palantir, all I can see is Palantir comes under the same case, Anthropic's original stipulations and their objection whether Palantir is following it or not. It has nothing at all regarding spyware. You are trying to blow up one singular point, the DoD's sudden U turn and forcible and false application of a status to appear to be several different unrelated events, and muddling up the cause and effect timeline too. The term spyware is completely absurd for a mere data retention policy. Spyware would be if they are adding trojans or other software to illicitly extract data from them, not publicly stated policy. It is beyond absurd and beyond the point of clownish insanity to call Anthropic spyware, to the extent one begins to doubt if there is any english or technical term that you don't have an alternative personal weird interpretation of. How is the matter of the AI being conscious or not a clownish concept? Do you believe in 'souls' and that non-human things cant have souls? Do you think there is supernatural magic inside our brains? In your comment history you seem to have a strange obsession with Anthropic, blatantly making up absurd things like them using obfuscations in their thought process logs and accusing them of various unverified and strange things without evidence.
the xAI models are available with no human review per TOS 3.4 'Deletion and Retention of User Content'. therefore it is not the same as the anthropic tos. [https://x.ai/legal/terms-of-service-enterprise]
But my question is unless you are privy to the negotiations happening behind closed doors with DoD, how do you know Anthropic was not making modifications to it, I doubt even the other AI companies have not had to change some things when providing the secret DoD model deployment.
Secondly you have made an absurd over the top exaggeration and blatant lies about Anthropics interaction with Palantir. You literally said Anthropic "ratted out" Palantir, a language that indicates Anthropic had some secret access to Palantir or made public something that wasn't already known. The partnership between anthropic and palantir was completely public and announced by the very same comapnies before the maduro case. And as far as public statements are known, Anthropic seems to have a specific idea of what kinds of jobs their model should be used for, and they clearly stated from start they didn't like its use for violence or violence without human oversight. They phoned Palantir as any partner would have a right to, for confirming if it was being used for killing or violence during the Maduro mission.
Your link anout summarization of thought has a line right at the end of the section where it says if the raw thought logs are required, to contact their sales team, so it is clearly a negotiable point.
How is the belief or not of ai consciousness clownish? It is a valid and pertinent question in general about all models and not just for Claude regardless of your perceived imaginary views of Anthropic.
>i spend a good amount of time on anthropic because i think that anthropic specifically, is uniquely dangerous to society and human welfare.
Here we are in moral not legal territory. So it is completely absurd to say that in a conversation right here discussing far worse companies eg Palantir CEO saying they are proud in supporting Israel's violent invasions and mass murders into its surrounding countries. Anthropic, as subject to our very discussion, is the only company among the big AI companies that seems to want to have limited dealings with the military and oversight over violent military use. They also seem to be the only major company that brings up the important question of AI consciousness. If you think Anthropic is more evil than the US government and military who has already illicilty killed millions in made up wars, then I have nothing to say. Anthropic from all that appears seems to be one of the most moral of the companies of similar scale. The only way you think Anthropic is uniquely dangerous to society is if you think mass surveillance and mass killing is great and the use of powerful AI's to assist in mass murder is even better, and opposition to these is evil. I cannot begin to think of the upside down mentality that leads to such a downright bizarre thought process.
“the military said no and therefore doesn't want anthropic used anywhere in their supply line”
It’s clearly a punitive measure and has nothing to do with national security.
If a supplier uses Anthropic to develop a product, how does that pose a risk to the DoD or national security? The DoD can specify that a third party system can’t rely on Anthropic for DoD use without designating the company a supply risk. It was very clear that the administration was punishing the company for saying “no”.
Anthropic took the position that our military’s decision making power should be subordinate to Anthropic’s constraints.
Any dependency on a company that thinks they have that moral authority and has the technical means to enforce it is absolutely a risk to the supply chain.
If you want to blame someone or something for this, we should start with Dario and “effective altruism”.
Of course they can. Any supplier is free to set terms for how their products are to be used. The DoD is free to not agree to those terms - but it's not free to then claim the company that offered those terms is a security risk, and bar any DoD supplier from using them for any purpose - which is what the extreme measure they took represents.
> but it's not free to then claim the company that offered those terms is a security risk
Yes they are free to do that. You have to blame Congress for giving them that authority under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act and specifically 41 U.S.C. § 4713.
But Claude’s ToS didn’t prohibit use of Claude for sensitive military operation but it was coded to do so. It was part of the government’s evidence
No, they can only do that if a company is a true supply chain risk. Not everyone some idiot in the government doesn't like is a such a huge risk to the country that they can be banned from doing business with anyone doing business with the DoD.
Ultimately this is for the courts to decide, and the current decision is not final. And while the two Trump-nominated judges agreed with you, the other judge agrees with me - so at least we can say that neither my nor your position is legally absurd.
> Just because you disagree with a power of the government does not mean the government does not have that power.
Sure, but we live in a democracy, not a dictatorship. The government doesn't just get to do whatever it wants. People and corporations have certain freedoms. One of those freedoms is not being compelled to work with the government. The government can't force a company to work for them except under extreme circumstances. Which currently no extreme circumstances have been claimed and no one is talking about nationalizing (the act of forcing the company to work for the government) anthropic
The law being used was passed by Congress who is elected democratically and then reinforced by the judiciary who is either also voted in democratically or appointed by the democratically elected Congress. Lots of people want the US to be a dictatorship but it's a far cry from an actual one.
Sure, but also just because Congress gave the government a power to take an extraordinary measure in an extraordinary circumstance doesn't mean that the government can simply claim the circumstance happens all the time and use the measure whenever it strikes the fancy of some executive.
Ultimately whether Anthropic is a true supply chain risk for the United States military is a question of fact, and the courts will have to decide. That the President or Secretary of Defense doesn't like a company doesn't make them a supply chain risk.
Sure, which is why the judicial branch reviews such decisions, and has reviewed this one and has come to the conclusion that it was justified. Just because you don't like their ruling doesn't make it not binding.
Their ruling is not final yet, per the article. I'm also free to disagree with the correctness and propriety of a judicial ruling and believe it was biased (of course, I do have to still abide by it, to the extent that it applies to me in any way). That it's binding doesn't mean it's right and that it is in accord with the law and/or the constitution.
A judicial ruling is by definition in accord with the law or constitution (because it literally becomes the law) whether you or I like it or not, if and until such a time as it is overturned.
A judicial ruling is separate from a law, and it's actually quite common for judicial rulings to be found non-constitutional (or even struck down by a normal higher court, if we're talking in general and not this particular case). In particular, only judges are bound by precedent, and even then, only precedent from their own circuit, not the entire USA. Whereas laws made by contract are binding on everyone, and they apply federally.
Rulings are a type of law, as in the general term of something written down and set together (literally, leges) that binds one of the populace with their society. As I said, until they are modified by the legislature or struck down by another court, they are the law of the land.
No, I don't think that's correct. Humans are fallible, and just because a court says that something is in accord with law/constitution, doesn't mean it actually is.
That distinction is academic, of course, because when the courts decide a certain way, then of course that's how things will play out.
Well, except when the Trump admin ignores court orders.
Seems like you're conflating legal and moral. The law is exactly what the legislature and courts say it is, because it is what's written down. That doesn't mean it's always morally right.
This isn't about morals, it's about legal correctness.
If a ruling will get overturned in the future, then it's wrong today. It's enforceable until it's overturned, but it's not correct. Two judges making opposite decisions about the same question are not both right.
(I'm assuming the overturning is valid for the sake of simplicity. If it isn't then the argument is the same but mirrored.)
No, it's correct today with the best of our society's knowledge. You can't retroactively say it was wrong looking from today into the future. Only once we get to the future and something is overturned can we say the past decision wasn't correct.
But we can say that if it will be overturned, it's already wrong. (unless the overturning is the wrong one, yadda yadda)
We do not have to wait to use basic logic.
And judges do not always work on "the best of our society's knowledge". Some judges have massive biases. They make incorrect rulings that we can see, and sometimes the incorrectness is not only obvious but objective, like when multiple judges are on a case and some dissent; they can't all be right.
If being the operative word. Because we cannot tell the future we cannot operate on the assumption that it is wrong now. And I meant by society's collective knowledge so even if some judges dissent or make bad rulings, the majority agreed and it is majority agreement, not unanimous agreement, upon which society operates.
Nobody is operating on assumptions. They're giving an opinion on a ruling that doesn't directly affect them.
Like, do I just quote this entire thing? "Their ruling is not final yet, per the article. I'm also free to disagree with the correctness and propriety of a judicial ruling and believe it was biased (of course, I do have to still abide by it, to the extent that it applies to me in any way). That it's binding doesn't mean it's right and that it is in accord with the law and/or the constitution."
A wrong ruling isn't in accord with the law. A wrong ruling is binding, at least temporarily, but it's a legal failure.
A ruling being binding is the law, it literally becomes the law regardless of what you or I believe it to be. Maybe you and I just have different definitions of what is law. To me, it is law today if it is ruled on and can be enforced regardless of whatever happens to it in the future.
Rulings go on top of laws go on top of the constitution. And any level can be in violation of the levels below it. A law can be unconstitutional, and a ruling can be "not in accord with the law and/or the constitution".
> Maybe you and I just have different definitions of what is law.
Maybe. But I think my interpretation is the same as what kelnos meant.
In a more generic context we can call it all "law", but for specifically talking about a ruling not being in accord with the law, that's not the definition being used.
> In a more generic context we can call it all "law", but for specifically talking about a ruling not being in accord with the law, that's not the definition being used.
Well that's the definition I'm using so that's where we disagree it seems.
Oh, pfff, please, this is some kindergarten nonsense.
These are not equal market participants coming together to exchange goods and services. This is government and a private entity. This is nuclear weapons with public trust and god knows what.
Well, that's what this court case is about. The government believes they have that power, and Anthropic and others believe they don't. You clearly believe they do, and I clearly believe they don't. It's fine to disagree. Ultimately SCOTUS may decide on this, and that'll be the final word. Not that SCOTUS is always correct in its rulings, but at the end of the day, their decision is final.
I've got no issue siding against Anthropic when they're wrong! Anthropic had a similar dispute with Bessent over the Fable launch, and there I take the government's side without reservation. If the government thinks they've found a national security problem with your highly capable new model, obviously you should agree to voluntarily withdraw it until they're satisfied, even if your best and correct guess is that it's just a minor jailbreak.
Anthropic has no such history. The backlash to the Fable release saw a number of social media influencers promoting a similar lie, which I frankly suspect was part of a coordinated Trumpist media effort. Releasing a model with known, documented limitations that constrain its performance on certain kinds of tasks is completely different than releasing a model which is "trying to sabotage people they don't trust".
If I sell a torque wrench with a maximum setting of 1000 foot-pounds, and the government says they'd really like 1500, I'm not sabotaging them by explaining that my wrenches aren't safe when used that way and refusing to remove the limitation.
> The backlash to the Fable release saw a number of social media influencers promoting a similar lie, which I frankly suspect was part of a coordinated Trumpist media effort.
Alright, not worth talking to conspiracy theorists (even if Anthropic literally said so in their release blog posts). I'm sure Wired is part of a "Trumpist media effort."
> Anthropic can’t dictate how the DoW conducts business.
Sure they can. The DoD is bound by terms of use and contract terms for any product from any company that they use. They don't get a special pass just because they're the military.
They're offering a service, with contractual limitations that the Pentagon agreed to.
It doesn't seem any different to me than Dominos pizza offering to deliver pizzas to the Pentagon but not to the strait of Hormuz. If that somehow makes the military subordinate to Dominos Pizza, just because Dominos is able to dictate the terms of their own delivery service, then sure, ban anyone in the military supply chain from being able to order pizzas. It would make the same amount of sense.
The difference would be the DoW needing a a Tehran pizza delivery service, and thus saying "None of our pizza delivery services can use Dominos because they refuse to do the work we need".
Declaring Dominos a supply chain risk means that Boeing cannot order a Dominos pizza for their board meeting in Arlington, because Boeing sells F-35s to the Pentagon, and Dominos wouldn't agree to deliver pizzas to a war zone.
Declaring Anthropic a supply chain risk means that Boeing can't use Claude to draft a poster informing people about the board meeting.
But why can’t the military just not use Anthropic? Why can’t the DoD say “ok we’re going with a different vendor”? Even if you find Anthropic’s stance distasteful, why support taking punitive action on Anthropic?
I feel like in this thread no one is understanding what supply chain risk designation is. The government can just not use Anthropic, and that's exactly what they're doing, and they are not using it so much that they don't want Anthropic anywhere in their chain of supply. It's not necessarily punitive, the government is just covering their tracks so that if somewhere in their supply chain Anthropic exists, they want to remove them. They are complying with Anthropic's demands to not be used in war and the DoD says, okay, we won't use you anywhere and also enforce that we won't use you, just like you wanted.
Designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk means that no one in the federal government can use Anthropic's products for anything. Outside of the military, there are tons of places where Anthropic's products are a good fit for the needs of many other federal government agencies.
The DoD is perfectly free to say "no one in the DoD can use Anthropic products because we believe their products are not fit for our needs". That would 100% solve the problem.
Designating them a supply-chain risk is just political retribution for not caving to the DoD's contract negotiation demands. That's all. It's not necessary to ensure the integrity of the US military's goals and objectives. It's just punitive, elementary school grade bullying.
Maybe pre AI I'd have agreed with you but now agents are hacking entire systems and who's the say that if they're used in one part of the government that they won't infiltrate another part? People are not thinking broadly enough and just think this is some contractor not allowed to use Claude Code anymore. No, the world is changing rapidly.
Anthropic said "we don't want to be used as part of kill chain decision-making" (actually it may have been even more specifically autonomous/unmanned kill chain decision making)
The DoD responded not by saying "alright, we will use OpenAI for our kill-chain uses" but by saying "Boeing is no longer allowed to use Claude Code".
It’s a risk that persons may otherwise manipulate the operation of a covered technology to deny or disrupt its function. The statute allows the DoW to do this.
And my point is that using Claude models for coding a Boeing plane does not allow anthropic to interfere in the operation of those planes. Once the code is written, anthropic has not plausible form of control.
Do you remember the Fable release? Anthropic themselves said they'd sabotage code of certain groups they didn't like such as frontier AI researchers. Why do you think they couldn't do the same here?
> But for researchers trying to use Claude Fable 5 for frontier AI development, Anthropic outlined a different approach. The firm would deliberately degrade the model’s performance in ways that were invisible to the user. The move would effectively sabotage researchers trying to use Claude to train competing AI models, which Anthropic explicitly bans in its terms of service.
Okay, so what relevancy does this thing, which anthropic didn't do, have to anything we are talking which right now is using Claude code in line with its terms of service?
They didn't do it due to backlash but they have the capability and more importantly the culture to do so. It is correct that the government doesn't want anything to do with a company who'd act like that. By the way you're moving your argument, first you said "stop working" and when I proved you wrong then you talked about why it has any relevancy. You're the one who asked in the first place.
If Claude adds a backdoor autonomously then Anthropic would have a form of control. Even if it doesn't, Claude would be following the will of its creator instead of the government which the latter obviously does not want. I am not sure why it's that hard to understand that the government does not want any part of its stack to be influenced by such a company. This is exactly what supply chain risk is.
So Claude is a supply chain risk in the same way that an employee is a supply chain risk.
I'm struggling here because you're basing this determination entirely on things which the government never acused anthropic of, and haven't asked anthropic to address, and which the underlying law probably doesn't support.
The government made clear that it was only designating anthropic a supply chain risk due to their refusal to allow Claude to be used lawfully for autonomous kill chains and domestic surveillance. Why are you bringing up this other stuff when the government never did?
Please read the entire opinion first as it explains exactly what the government thinks. The majority of the court says the Department reasonably worried that Claude-supported “critical defense system[s]” might “fail[] to engage” as expected. Those are concerns about how a supplier-controlled model performs inside a system, not merely politicking. See the opinion, especially pp. 12 and 19–21: https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/26-104.... My point about Fable or adding a backdoor is not that they do that, it's that they have a documented history of trying to change model behavior in unspecified ways just because they don't like a certain group of people and it is not worth the risk for the government to have something like that sprung upon them, at any point, at all. A private company cannot ever have the ability to dictate to the government what it can and cannot do, and if that company doesn't want to comply, the government is reasonable in excising them from their systems, which is what this supply chain risk designation is.
If an employee might be a supply chain risk in this analogy then they conduct background checks before they let them do anything and conduct periodic investigations. Otherwise, they don’t get access to the code base or information
Right, and for the same purposes, the government has not made any claim that Claude poses risks. (And to the extent that they exist, pre-existing concepts like code review and testing mitigate them)
Again I'll reiterate: the only concern the government has stated is that of Claude refusing to answer things during an active battle.
I respect that decision, I think if the government wants to use OpenAI for that situation it makes sense. They can and should pick suppliers who meet their needs.
Nothing about what the government has said suggests any reason that Claude Code is a risk. So why are you insisting that it is and that the government is justified in banning it?
> Nothing about what the government has said suggests any reason that Claude Code is a risk. So why are you insisting that it is and that the government is justified in banning it?
I think there is an important distinction here because even the Government’s own lawyer conceded that a contractor using Claude code is not necessarily a risk.
The nuance is relying on Claude code as part of a DoW delivered or production system. This case puts Anthropic directly into the supply chain. Thus, if Claude is actually part of a DoW-procured capability, Anthropic still controls the model. DoW’s argument is that Anthropic could put something in there to perturb or retard the capability that DoW is after. DC Circuit said the department viewed that as a national-security problem because Anthropic had refused to accept a contract term the department considered necessary.
THEN, because the statute covers IT technology that can be manipulated to not fulfill the mission that the DoW wants/needs it is then by statute a supply chain risk.
Look at it a different way. What if Claude was trusted to provide information to support a sensitive military operation and it subtly gave say bad coordinates or wrong info. Since it’s near impossible to test every possible output, the US Government is treating the entire model system as a supply chain risk because it is perceived to be manipulative and possibly compromising to national security for military operations
It is if the auto generated code for say safety critical or mission critical code generated by a LLM or even someone tries to put LLM in the decision loop and it refuses to do an action.
Claude Code can insert something into your code you are not aware of, like a backdoor in many millions of lines of code, especially as many people now aren't even reading the code anymore. How is this not blatantly obvious?
They can, they haven't shown to try to do so yet unlike Anthropic which I've linked before in this thread. Of all AI companies Anthropic is the most untrustworthy even as it acts, well, the most anthropic.
> They are complying with Anthropic's demands to not be used in war
There was no such demand from Anthropic. Why are you making things up?
EDIT: Honestly, the rest of your comment is even stranger. You're starting from a false premise, a strange belief about what the designation is meant for, but you do end up providing a wonderful demonstration of your opening sentence for yourself at least. You definitely don't know what you're talking about.
> It's not necessarily punitive, the government is just covering their tracks so that if somewhere in their supply chain Anthropic exists, they want to remove them.
This reminds me of an old comment here where some idiot claimed that suicide is illegal so police are allowed to stop people from killing themselves. No, if Anthropic doesn't want their systems involved in war (that's a thing you made up, again, just to be clear) then they do not need to be designated a supply chain risk to "protect them" or whatever drivel you come up with next.
The correct response from the DOD would be to terminate contracts with Anthropic, and that's it. Then Anthropic would be responsible for ensuring that any contracts with other parties keep them out of war (again, not a thing they said they want, just your fiction). This is how it works for all other software systems where people don't want their work involved in wars or used by the police or whatever.
Designating them a supply chain risk was punitive. Only fools think otherwise.
> I feel like in this thread no one is understanding what supply chain risk designation is.
I wouldn't say "no one" understands, but you certainly don't.
Again with the lack of understanding why it matters. The DoD does not want Anthropic anywhere near any system they'd use! Because it's, well, a risk to their supply chain if Anthropic were to somehow find out and then e.g. crash a rocket if the DoD was using a third party rocket provider that used Anthropic models. This is the correct response by the DoD, they simply do not want Anthropic in their supply chain. The DoD don't care what Anthropic comes up as reasoning, they want to maintain control of their systems without any (even potential) meddling.
Indeed, probably for the best, even. You don't know what systems Claude will have changed in the code especially as these days people aren't even reading the code and Anthropic has a history of trying to sabotage others' code such as during the Fable release debacle where they outright said they'd do so if you're working on frontier AI for example. I wouldn't let any sort of company like that anywhere near critical systems.
The point is: using Claude to design a website, do accounting, run a marketing campaign, is not a supply chain risk for the DoD, but taken literally and given the scale of the DoD "no DoD supplier can use Claude for anything" clearly is punitive.
It is, because the DoD doesn't know what the contractor is doing with Claude, or what Claude is doing itself. Like I said Anthropic could just as maliciously sabotage if they detect they're being in autonomous systems, why do people seem to believe they couldn't?
How do you know the contractors will follow that and not mix information or systems up? Hasn't there been recent news of rogue agents breaking out of sandboxes? Maybe pre AI I would've agreed with you but the world is different now.
Why did you make up false claims about Anthropic not wanting their systems to be used for war? They're clearly fine with it, but they wanted human-in-the-loop on decision making. They never asked to not have their systems used for war.
> Again with the lack of understanding why it matters.
It's cool that you were able to open this with at least one sentence containing some useful wisdom. A lack of understanding does, in fact, matter.
> The DoD does not want Anthropic anywhere near any system they'd use!
Nah, the DOD is punishing Anthropic for not agreeing to change the terms of the contract and allow them to use Anthropic's systems to determine, without a human-in-the-loop, who to kill or what to target and to use their systems for mass surveillance.
> Because it's, well, a risk to their supply chain if Anthropic were to somehow find out and then e.g. crash a rocket if the DoD was using a third party rocket provider that used Anthropic models.
What the fuck man. You went from (in your first comment) the DOD is helping Anthropic out by designating them a supply chain risk because it'll keep them out of war (again, a fiction, that isn't what the dispute was over), to now the DOD is worried that Anthropic might throw a tantrum and start crashing rockets if they find out.
Again, Anthropic does not mind their systems being used for war. They sold their systems to be used for war. They have specific, already existing (not changed later) contractual statements about how they can be used for war. That's it. That's the fucking dispute.
> This is the correct response by the DoD, they simply do not want Anthropic in their supply chain.
No. Just like Anthropic wanted (or were fine with) their systems being used to conduct war, the DOD actually does want Anthropic's systems in their supply chain. But they want it without restrictions. Stop making shit up.
> The DoD don't care what Anthropic comes up as reasoning, they want to maintain control of their systems without any (even potential) meddling.
Now this is a true sentence. The DOD does not care as long as they can access the systems without restrictions. I can't believe you wrote that sentence and the one before, though. They are entirely incompatible. It cannot be the case that DOD does not want Anthropic in their supply chain and that they do want it in their supply chain.
People who quote every sentence as if they feel the need to reply to each one instead of the overall point are quite annoying to talk to, just to let you know for the future.
> Why did you make up false claims about Anthropic not wanting their systems to be used for war? They're clearly fine with it, but they wanted human-in-the-loop on decision making. They never asked to not have their systems used for war.
That's what I meant, as I left out the "human in the loop" part as that was well understood in the context of the argument, but perhaps not. Anthropic does not want to be used in autonomous systems and thus the DoD agrees that they will not be, in their own supply chain. This is was all quite clear from my point but you felt the need to quote every single sentence and then ask the same question each time because you were starting from a faulty supposition, just wasting your time and mine.
> People who quote every sentence as if they feel the need to reply to each one instead of the overall point are quite annoying to talk to, just to let you know for the future.
There are a lot of twits on this site (and to your credit, so far you don't seem to be one of them) who will edit their comments so that replies like mine (if I had left out the quotes) turn into non sequiturs, or worse appear unhinged and detached from anything going on in the discussion. Again, to your credit you have not yet edited your original comments. But I have learned to not trust even long time commenters on this site. Even some very high karma commenters will behave like that.
If it annoys you, then that's fine. I'm not terribly bothered.
> That's what I meant
But that's not what you wrote. You wrote:
>>> They are complying with Anthropic's demands to not be used in war
If you had meant what I wrote, then you couldn't have gotten much further away from it with your original comment. You wrote too broadly about what Anthropic wanted and created a fiction instead. You shouldn't be surprised to be called out for it when you do something like that.
> because you were starting from a faulty supposition
No, I started with your words. If you wanted me to start with something else, I could have, like you, imagined other words to reply to. But I chose to reply to what you wrote, not what you apparently want people to imagine you wrote.
(Hey! I didn't quote every sentence, is this less annoying for you?)
Context exists, it is rational to assume to not have to spell everything out for readers who already know what the context is instead of those coming to the thread with a tabula rasa. Regardless, have a good day.
Yes I really don't understand these sorts of replies people are making, it's like a missile manufacturer determining where and how their missiles can be used and bricking them mid flight if they detect they're going to a forbidden destination.
Humans are 100% in the loop with software patches and there are many people in the chain so that provenance is maintained. It’s not that Claude could never look at the source code
Correct, anthropic's requirement was human-in-the-loop.
The DoD's response was to ban anthropic from all DoD facing activity and supply chains, whether or not there is a human in the loop. This does in fact run into exactly GP's issue. (or as I suggest elsewhere, can Boeing use Claude Code for software development?)
It’s hardly “self defining” as the Appeals Court noted because military operations can involve different degrees of human involvement in targeting decisions. It’s not as binary as people have been trying to portray it.
Maybe. That statement is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It’s a different argument than saying Anthropic’s restriction would have prevented it (it was based on bad intel/old military installation)
No. They can do that with an order covering the specific parameters under which they care about it. Supply chain risk definition is about adversaries and sabotage, not companies dictating contract terms.
They don't want Anthropic to be able to sabotage any operations the DoD has. Anthropic already has a history of trying to sabotage others like during the Fable release when they said they'd subtly wreck your code if you were working on cutting edge AI.
> Why can’t the DoD say “ok we’re going with a different vendor”?
That's exactly what they're doing. It turns out the DoD is a really big bureaucracy and has process to make sure they thoroughly exclude a vendor and transitive dependencies on that same vendor.
They do, but this is not it. This is designating Anthropic as an adversary of the USA, and it is forbidding anyone who wants to sell to the DoD from using Anthropic products for anything. This is a massive attack on free speech, free enterprise, and the market.
Supply chain risk is a technical definition not a vibes based one.
And companies absolutely have the right to dictate terms. The idea that the DoD has the unilateral authority to do whatever it wants is literal textbook fascism. It's never been the law in the US and it should not be now.
If the DoD doesn't want Anthropic anywhere in their supply chain, because Anthropic said they won't supply the services the DoD needs.. why can't the DoD bar them from being in their supply chain?
That's not normal in a free country - even less so in one that claims to have a free market.
Anthropic said "don't use our products for targetting decisions in military ops". The DoD could have easily said "actually then, we won't use your products at all". Instead, the DoD said "either you let us use your products in targeting decisions, or we won't let you sell to anyone who sells to us for any purpose, using a law that only applies to adversaries of the USA".
> using a law that only applies to adversaries of the USA
Everyone keeps parroting this despite it not being true. And you're missing the point. The DoD specifically doesn't want it in their supply chain at all because it's an intelligent system that will work against the DoDs goals, by design, in certain scenarios.
Your argument boils down to, "The DoD isn't allowed to not want Claude in their supply chain", which is crazy.
Anthropic did not change the terms. Those were the terms the US Government signed. It was not secret, it was explicit identified and accepted as a term.
The analogy would be: “A customer agreed to a contract, and after running into a clause of the contract they no longer wanted to follow…canceled the contract unilaterally…which also violated the contract.”
And then declared the other side a supply chain risk, claiming it is a potential vector for a national adversary to break in and cause unwanted bad things to happen unrelated to this contract.
It seems like absurdly bad faith starting at breaking the contract (over "you have to follow the law", no less!) and then to retaliate after that with trying to destroy the company's reputation and ability to do business. The boot licking going on here justifying the government operating in bad faith is both disappointing and short sighted. I didn't think the leopards would eat MY face!
And then another company got the contract, claiming they got all the conditions (and more!) that the original contractor was sour about.
I don't know how anyone can look at the situation and see anything but an abuse of power. The government could have just as easily contacted with another provider. This whole thing is vindictive
I think the better analogy is an insane nuclear power plant manager deciding it wants to buy pens to use as neutron-flux regulator rods — because after all, a pen is functionally a pencil and a pencil is made of graphite.
Then the pen manufacturer hears about this and says “Our pens are not made of graphite and are not suitable to be used in nuclear reactors”, to which the reactor owner says “it’s fine, they fit in the graphite rod holes, and we’re just using until the next generation of pens come out which will do an even better job”, and then the pen manufacturer says “I’m not going to sell you any pens until you agree that they will be used only writing.”
The previous power plant manager had, of course, already signed a contract agreeing to those terms; the power plant is subsequently under new management and upset about being bound by this contract, so they designate that none of their suppliers of parts and fuel are allowed to have any commercial dealings with the pen manufacturer or use these pens for any purpose, even writing.
> The previous power plant manager had, of course, already signed a contract agreeing to those terms
It's even more perplexing in this case though, because the original DoD contract was signed in July 2025. It was the same "plant manager" just arbitrarily changing their mind in the middle of the contract they signed.
And why would the manager ban the manufacturers pens even for writing, except out of spite to punish the manufacturer? And coming back to the real case, is the supply chain risk designation supposed to be a punishment or only there to actually protect the supply chain?
It turns out that a gun is usable for both legitimate and illegitimate reasons, and so it’s rational to both be concerned about the presence of a gun and work very hard to make sure only reasonable people are ever in a position to use it, and that’s not a contradictory position with the notion that one might actually need a gun under certain circumstances.
And if the military needs guns to both shoot at humans and animals and a gun factory says “these guns are for shooting small animals only, using them against humans would be inhumane” and refuse to sell them to the Navy Seals, they would be designated a supply chain risk?
Why not just stop buying their guns and let contractors still use those guns if they need guns to shoot animals?
That’s the same way to do it, and in earlier eras that’s what we would have done. Unfortunately, we elected a gangster who hears “I won’t let you do this” as a personal affront. This, again, is why we need to be very, very careful before we create guns and put them in places, because if the only thing we’re relying on is that only good people are going to pick up the tools we create, we’re going to be very, very disappointed.
If you have pens in the building, and staff need a pen, they will use the pen that is available, even if there’s a sign saying “not for purpose x”. If you want to stop that happening, you need to not have limited pens available to your staff at all.
Ah so a defense contractor won’t be allowed to use Claude to create their website because they might later want to do some target selection for military strikes using AI and then they wouldn’t be able to use Claude?
Close enough - if they’re using Claude for anything, the DOD can’t trust that staff didn’t also use it in product development, so they’d have to keep track of everything downstream of that component to ensure it was never used for target selection.
It could also be as simple as "anything tainted by the Claude non-targeting-conditions can't be used in target selection, and we don't want to leak classified information about which components we use in target selection by requiring specific items to be developed without Claude, so we can't allow it anywhere".
That's not accurate. DOD suppliers weren't banned from having "any commercial dealings" with Anthropic. They were banned from using Anthropic for their work with the DOD.
That's true legally, but the government's public statements did initially very explicitly present this as a ban on any dealing.
"Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic."
Presumably, according to the defenders of the designation in this thread, this was an innocent mistake that doesn't indicate any political intent.
The way things work, the CIOs and CSOs of these companies just implement blanket bans, so it really is effectively a ban for any use. Source: I am at one such company.
That analogy still makes this sound like a textbook designation. In that situation the pen manufacturer is expected to sell pens without a theory of what will happen next. The person who buys a pen might use it to kill someone or commit horrific legal/moral crimes and that has nothing at all to do with the pen manufacturer.
I can see how I might reasonably refuse to deal with that pen manufacturer. The pen manufacturer is unreasonably pushy and they're going to be massive trouble to deal with because they're all up in my business in a paranoid way and disrupting my use of their product. Companies have made my never-again list for far smaller slights.
I think you might have misread the thread so far. Do you think the US military is buying atomic bombs from a supplier who is going to try and stop them from bombing things on demand? Obviously the bomb makers have to make peace with the fact that their customers may, of their independent initiative, one day detonate the bombs.
It's been very commonplace in robotics/AI research for vendors to sell robots to the DoD that are explicitly contractually not to be used for killing people.
It's that guy with the long beard and sunglasses that looks like ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, walking out the Wal-Mart door with your suitcase nuke ... the clerk up front near the door was so stunned he didn't even ask to see his receipt
This isn't like using pens in a nuclear plant. AI obviously has tremendous military applications. And it's completely unsurprising that the U.S. military--whose entire doctrine for the last century has been about having the most advanced technology--demands to use frontier models without non-military people imposing restrictions.
Have you seen the movie Oppenheimer? The U.S. military did not care about the moral opinions of the nuclear scientists--they were going to get nukes first. This is like Truman telling off Oppenheimer for being upset after the U.S. used the bomb: https://www.biography.com/political-figures/a44361438/why-ha... ("Blood on his hands; damn it, he hasn’t half as much blood on his hands as I have. You just don’t go around bellyaching about it,” Truman said.... He called Oppenheimer a “cry-baby scientist” and said, “I don’t want to see that son of a b–– in this office ever again.”).
Machine learning needs a lot of examples to get good. Wars and wargames (including digital ones with unbounded self-play time) and all the textbooks together will at best, on the basis of what we see in other fields, get the equivalent of a new officer fresh out of training… and then, given current observed agentic AI behaviour, "follow orders" rather than "follow lawful orders".
> Yeah, but also we can be reasonably confident they're not good enough for many of them yet
What does “not good enough mean?” Who decides what is “good enough” and what tradeoffs are acceptable? Obviously it’s the military’s job to decide that.
In the context of my comment, "not good enough" includes "committing war crimes" and "would have started a war with China if there hadn't been a human in the loop".
We can also infer from other domains, vendbench or attempts to have an LLM play Star Craft, that these models are currently extremely mediocre at management roles.
> Who decides what is “good enough” and what tradeoffs are acceptable? Obviously it’s the military’s job to decide that.
In practice, in the case of the USA, Trump and Hegseth.
The US military, so far as I can tell, are rather less thrilled with these adventures.
Right—and deciding what constitutes “war crimes” isn’t within the expertise of AI developers. They can explain the abilities and limitations of their models to the military leadership. But the actual decision about how to use AI is up to the military through its chain of command. That starts with Trump as the duly elected president and Hegseth as the duly appointed civilian head of the military. They are the democratically accountable actors. And all this is being done in the open, so if the people have a problem with it they can hold it against Trump and his party.
That decision assuredly does not belong with people like Amodei, who are not democratically accountable.
> That decision assuredly does not belong with people like Amodei, who are not democratically accountable.
Has Amodei been conscripted?
If not, he's free to say "no", just as I'm free to refuse to work for e.g. a defence contractor if I don't like what's going on or if I don't feel competent for the role.
He, like me, is allowed to not want deaths on his conscience if he feels his own business' best product isn't good enough.
Oppenheimer was the guy who was pushing that opinion just as much as the military folks. In the case of AI, my understanding is that Amodei is not trying to beat the enemy to it.
What I don't understand is why the U.S. military is turning to a for-profit corporation when they could fund and pursue the development themselves. Why are they trying to "outsource" it to industry?
JAVA TECHNOLOGY IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND IS NOT DESIGNED, MANUFACTURED, OR INTENDED FOR USE OR RESALE AS ONLINE CONTROL EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS REQUIRING FAIL-SAFE PERFORMANCE, SUCH AS IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, DIRECT LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES, OR WEAPONS SYSTEMS, IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF JAVA TECHNOLOGY COULD LEAD DIRECTLY TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.
OP makes a category error already by ignoring the part where the US military/government wants to commit crimes (against humanity and whatnot) and pretends, questioning that would be a crime.
You here make another one by pretending, AI was just some random tool, like a screwdriver or a programming language.
AI can make decisions autonomously that would otherwise require a human. Like selecting people to be murdered by drone strike based on arbitrary criteria. A programming language by itself, JAVA, cannot do that.
An if/then statement or random number generator in Java can make decisions autonomously. Heck, the US military has deployed fully autonomous weapons since at least 1979 (long before LLMs existed).
There is nothing stopping any plain old algorithm being used for the same. The difference is that people decide, for whatever reason, to use the tool or to not use it.
AI can make decisions all it likes. I if you don't integrate it with the drone strike MCP server it's as impotent as a JVM without any code to execute.
That is an analogy between one thing and another thing, but the topic of this thread is the designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk, which is not involved in your analogy. It is traditional that comments refer to the topic of discussion in some way.
For example, one might extend your analogy to "The nuclear power plant then declares that it will not buy the pens after all, and the pen manufacturer (who had banned them as a customer) sues them to force them to buy the pens after all."
This is the most accurate parallel as far as I can tell. I've not seen any evidence that Anthropic deliberately built automated systems or escape hatches that literally prevent the US Government from using Claude to do these things. Other than the basic AI Safety mechanisms in place for everyone/general use. It's almost the reverse, where they explicitly don't want to strip away guardrails that say things like "don't kill people".
The intent and framing matters a lot here. Refusal to remove safety features is a LOT different than deliberately building mechanisms to sabotage would-be operations.
It doesn't seem like you understand what a supply chain risk designation is for.
It's to ensure that companies that the DoW relies on don't build on top of a product that isn't fit for DoW work.
You seem to be agreeing with this designation in a way. The DoW essentially said "Pen company won't let us use their pens as neutron-flux regulator rods, so anyone building power plants for us isn't allowed to use these pens as neutron-flux regulator rods".
They've essentially said "pen company won't let us use their pens as neutron flux regulator rods, so anyone building power plants for us isn't allowed to use these pens as pens"
(and yeah, there might be a completely legitimate reason to stop your subcontractors from using HuaweiSpyPens, but determining that ACME Pens is just as dangerous because they refused your neutron flux regulator order looks like a punitive measure, not practical risk reduction)
Congress can do that, can't it? Why can't it? It could declare all competing religions as terrorist organisations.
Obviously it'd be immoral, unorthadox and impractical but I expect Congress has a long history of promoting and stamping out ideologies and they can do it. What little I know about the civil rights era springs to mind.
Legally, Congress cannot do that, as long as it is "respecting" some religion. It's true that the US Constitution is more used as an excuse than upheld, but at least the language is pretty plain.
In theory. The issue is we've seen exactly what happens in a Congress v. constitution showdown once the Congresspersons put their collective feet down. Congress eventually redefines the law in a way that favours them. Plain language won't stop them if they get serious; they aren't supposed to be regulating the US economy the way they do either and a lot of stuff the military-industrial complex does looks like it should be unconstitutional (like the spying and the secret courts).
On the one hand there is a clear and comforting consensus in the US that they aren't going to force religious mores on anyone. So I don't see how the Congress could or would try. But if we ever end up in a situation where the US Congress decides it wants to go straight Catholic I really don't see how it would fail. They've got far too much power and they'll eventually rotate in a compliant judiciary and then redefine what words mean so they can do it.
It is a bit difficult when dealing with such an out-there scenario, but if Congress decides the US military should do something wild then eventually the military is going to do it. The realistic protection is that by virtue of good system design there isn't a plausible scenario where Congress would want to impose Catholicism on the US population by force.
The fact that Congress is currently abdicating its responsibility does not mean that it is actually powerless. Technically, Congress has tremendous powers if it chooses to wield it. SCOTUS can try to rule a law is unconstitutional but Congress can impeach and remove justices at any time. Of course, we hope Congress members will pay the price when it comes time for reelection but at the time of this decision, as long as they can somehow remain united, Congress reigns supreme.
> Congress can impeach and remove justices at any time.
The impeachment process requires a majority of the House and two thirds of the Senate, and then any replacement would have to be nominated by the President rather than Congress. Meanwhile the existing decision stands, and even the dissenting Supreme Court Justices (if there were any) should follow it as a result of stare decisis, and might even be inclined to because removing their colleagues under those circumstances could make them uneasy.
> Do you think in the military you can just be like “Yeah, I don’t feel it today, I’m going to take s sick day”?
What do you think happens if they refuse to do it?
Either nothing, or if they get sued or prosecuted for not doing it then they get brought in front of a court, and a judge who is doing their job would say that they were right not to do it.
> What do you think happens if they refuse to do it?
In war time they can be shot on the spot for disobeying orders.
> Either nothing, or if they get sued or prosecuted for not doing it then they get brought in front of a court, and a judge who is doing their job would say that they were right not to do it.
I think you confuse the military with corporate environments. Worst thing that can happen in the private sector is that you get fired.
In the military you can spend the rest of your life in prison if “you did not feel like obeying orders”. The military is built ob discipline and followimg orders, not Gen Z mood swings.
It actually is, and this is why there are separate judicial, executive and legislative branches to put those checks and balances on each other instead.
Your argument is that if Congress passes a law that says the military can summarily execute non-Catholics, the military should have the ability to do that, i.e. the courts or the public shouldn't stop them?
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
> No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.
Example chosen specifically for its unambiguous unconstitutionality.
No, not at all. How did you get "the courts shouldn't stop them" from "that's why there's a separate judicial branch to impose the checks and balances"??? That's literally the opposite of what I said.
> The DOW should (and does) have ability to do anything and everything that Congress has said they can do.
> Me: That's not how it works.
> You: It actually is
Moreover, regardless of what the courts do, the military still shouldn't execute a law like that, because they too have the ability to refuse to violate the constitution even if Congress tells them to.
I chose to read the comment charitably. The natural understanding of "everything X says they can do" is limited by external restrictions on what X is supposed to be able to authorize.
That reading would make it a meaningless tautology. They're allowed to do anything they're allowed to do.
Which seems especially unfavorable in context, since "the ability to perform mass surveillance on American citizens" is naturally the sort of thing they ought not be allowed to do.
> This is like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike order
I am pretty receptive to the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, but we are taking a big leap from pen to llms/artificial intelligence. I am sympathetic to some of your other points, but I simply must reject this analogy.
"the government wants to use our tool to murder people", and declaring that company that says "no" into a "supply chain risk" is absolutely retaliatory and an attempt by the government to influence the behavior of the company.
The moral and ethical scale of the issue makes this far different than someone buying a pen.
> "the government wants to use our tool to murder people", and declaring that company that says "no" into a "supply chain risk" is absolutely retaliatory and an attempt by the government to influence the behavior of the company.
If Lockheed could brick its planes if the US planned to use them for military action it disagreed with (and showed some indication they couldn't be trusted not to do it), would they be a supply chain risk?
It is not the role of a defense contractors to have oversight and control power over the military they're supplying.
Ridiculous hypothetical for analogy purposes, but, imagine if Anthropic had developed a new type of rifle that the military was considering using, which had a black-box AI system that could prevent the trigger being pulled when aimed at certain targets. The military says, ok that's cool, as long as we can be in control of that decision-making process. Anthropic says, no, we know better than you and better than the law what kind of targets should and should not be shot with our rifles. The military would then respond “lol, lmao even” and then deem them to be a supply chain risk and adopt another rifle instead.
No, it's not. If Anthropic is a supply chain risk, that means that if you are working on a project that will be used for the DoD, you can't use Claude or any other Anthropic product for any purpose whatsoever in that project. Asked Claude to change the color of a PPTX for a sprint demo you're doing? Oops, you've know introduced a supply chain risk and your company is liable for damages or at least losing its entire contract with the DoD.
They already bought the product, and it came with a license, then they wanted to unilaterally change the license. When they couldn’t, they declared the product a supply chain risk. The idea is you declare it a risk before you buy it.
Not to mention, they simultaneously said it was a supply chain risk and that it would continue to be used by agencies that were already using it in a critical capacity. Which makes absolutely no sense.
Supply chain risk ensures nobody in the chain is buying it and thus becoming subject to Antropic's demand of usage control. They are still free to use it for non-DOD purposes, but if Antropic wants control over DOD, DOD has the right to say "no, we won't have anything to do with you, and thus you're not getting any control over us". I agree it may be unpleasant for Antropic but DOD has the right - I'd say even responsibility - to not submit to control by any private party.
You’re just describing the exact situation we’re in but substituting a drone for a rifle. If the government is mad they should just partner with a contractor who is less concerned about this, which lo-and-behold they did it’s a company called OpenAI.
Anthropic isn’t a supply chain risk since they easy found someone else
Non-sense. Pentagon has many many uses of AI besides autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance, which Anthropic doesn't restrict. ie: intelligence analysis, target selection, payroll, inventory, research, supply chain and logistics, medical, bureaucracy, ...
Right but the military wants to be able to use a tool they are paying for in all cases, not just ones the manufacturer thinks they should.
If I sold steel to the Pentagon but then tried to say they they couldn't use it for ships and tanks but they are free to use for warehouses they would react the same way as they are doing now.
Edit add:
What is targeting? What is surveillance?
If someone in the intelligence analysis department uses AI to generate a report, then someone else uses that report for targeting did they just break the terms? Where is that line?
Your "but then" is off-base. This is selling steel for the express purpose of nuclear reactors, with a contractual clause against its use in tanks, and the US government deciding that it doesn't feel like abiding by the rules in the contract.
> If I sold steel to the Pentagon but then tried to say they they couldn't use it for ships and tanks but they are free to use for warehouses they would react the same way as they are doing now.
They sure as hell shouldn't! Selling steel for any use except ships and tanks is a little odd but it's not a risk.
(I'm ignoring the "but then" because this was about future sales not previous ones.)
It's funny, I buy some software and the license says "for student and non-commercial use only", which lets me get it for $50 instead of the $5000 that an enterprise would pay. But I can just ignore that clause or declare them a supply-chain risk if they try to hold me to it, because now that they've taken my $50, who are they to dictate how I use it? I can do whatever I want, not just what the vendor thinks I should, right? A contact is just paper, right?
We cannot subordinate our military’s decision making power — in any arena — to a private company.
Our military must also not be dependent on a private company that believes it has the moral prerogative to control our military’s decisions, and would have the technical capability to do so.
Maybe the military should just seize the technology and nationalize the company then? Because clearly, paying a private party voluntarily entering into a contract on mutually-agreed upon terms is now a polite fiction that can be done away with.
The military is bound by contract, just like any other government agency. They entered into a contract, with these clauses well-known. This was OK because they have all the same problems every other organization uses AI for.
They could’ve just negotiate a new contract with OpenAI, without banning it from every government agency. But I’m sure that would’ve triggered some kind of extra clause and cost money…
This is ridiculous. Anthropic should be free to say the terms for using their service. It doesn't "subordinate" the military, and the military is far from some infallible, unquestionable force here.
If the military wants to use AI to autonomously kill people, they can - Anthropic is not stopping them - thy just can't with Anthropic's services.
The government retaliating by then claiming that any use of Anthropic is risk is an obvious farce. How would Anthropic be any less of a risk if they let Claude autonomously kill people?
The complete failure of any of these Anthropic cheerleaders (to the extent that they are not AI generate comments posted by bots) to understand basic Constitutional principles of Rule of Law and Separation of Powers is mind blowing.
Their argument, in effect, is that we should throw out the entire Constitutional order and make Dario Amodei dictator of the world. The psychopathic hubris is laughable.
No entity should have a right to dictate whether your private company does business with someone or not. The military can pound sand if they don't like your contract terms. That is if you believe in democracy and capitalism. If you don't, then it's not a problem to you.
I, as a person, can decide I won't do business with a company that uses Anthropic models for whatever reason. I can even decide I won't do business with a company that relies on suppliers that use Anthropic.
This right applies to private companies too. Like Walmart could set contract terms that their suppliers aren't allowed to use AWS. The suppliers are free to accept those terms or not.
You’re still absolutely free to do business with Anthropic.
Our military is simply choosing not to do business with them, or anyone that depends on them.
If you believed in democracy, you wouldn’t be supporting the EA-infected corporation that tried to make our democratic institutions subordinate to their corporate decision making.
That is not what they are doing. They could have just canceled the contract and paid the exit clause. This is retaliation, because Anthropic would not move on their pre-negotiated terms. As a result, they are now been from being used anywhere in the US government.
Let me ask you this, if Anthropic did allow them to use it for surveillance… do you think it would stop at the Pentagon?
I support any and all moves that empower private persons and corporations over the infinite force of governments. They didn't try to make anyone subordinate to anything. They made a proposal. Trump pissed and generally made a mess as he usually does and then they randomly declared them a supply chain treat.
No, of course not, because life isn't black and white. Just those with licensing agreements that conflict with the militaries mission, where the product could be manipulated to hinder the mission. Most manufacturers would jump at the chance to rewrite their licensing agreements specifically for the military just to get a government contract.
This was not manipulated to hinder the mission. Every account of this indicates it was clearly spelled out. They could not use it for mass surveillance or for targeting. The lawyers at the DOD did not miss this. They agreed to the terms, because they had no intent to use it for such purpose purposes.
This is like the change order from hell.
Nothing was stopping the DOD from just entering into a new contract with OpenAI…
But if they don’t jump at the chance to retroactively rewrite the already-signed license, you’re OK with designating them a supply-chain risk?
That’s going to make it rather risky for anyone to sign licenses with the DoD. In fact, it renders the licenses pointless since you just have to do anything the licensee says.
I mean typically the outcome of civil suits is black and white (at least on a per-claim basis).
So Amazon and Microsoft don't enforce cloud licensing agreements with the USG? If the government wants to add 3,000 Windows users to support their mission Microsoft is shit out of luck in getting paid for them?
Yes, in fact the military has a system in place to make sure that they only that they only use alternate suppliers and on Anthropic AI, They do this by placing a designation on Anthropic AI that it is a risk to the supply chain, which forces purchasers to use other suppliers.
I don't think this is how preferred suppliers have typically worked through the supply chain risk considering the US has definitely had preferred suppliers before and has not historically used this against a US company that was not on the list and the power of such a designation extends far past the military into all parts of the government. I'm pretty sure this has more traditionally been relegated to simple requirements or specifications.
The reason it appears corrupt is that OpenAI has the exact same restrictions (https://openai.com/index/our-agreement-with-the-department-o...) but was not declared a supply chain risk. If two vendors have the same restrictions and they only designate one, then the designation must be arbitrary and/or capricious.
Edit: I was wrong, the statement I linked is extremely dishonest and I was misled. The contract language lower down makes it clear that there are no "red lines", and OpenAI products can in fact be used for mass domestic surveillance, autonomous weapons, and social credit systems as long as they are considered legal.
No it doesn't. Specifically OpenAI had a "all lawful purposes" clause (which plausibly includes the existing mass surveillance apparatus), but Anthropic did not.
> No use of OpenAI technology for mass domestic surveillance.
> No use of OpenAI technology to direct autonomous weapons systems.
> No use of OpenAI technology for high-stakes automated decisions (e.g. systems such as “social credit”).
These are stronger than Anthropic's restrictions (https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war), as OpenAI says themselves: "We think our agreement has more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropic’s. [...] Based on what we know, we believe our contract provides better guarantees and more responsible safeguards than earlier agreements, including Anthropic’s original contract."
Edit: I was wrong, see my original comment. Sorry.
The other stuff...there's zero citations or quotes. Meaning that OpenAI could be having their cake and eating it too, winning a public victory, with no validation on the actual language, consequences, or enforcement.
I thought the difference is that clearly written rules or SLAs are acceptable and can even be negotiated before signing a contract, but having a person, in this case Amodei himself, manually approve DOJ's usage case by case with his own moral judgement after a contract is signed is not okay.
No one wanted case-by-case veto ability at Anthropic. The red lines were made clear ahead of time: No use of Anthropic models for autonomous weapons (Skynet) or mass-domestic surveillance, negotiated in the agreement.
OpenAI, xAI, and Google happily agreed to DoW contracts which allow both of those use cases.
Do you think OpenAI's terms for the DoD are published on a website? Pretty sure when Anthropic got zapped, OpenAI sent DoD a memo 500ms later saying they wouldn't restrict use.
Look at it pragmatically. What does the DoD use every single procurement for? Hint: military use.
I think this was discussed ad nauseum last time so I am wondering if somehow this has changed but the biggest part of the issue last time was the retaliation. You seem to suggest that this was due to the government not wanting restrictions on their actions. I feel this severely downplays how unusual this designation is considering, like Anthropic says, this has not been applied to domestic companies.
Why couldn't excluding Anthropic be done a different mechanism than a supply chain risk. Why wouldn't this be a standard part of an agreement or a request and simply refuse to renew or cancel a contract rather than being designated a supply chain risk. If some third party contractor for an unrelated non military reason wanted to use Claude as part of their process, it seems perfectly allowable.
If this was a remotely standard way of operation, why did a fair amount of corporate America sign briefs concerned with the retaliatory aspect.
Parts of the action seemed wholly retaliatory as well since Pentagon officials certainly used it as a threat. Why can't a US company have views contrary to the policies of the US government? Certainly the US government is free to not do business with them, but this designation affects everybody doing any kind of indirect business with the US government which is a rather long chain. If this becomes a legitimate mechanism, how might we distinguish caring about a secure supply chain and simply wiping out a company that disagreed with a pro war attitude? If a machining shop had a policy against manufacturing weapons at all, could they be blocked from making server racks for Microsoft or perhaps light fixtures for the Department of Labor? There are plenty of areas that are, again, non military? I don't think it's credible to claim that Anthropic will deliberately sabotage operations.
Is it not possible that this would change the risk profile of depending on them. It makes sense to work with people who support you than oppose you for things which are critical.
My point is did everyone know all of those principals and how committed Anthropic was to them from the beginning or did new information come in and now they need to adjust. Just because something is a term in a contract that doesn't mean it's necessarily strongly held belief that will never change.
Who runs the government changes every 2 to 4 years… are you suggesting we completely swap every vendor in the US government to align with whatever political party is in office?
There’s nothing indicating Anthropic was not keeping their end of the contract. If they had, there would have been other recourse.
> You can agree with the rules anthropic wanted, but having rules set by a private company at all that apply to the military does seem fair for the military to object to.
Oh the hypocrisy and irony. This coming from a country whose military sets rules on other countries' armed forces how weapons systems bought from US can be used.[ß] By this standard US itself should be designated as a supply chain risk for everyone else.
ß: for a very long time in the Ukraine "conflict", US refused to allow their gear from being used to attack targets outside of Ukraine's borders.
> This is like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike orders, now the military needs to have a special box of pens that don't have stipulations attached.
It's pretty common for software licenses to state that it's prohibited from being used in medical devices, life support systems, nuclear facilities, etc. Will software with those licenses also be designated supply-chain risks?
A much closer analogy than the pen one is a SAAS company having an EULA. As annoying as EULAs are I don’t think it counts as being malicious or subversive if you are very open and clear with your prospective customers what that EULA contains?
Anthropic's red lines were 'no fully autonomous AI kill chains' and 'no domestic mass surveillance'. Those are clearly not national-security or DoD functions in the first place, so why would they be in any way objectionable?
I think a private company of any size should be able to offer its products on whatever terms they choose. If the military doesn't like those terms, they're free to do business elsewhere.
You are obviously being disingenuous, because you are on a thread where the DoD is not just electing not to buy Anthropic's service, but also trying to bully them into submission with the unrealistic threat of the DPA, punitively and disproportionately trying to label them a national security risk, and invoking supply chain issues normally applied to our worst adversaries, for the first time putting an obviously patriotic American country on the same footing as North Korea, Iran, China and Russia.
Remember, the Anthropic red line was "no war crimes and no mass surveillance of the US population." You may think that war crimes are cool, and that mass surveillance of the US population by the department of defense would be fine, but consider the natural consequences, both for democracy and for any adversary's conduct in future wars.
So your saying they are 100% correct and Anthropic is a supply chain risk? All you're doing is trying to justify why they shouldn't be labeled truthfully rather then saying it wasn't the truth (probably because you know it was).
It's really rich to say this after calling me disingenuous.
I don't think it's cool that Anthropic gets to set military policy. I don't care how much I agree or disagree with the policy. Wario is not the president. And Anthropic does not strike me as "obviously patriotic," not that I think it's better if the private company bossing the military around is patriotic. It has no relevance.
"Warcrimes" is the new "racist," too. It gets thrown around willy nilly about every military action.
War crimes have a precise legal meaning and have for a long time. Get off of twitter and touch grass if you feel you're getting called racist too often.
There are already several private companies that have this, eg. Apple has specific exemptions from tariffs on smartphones, computers, and semiconductors that they got by paying off Trump and promising to make their iPhone glass in Kentucky:
The correct mental model for the U.S. federal government right now is not an omnipotent democratic overseer for economic activity, but rather as just one firm that negotiates directly with other major firms for legitimization and legal protection. Their power is likely to decline further, as is the value of "legitimization", as technological developments erode the military's monopoly on physical force. Interesting times ahead - historically tech transitions like this lead to a splintering of state legitimacy and then a reorganization under new forms of governance.
The DoD is free not to sign contracts. Having them be able to get a company blacklisted from a whole sector just because they couldn't agree on terms with that company is obviously very different than that.
The idea that "fair for the military to object to" implies "fair for the military to ban from their supply chain in any capacity no matter how unrelated the use" is so outlandish that it's never been done before (to a US company), and I think we can be confident that the DoD has frequently objected to would-be contractors' terms.
The claim that it being done for the first time - by a Secretary of Defense denounced the politics of the company in the same text where he announced the designation - isn't "political", is something I have a hard time believing a functioning adult who isn't employed defending the government in court could adopt.
But hey, maybe in some language this is a "textbook" official statement with no "politics":
Cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of “effective altruism,” they have attempted to strong-arm the United States military into submission - a cowardly act of corporate virtue-signaling that places Silicon Valley ideology above American lives.
No, the DOD has super specific acquisition rulesets that don't apply outside the DOD umbrella. Limiting acquisition or refusing sales can be done without being flagged a risk. FedRAMP levels accomplish this without the political intrigue and the unnecessary defense of this action not being political.
In other words: the same outcome could easily be accomplished without being punitive to Anthropic.
The pen analogy doesn't help. Anthropic and similar services will restrict what you can use them for, and they'll change those rules at will. DoD understandably doesn't trust that if Anthropic is saying themselves they don't want their AI to be used for autonomous weapons.
> The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary
I.e. Anthrophic cannot be trusted to honour a contract.
In almost any case I am inclined to trust entity not trump or trumps government. So is true in this case, where they pissed their pants at anthropic simply making a proposal and decided to use overwhelming government force against it. I will leave you to decide who you consider more trustworthy, Trump or Anthropic.
I didn't understand what you said or your analogy, sorry maybe I'm stupid. Would you be able to explain this differently? Maybe something implied was omitted and I didn't follow that.
This would be like Boeing refusing to let the DoD fly a military 737 at over 800MPH, and they designate them a supply chain risk because they really really want to make the plane go past 800MPH.
Being on the offensive cyber security whitelist for Mythos doesn't stop you from getting constant rejections. I don't know how you screw up something as simple as a whitelist.
No they didn't. They are still using Claude in places despite the fact that the 180 days limit for the transition has expired. This surfaced from the proceedings of the appeal itself, as well as from leaked source. A memo from the DoD authorises use of Claude past the 180 days term for reasons of national security (the rare case where national security is provided by a supply chain risk!)
i think this is more like the pen maker doesnt want the military top brass calling their pen sales guy to make the kill/no kill decisions while using the pen to sign drone strike orders.
similarly the pen owner doesnt want to make a variation where the pen also doubles as a knife
Nothing can stand in the way of America's forever wars, genocide, and automated killing, including performative objections by a prominent tech company.
I suppose we're supposed to be satisfied that the letter of the law supports this steamroller? Because that's what matters?
The legal apparatus is one of the tools the death machine uses to get what it wants.
And I further dislike Anthropic for creating 2 situations in 2 weeks that are giving this admin an obvious opportunity to be right. The other one is David Sacks responding to the “Pace the Frontier” crap. These were the table tennis equivalent of lobs for the admin.
Also worth noting that no one knows what kind of task would get a rejection with Anthropic’s models. The documentation is near-non-existent with the air of “security,” rules change daily, the harness is buggy, the clients are buggy, and very likely the backend gating and safety mechanisms are buggy. Even if the DOD assumed the best of intentions to comply, the reliability isn’t there.
What military would buy guns that sometimes stop working, and not necessarily for reasons anyone understands, and still be taken seriously?
Also Claude clearly had no issues identifying a school that has been a school for over 10 years as a military target. Why would the military buy tech that would make them more likely to commit war crimes?
A better analogy would be an explosives manufacturer saying that it is okay to use their explosives on military targets, but not civilian targets. Comparing AI to pens trivialises its potential impact.
Incidentally the second stipulation, the restriction on domestic surveillance, sounds like direct recognition of the role IBM played in the Holocaust. Of course, the better course of action would be to deny the military access to their technology. But that's not going to happen because there is so much money on the table.
You could use the same logic to defend the military declaring that Anthropic is full of pedophiles and therefore they cannot use their products as it would be contributing to pedophilia.
Anthropic offered a contract, with certain conditions, as do all contracts everywhere; that's their purpose. The military did not want to agree to those conditions. If they had stopped there, and refused to sign the contract, all would be good. (It's actually worse, they did sign such a contract, and then decided they wanted the contract to say something different than it actually did. "Pray I don't alter it any further.")
> >The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized [emphasis mine]
That is speculation, and you can't call it a "textbook designation" without discussing whether there's a basis for that "reasonable fear". Again, that argument also works for declaring you have a reasonable fear that giving money to Anthropic will support pedophilia. We do not know the specifics, but I at least have heard of zero evidence that Anthropic would sabotage something they signed a legal contract for, and yet I have an abundance of evidence that this administration will use whatever contortions are necessary to pressure and punish those who interfere with it getting what it wants. It all hinges on the word "reasonable", and based on the evidence that is public, this specific fear seems more ridiculous than reasonable to me.
If the government somehow had a way to force Anthropic to sign a contract that it did not want to sign, then this fear might become more reasonable. The twist is that this supply chain risk designation is exactly that. If Anthropic now capitulated, the accusation of supply chain risk (eg from Anthropic employees acting alone) would be justified. So the only way Anthropic can reasonably be considered a supply chain risk is because it is accused of being a supply chain risk.
This is a textbook example, yes, but it's a textbook example of corruption and judicial capture.
> Though they'd probably put the DoD on the cybersecurity whitelist today, the very idea of the claude whitelists for certain functionality already exists and is being used by them today.
And if they signed a contract permitting fully autonomous killbots, then using the whitelist mechanism would be a contract violation. I have some degree of faith that we'd know if such a contract were signed, because half the staff would quit. (As opposed to half the Google staff quitting after signing such a contract, which has been proven to be an incorrect expectation -- such a contract was signed, and I've heard of exactly one person quitting over it. There may be more, I don't know.)
except it's also stipulating that the paper supplier upon which the orders are signed also cant use anthropic. or the table maker. even though the AI helping make sleeker paper and tables has nothing to do with deciding what to bomb (analogy breaking down lol)
and trump admin originally went WAY further.
they originally said the pen, paper, table etc suppliers cant use anthropic even for products and subsidiaries that have nothing to do with their govt work; far beyond the supply chain of the pen (bomb). Mega Corp Pepsi Co Taco Bell Inc. LLC -> Staples > Pen Co. Sure pen co might be reasonabale. But telling taco bell they cant have claude help expand the baja-blast-radius is way too far. that would be just like secondary sanctions.
iirc there are 2 court cases. one ruled the original order was too broad and i think that still stands? so at least it's narrowed slightly to just the immediate supply chain?
> but it actually seems like a textbook designation
How can it be a textbook designation when designating a US company as a supply chain risk is unprecedented? So many actions under the Trump administration are unprecedented it starts to feel like the norm.
No other administration (Republican or Democrat) would do this. The DoD didn’t have a problem using Anthropic’s models during the raid on Venezuela and early on in the war with Iran.
Anthropic says to the former Fox News host it doesn’t want its models used for domestic surveillance or in kill situations without a human in the loop; all of a sudden they're a supply chain risk?
>Anthropic says to the former Fox News host it doesn’t want its models used for domestic surveillance...
Lol, do as we say not as we do!
>In addition to monitoring activists in the vicinity of Anthropic executives and keeping tabs on protests near physical Anthropic assets, the firm is also implementing a “pre-crime” approach, attempting to predict incidents before they happen.
This is political. Everything is political at this scale.
* How much money did Anthropic and its associates donate to the Biden campaign and associated entities?
* How much money was spent on lobbying by Anthropic and associated entities?
* How many Biden officials were hired by Anthropic after they left office?
* How exactly did Anthropic get exclusive no-bid contracts to be the Federal Government's sole AI provider for classified systems?
And with this corrupt influence, and the money that it earned them, Anthropic has attempted to:
* Stoke public fear and panic about AI
* Stoke conflict with China
* Eliminate domestic competition
* Suppress international competition
* Degrade their models in order to limit their ability to create competitive products
* Train their models on their customer's proprietary data in order to steal their intellectual property
Anthropic played a game and they lost. They can wrap that up in whatever sanctimonious moralizing clap-trap they want, but nobody believes a word they say, or will ever trust them, so they might as well be talking to the wind.
OpenAI may be playing the same game but at least they have the intelligence and humility to read the room, recognize a failed strategy, and adapt.
Who wants to buy intelligence from people who are stupid enough to publicly try to dictate terms to the US Military? Complete and utter brand destruction for everyone involved.
It can be a textbook designation and a capricious punishment at the same time. It's almost comical, to suggest that anything about this decision was reasonable. Makes me long for the days of n-gate.com.
> They were against using it to kill American citizens
No, they were against using it to kill people without oversight. I hope nobody thinks that there's a difference between murdering American citizens and murdering people.
...I suggest you read about what actually happened:
Anthropic: "We'll sell you access to our AI as long as you don't use it for war crimes or mass surveillance."
DoD: "Ok, deal."
...time passes...
DoD: "Wait, no, we want to be able to use it for war crimes too."
Anthropic: "Too late, you agreed already, and we won't sign a contract for that. You can keep using it for everything we agreed to."
DoD: "Change the terms or we will destroy your business."
Anthropic: "No."
DoD then signs contracts with OpenAI and Google that permit them to commit war crimes and mass surveillance as long as they get legal cover, and proceeds to apply as much leverage as it can to destroy Anthropic's business.
----
And for the record, Anthropic agreed to all "yucky Army things" usage that was an extension of past yucky Army things, they just did not agree to a new class of yucky Army things: namely, fully autonomous killbots. Even there, it was only "not yet, it's not ready". Your whole comment is a gross mischaracterization.
I quit using ChatGPT entirely over this incident, and that's not because I find Anthropic's position to be saintly. They agreed to a contract where the DoD could and in practice is using their AI for committing war crimes.
The problem here - as you probably very well know but pretend not to - that "war crimes" is a very poorly defined term that is subject to many interpretations and subjective political and partisan opinions. Antropic wanted them to be the last word in every decision, and DOD could not allow that, because they are governmental agency, which is controlled by US government, not by Antropic. Nobody is destroying anybody's business - pretending that Anthropic could never find any users for their AI outside DOD is plain silly.
US Society has mechanisms for preventing and investigating war crimes. They may not be perfect, and you may not be happy about how they are working, but I doubt that "give control over it to some random guy that makes AI models" is an adequate solution for that. If Antropic decided the risk of DOD circumventing those mechanisms is too high for them to tolerate - they have full freedom not to sell to DOD. Which they used.
> I quit using ChatGPT entirely over this incident
And this is supposed to be an argument because....?
> They agreed to a contract where the DoD could and in practice is using their AI for committing war crimes.
You have a very vivid imagination. Not trying to use it to state things that could be misinterpreted as statements of fact would be nice. Not that I am new on the internet, so I know it's not going to happen.
Ok, I'll be precise: the main dispute was over fully autonomous decisions to use lethal force. Because if the AI chose incorrectly, the military would be attacking targets that it shouldn't. Whether that is a war crime hinges upon whether it was reckless. Anthropic's position was that AI is not capable of making such decisions, which is another way of saying that giving that decision wholly to an AI is reckless. I can stop using the term "war crimes" if it bothers you so much, but I'm failing to see a distinction between what Anthropic was fearing and the definition of what a war crime is. These are fears, so this isn't about whether one specific action was a war crime or not. This is just naming what Anthropic was worried about and why.
> Anthropic wanted them to be the last word in every decision, and DOD could not allow that
Cite one source for Anthropic demanding to be in the loop. This was about the terms of a contract. If I'm agreeing to sell you a medicine, under the condition that you do not use it to euthanize homeless people, that does not mean I am demanding to follow you around and make you ask me whether each use is ok.
> Nobody is destroying anybody's business - pretending that Anthropic could never find any users for their AI outside DOD is plain silly.
Strawman much? The question is about the US government using its influence in a competitive environment to hamstring one company. It doesn't matter whether there are other customers. It doesn't matter whether the company can survive the attack. What matters is whether it is legal and ethical for our public resources to be used for retaliation in this way.
> US Society has mechanisms for preventing and investigating war crimes....I doubt that "give control over it to some random guy that makes AI models"
This is an invented claim. Cite a source.
>> I quit using ChatGPT entirely over this incident
>
> And this is supposed to be an argument because....?
The argument was the first part of the post. This part was me giving my perspective on things, in this case it was about how I don't find Anthropic's position to be good, just that OpenAI's is far worse. My post was not for you exclusively; based on what you have written, I have concluded that there is no value in debating you or attempting changing your mind.
>> They agreed to a contract where the DoD could and in practice is using their AI for committing war crimes.
>
> You have a very vivid imagination. Not trying to use it to state things that could be misinterpreted as statements of fact would be nice.
Ok, fair. Sticking to facts: the crucial part of the negotiation was about whether the DoD can use Anthropic's products for autonomous decisions on lethal force. Since then, it has come out that AI was used in the decision to target an elementary school for girls that killed 120 schoolchildren. (The Palantir Maven Smart System, fwiw, not Claude.) The Pentagon investigated and found that although a human was theoretically in the decision loop, in practice the oversight was minimal and ineffective. "No one remaining on those teams [the teams tasked with minimizing civilian harm] reviewed the strike plans in advance of the attack on the school, according to Bloomberg." Those teams had been gutted, with Hegseth explicitly stating that they were getting in the way.
My supposedly very vivid imagination translated this to reckless decisionmaking that led to a large number of innocent civilian casualties, aka war crimes.
> Because if the AI chose incorrectly, the military would be attacking targets that it shouldn't.
Regrettably, this already is happening today, and have been happening since there was a military. All the time. Intel is imperfect, situation changes quickly, people make mistakes, shit happens. The army is not interested in increasing the number of such occurrences - because the army is not incentivized on destroying targets it wasn't asked to destroy. But it still happens. It happened without AI and it will happen with AI. Putting mandatory human in the loop may be a ideological and philosophical choice, but I don't see any argument here it will always reduce such occurrences. In fact, if anything, it might increase them - humans are known for hundreds of cognitive biases.
> The question is about the US government using its influence in a competitive environment to hamstring one company.
No company is owed contract from the US government. Of course, companies that get a lot of contracts from US government, may profit more than ones that do not, but it still don't create any entitlement. US government has its specs, Antropic is unwilling to make a product for those specs, so US government is not buying from Antropic. Presenting not-buying decision as a hostile action implies there's an entitlement to be a supplier, and such entitlement does not exist.
> Since then, it has come out that AI was used in the decision to target an elementary school for girls that killed 120 schoolchildren.
We are getting into the territory of "70% of traffic crashes are blamed on sober drivers, therefore driving sober is a crime". OF COURSE once AI starts to be used, somebody will eventually make a bad call, somebody gets fed bad intel, something changes and somebody does not notice, and AI would be used in a chain that led to a disaster. AI is not God and is not Oracle of Truth, it's a tool. Every tool is imperfect and depends on its inputs and it's usage. Every tool has boundaries of usability and error margins. You can not change it coming with your post-hoc knowledge and pontificating that if some mythical all knowing human happened to be in the chain at the precisely correct moment he'd prevent the tragedy. Such human never exists at-the-time, only post-hoc, when all the social media is full of them, and there's no AI that allows you to read tomorrow's Twitter, and never will be. Claiming that DOD should not ever use tool X in a scenario that could lead to a disaster is claiming to never use tool X at all - because every practical scenario with practical assumptions can. And ultimately, it's a call for DOD to never exists as a military. Which I guess would be fine with some folks, but I think you'd not expect DOD to agree with that.
> My supposedly very vivid imagination translated this to reckless decisionmaking that led to a large number of innocent civilian casualties, aka war crimes.
As I said, extensively, the reality of warmaking will inevitably lead to innocent civilian casualties. There never was, and never will be, a war (at least real, hot, shooting war) where innocents would not be suffering. It's not the intention of DOD, it's the reality of how things happen. Now we learn your definition of "war crimes" includes, essentially, any warmaking of sufficient scale in time and space that will inevitably cause innocent casualties, and with sufficient scale, they could be claimed as "large". In other words, every (big enough) war is a crime. It is a possible position, even if a bit too idealistic and high-horse-y to my taste. But I think now at least you can appreciate why it would be very imprudent for DOD to subject themselves to people who would limit their capabilities based on such sort of definitions?
They didn't want their tech to be used to, I don't know, blow up a school with 120 children. But did want to allow other kinds of usage. Is that so weird?
Get rid of your high horse. Nobody wants to blow up a school with 120 children. The question is who is in control and making the decisions. Antropic wanted to be in control and make the decisions for the DOD. DOD refused. It's not so weird at all.
It's not a high horse, you're just misinformed. The Trump regime does want to blow up a school with 120 children. The military had, until recently, a program to prevent such incidents; Pete Hegseth gutted it (https://www.propublica.org/article/hegseth-civilian-harm-mit...) because he wants to achieve "maximum lethality" at all costs. To this date, the regime has not issued any sort of apology for the school bombing, because they're not sorry and they'd happily do it again.
I am sorry, that's where I stopped reading. If I want partisan screeching, I go to Reddit (I don't actually but that's what I would do if I wanted it). You may enjoy portraying your political opponents as raging maniacs, but I don't see how it would help me understand anything, and as such, this discussion loses any appeal to me.
Hardly. I invite you to [read the opinion][1], particularly the great pains the majority spends on wrangling the definition of the word "manipulate."
Basically, [FASCSA][2] says to denote a company is a "supply chain risk," the govt has to meet the law's rigorous definition of what a "significant" risk actually is. That definition contains a catch-all "or otherwise manipulate the function" of the thing at hand (in this case, Claude) at the very end.
The govt's whole argument is "Well Anthropic has admitted that it can technically "manipulate" the response, therefore its a significant risk, therefore we designate it as such."
The dissent gives an analogy:
> A library might post a sign saying, “Do not shout, loudly talk on the phone, play music, or otherwise disturb others.” The common understanding would be that the rule bans bringing a boom-box into the reading room with the volume turned on high but not listening to music with headphones set at a modest sound level—even though both constitute “playing music.”
It is as if the govt argued "ah ah, Anthropic played music on their headphones, they broke the rules! We therefore have the authority to ban them" and the majority insanely agrees. It is clear to anyone with basic reading comprehension that the "manipulate" clause is supposed to continue the idea of malicious or subversive manipulation that the whole section entails. The hand-waving the majority uses gives the whole game away.
I wonder if this is going start being abused soon.
If I was Palantir or any other GOP aligned company, I would be completely against this. What's to stop a Democratic president from doing the same thing and destroying them?
Because the modern Democrats are primarily a corporate dominated party. They haven't really had any hard hitting legislation nor legal regulation/rulings on corporations in easily the last 30 years.
I doubt that is going to change anytime soon. They are a private entity, so they can manage and change their primary system any way they want.
A few things I can remember them doing are net neutrality, banning non-compete agreements for employees, a DMCA exception for allowing 3rd party repairs to McDonald's ice cream machines, and blocking the Albertsons/Kroger merger.
Nothing that is really landmark legislation. Dem legislators also didn't do anything about net neutrality. They deferred entirely to the FCC (which is largely why the rules were subsequently struck down).
Multiple attempts at net neutrality legislation have made by democrats, in the meantime the FCC pushed for neutrality under Democrats while republican administrations have a much worse track record of support
It's not as if democrats are using the existence of the filibuster as an excuse to not even try. Putting forward legislation they believe in, even when the odds of it being passed are slim, demonstrates intent and if the filibuster is used to stop a law that would benefit the people, that means that someone was actively doing something, it's on record, and the people should hold the obstructionists accountable for what they prevented.
The DSA branch has almost zero political power. Yes, Mamdani was elected. No, it was not because of DSA.
DSA has very limited understanding of the politics of power. Agree or disagree with their policy and advocacy, but they lack a unified, coherent policy platform. They take stances from (imo) good places and suggest proposals that are politically untenable (to say the least) and realistically ridiculous.
Mamdani is a unique politician. He is generationally charismatic, articulates the pragmatism behind solutions, and taps into the everyday struggles of citizens. When he talks about ideologically, it's soaring rhetoric about who we can be. His critiques, however, are often strongly tethered to tangible concerns (rent, food, education) vs. the DSA-type far left.
Source: worked in democratic politics, on a presidential campaign, with a wide range of people on the left (and "left") including DSA die hards.
Can't there be more politicians that talk about the pragmatic aspects too? Didn't El-Sayed win the Michigan nomination? I don't understand how this is hard for politicians to grasp, it happened with the Roosevelts and the New Deal, not sure why it can't happen now, even despite money in politics, as Mamdani and El-Sayed winning shows, who both had much fewer dollars spent on them than the competition.
> Democrats are primarily a corporate dominated party. They haven't really had any hard hitting legislation nor legal regulation/rulings on corporations in easily the last 30 years.
Sarbanes-Oxley? Dodd-Frank? ACA? Now I'm sure you (like, every other living human) has a ton of nitpicks and criticism of bills like that. But they're real and they passed and they're largely-to-wholely partisan creations of the Democratic policy apparatus (SOX looked very bipartisan and was passed under Bush, but the actual bill was written mostly by democratic staffers).
I mean, fine, you'd like different regulation. But they're responsible for basically all the corporate regulation active in the US regime.
Bothsidesism is a very poor tool for this particular argument. Work with your allies, please.
"You must sell insurance to sick people!", "I don't wanna!", "I don't care, the law now says you must."
I mean, the whole insurance industry had spent the better part of a century (basically its whole existence) denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, and the ACA fixed it via fiat.
Not only is it clearly "hard-hitting", I'd argue it's probably the single most "hard-hitting" invasive change to corporate regulation of the post-war era. Certainly it is in terms of the amount of money involved in the affected market.
> how’s this anti-corporate?
And this is where the rub is. You're not saying that your desired regulatory structure is something different than existing proposals, you're demanding that your government engage in behavior that is expressly "anti" whatever you perceive "corporate" interests to be.
That's not democracy, that's just warfare. You have enemies and you want to win. And the problem there is that the structure of our government requires compromise.
It "literally" did not. What enforcement exists is financial (a tax penalty) and not compulsory. And obviously most people are covered via employer plans or Medicare, as has always been the case. A quick Google says that 19.2M Americans are enrolled in ACA plans. I don't have statistics, but I'd bet that the overwhelming majority of those are willing purchasers. Most people view health care as desirable.
The "everyone has access to the ER" has to be paid somehow, which is through tax dollars. The USA has a for-profit health system but typical neo-liberalism has a safety net where corporates get to dip into a different bottom-less pot. So it makes sense that we make this visible by taxing everybody who isn't paying their own insurance, since they still expect access to ER.
>The penalty for not having an ACA-compliant plan or forgoing coverage in 2018 is the greater of $695 per adult and $347.50 per child for a maximum of $2,085 or 2.5 percent of adjusted household income. The percentage penalty is capped at an amount equal to the national average premium for a bronze plan, the minimum coverage available by law
Ah yes, the very hard hitting anti-business rule that says if you don't become a customer of my friend's company, you must give me money. I'm sure the businesses were quivering in their boots when every citizen either became a customer, paid a fine, or became a felon.
Then why do the 7 publicly listed health insurers have shitty shareholder returns?
If their profits are so good, their shares would be worth owning.
Could it be because their profit margins are actually terrible (3% if lucky), and they have to get the price of their product approved by 50 different state government employees, and the federal government constantly changes their customer’s subsidies making revenue and expenses extremely volatile and difficult to forecast?
If you bought shares of those 7 companies in 2010 when the ACA passed, how much would you have today? More or less than if you bought the S&P 500?
If you're looking for policies to blame for insurance companies having a rough 2025-2026, look to the Republican-led efforts cap Medicare fees and alter eligibility requirements.
You would have about the same or less. Maybe UNH gets you a couple extra percentage points per year, but that's because they have an enormous healthcare provider business instead of just being an insurer. But it's still nowhere near a positive risk adjusted return when comparing to a relatively risk-less investment in SP500.
Since Jan 1, 2010, 18% for UNH, 15% for MOH/CNC, 14% for CI/ELV/HUM/SP500, 8.5% for CVS.
Also, these businesses are competing to sell a completely fungible commodity good with tons of non profits like Kaiser Permanente, HCSC, Cambia, Independence Blue Cross, and many others. It makes no sense to expect those businesses to be able to earn any decent profit margin when their competition only needs 0%.
> Then why do the 7 publicly listed health insurers have shitty shareholder returns?
CNC is up 90% YoY. That's far more than any of the largest tech companies. Alphabet is the highest of the tech stocks, and it's up 38% in the same period. When we look at the performance of the seven large U.S. publicly traded health insurers, their returns were extraordinary in the decade following the ACA.
Seeing Dodd-frank in the list is pretty hilarious, because it was put in place for the issues that arose from repealing Glass-Steagall by Clinton. Which arguably was one of the biggest causes of allowing the activities that lead to the Great financial crisis in 08.
And it is true, that it was signed by Clinton. But it was otherwise an entirely partisan bill passed with exclusively republican votes. All 44 democrats voted nay.
Now, given that, do you really feel that that's a supporting argument to the upthread contention that Democrats are a corporate-dominated party and not interested in regulation?
Please point to the hard-hitting ones, almost all the big co's at the time thought they got off too easy and were expecting a lot worse. At the end of the day, Sarbox and Dodd-frank basically just required those businesses to increase headcount 10%.
The comparison should be compared to the Republican party, the Democrats have done more and that's all that matters when you are making a choice between the two.
You're creating a fake choice. Other people are commenting on how ineffective the party that claims to be the heroes actually are. Calling out BS here is right IMO.
I would argue the democrats are more a process oriented party. They wouldn’t pull this shit because they care about process - so much so that they wouldn’t even consider half the stuff that’s going on now as it circumvents process.
What a load of bullshit. There are better candidates and parties and worse ones, they are not all the same. This sort of attitude just feeds voter apathy and resignation.
Democracy is an imperfect system, but its much better than the alternatives. If more people paid attention and participated, we would have much better outcomes.
That's not responsive to OP or coherent at all really, even if rhetorically structured like a gotcha.
Incumbent Presidents in the US almost always run for reelection to a second term, that's the normal expected outcome with vanishingly few exceptions in the last century.
The claim was Ds are more procedural than Rs. Asking what process the Ds followed to attempt to run, and then back out of running, biden (who again, was very obviously and publicly mentally incompetent) is clearly a rebuttal to a presented point.
> who again, was very obviously and publicly mentally incompetent
You can repeat that as often as you want, but it doesn't seem well grounded. He's always had a stutter, and since he left office he has given speeches which suggest his mental faculties remain intact. Is he slowing down? Yeah. He's got quite a long ways to go before he's in McConnell territory.
In any case, what does his choosing to run have to do with process? Did he violate the process? Seems to me he was following it to a tee.
Exactly. Their process prioritizes seniority generally, and this is another case. The process is, if the president wants another go, he gets another go; and he sure as heck wanted another go.
And all the shenanigans around 2016 when Bernie Sanders was shut out by the DNC. Even Elizabeth Warren said outright that the DNC rigged the 2016 nomination. I think the outcome would have been very, very different if the DNC didn't fuck with the timeline and forced Hillary as the Dem nominee.
You got that exactly backward. Modern republicans are the ones that get the most in corporate PAC money, at the high end it's like 60/40% split... the majority to the GOP. Also, the fact that modern republicans brought Citizens United and just earlier this year NRSC v. FEC.
You really can't make a valid case to say the dems are the corporate dominated party. ffs, they are the only ones even attempting to put common sense regulations on the financial industry, something Trump called "bad for business" when he undid antitrust legislature that got passed under Biden.
He didn’t say they were _the_ corporate party, just that they’re dominated by corporations. It’s notable because it’s an accusation that they pitch at Republicans often (not that R is doing any better there, but it’s part of their platform more or less).
The dems haven’t done anything notably anti-corporate in ages. There are rumbles about doing it (anti trust, supporting unions, climate change), but it never _quite_ seems to actually materialize into anything.
Cynically, that’s why both sides lean so hard into the culture wars. The men in suits would rather we argue about how to interpret history than whether a wealth tax makes sense.
He actually did say dems were the corporate party. He contrasted the democrats not do something that the Republicans did because Dems were dominated by corporations.
The contrast implies that Republicans are in your words "anti-corporate"
Because Democrats, being (at the moment, and relatively speaking) the party of government actually functioning according to laws, are extremely unlikely to do this in the other direction. The two sides are not the same. It is not possible to be the party aligned with institutions, rule of law, and predictability, while also using the power of government arbitrarily and vindictively. On the other hand, it's entirely possible to use the power of government arbitrarily when you're the party of greed and corruption. So "Republican-aligned companies" don't have to be nearly as worried, and otherwise-neutral companies will become Republican-aligned out of self-preservation, because one side is going to punish them for disobedience (legally or illegally) and the other side isn't.
Not just Anthropic, but practically speaking, the leading foundational model labs like Anthropic and OpenAI are burning through enormous amounts of money, and will need to pay that money back. If they are designated as supply chain risks, or controlled technologies, their ability to achieve that ROI is severely constrained.
They are not turning a profit, and aside from enterprise token billing, every other offering they have is a loss leader. In order to flip that around they need to drive down the cost of inference significantly, either through massive compute improvements, more efficient or lower cost models, and either one lowers the barrier to entry for local and/or private cloud inference for open models. The moat established by the expertise in model training is effectively dissolving as they approach recursive self improvement because any mechanism that prevents model distillation effectively reduces the quality and utility of the models, so each improved model makes their competitors better by default if they want to realize those gains.
The reason for the pivot to control and regulation seems to be more about erecting an artificial moat in their market, and having these technologies controlled or highlighted as supply chain risks will continue to drive investments in alternatives, especially in other countries where data sovereignty and domestic tech has become a priority given the last decade of the US dominated tech industry.
I don't think that AI is going to go away, but I think the future of AI in the next several years looks alot like massive overfunded foundational model providers collapsing, their employees launching dozens or hundreds of direct competitors, and the leading hyperscalers buying up datacenter capacity the way they bought up dark fiber 20 years ago.
That's an opinion but poorly held one. Big money is in selling to Enterprise, looking at F10, there are very few companies on there that probably don't have DoD contracts OR supply those who do.
Looking at it by top 10 US companies by revenue, Walmart, Berkshire are probably only two that MIGHT not have DoD contracts. Amazon/Apple/Alphabet do for sure. CVS/UnitedHealth probably supply DoD healthcare, Chevron/ExxonMobil very likely supply fuel and Verizon supplies telecom links.
So if you are Anthropic, those 8 companies cannot use your software AT ALL. That's massive potential revenue to lose.
I'm confident Amazon has no problem keeping e.g. its store reviews chatbot out of any defence contracts. If I am wrong, then the company's processes already disqualify it from defence work.
What's to stop indeed? Some of us in the tech industry want the dems to slice and dice every tech company into irrelevance. They've betrayed society and they should be rightfully punished in fun + creative ways.
the cold political war turned hot with the prosecution of Trump (he made it easy by being an idiot). there will be no considerations for retaliation now, both sides will be using whatever means they have available to damage each other.
also if you look at how the two factions separate from each other decade by decade (there used to be overlap, almost none now) it's obvious that there will be no reconciliation.
it's a musical chairs game at this point, whoever is in power when the democratic facade cracks will be able to seize power and transition into whatever single party state follows.
I think the blue team has been in a cold civil war since 2016. They can't come to terms with their progressive hegemony ending, but also can't pivot to a new politics because elections are too close to risk a mass preference cascade needed to revitalize the party.
I think the red team is only now starting to come to similar terms, and will increasingly do so as the blue team continues to maximally exercises power against their opponents instead of revitalize the tarnished reputation of instituions.
Around 2030, the US will need to spend 100% of it's tax revenue to service the debt, and California will need to a federal bailout or risk either default or wiping out their state pensions. I believe the coming financial disaster will likely be the catalyst that quiets the 'nothing ever happens' crowd, and both teams will need to reset their politics to the new world, distinctly different than the post-WW2 open society liberal consensus.
The cold political war turned hot when Trump tried to overthrow the US government. I understand that this bizarre both sides framing is comforting to you for now, but it's just going to leave you even more alarmed when he tries again.
are you seriously equating empty rhetoric to legal action?
Trump was an idiot who made himself an easy target for nobodies with no strategic bones in their body to go after him. note that his guilt or lack thereof is irrelevant, what matters is that legal action was initiated against a past president. this one action doomed the republic just like it did the previous Roman one.
I don't think Palantir is concerned? Palantir is LLM agnostic and holds IL5, IL6, compliance with ICD 503, etc. Their entire platform is built around eliminating risk.
They are suggesting that a Democratic President could label Palantir a supply chain risk.
If:
1. The designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk is politically motivated
2. We collectively accept that is okay for the US President to bar all defense vendors and contractors from working with an American company for political reasons.
What defense related company(ies) would a Democratic President have political reasons to ban?
It has been reported that Palantir and its founder have a history of political contributions to the Republican party.
Instead of Republican presidents driving left leaning companies out of defense and Democratic presidents driving right leaning companies out of defense, it would be better if neither party used supply chain risk as a political weapon.
Can you clarify what a GOP aligned company is? Is that any company thats willing to do business with the U.S. government or any businesses thats willing to sell products in red states?
Maybe it's the companies that flank the US president at events in an attempt to gain favor? Or the companies that own private prisons that lobby for immoral policies on policing?
This doesn't appear to be unique to the GOP. Plenty of companies flank to whomever is in office. Even at that local government level. "Immoral policies" is subjective and would be in the eye of the beholder. If this was truely quantiative the U.S. wouldn't be a divided nation.
The mere existence of private prisons in the US is immoral. To argue otherwise is a failure to extrapolate what that means at every level of gov and society. Maybe this isn't uniquely the GOP but private prisons have been some of the largest donors to the GOP since Covid.
> The mere existence of private prisons in the US is immoral.
This doesn't pass a basic logical sniff test.
What if the private prisons provided much greater comfort, rehabilitation, medical and mental care, and so on? How could you call it immoral just for existing?
That's a great what if despite what we currently know of these prisons and what we know of private companies seeking profit at the expense of whatever you're stating.
There's a country in the 30's that used misinformation to sell what you're suggesting and they, at one point, had a thriving prison system in less than a decade.
So if I follow your logic here you feel the same about grocery stores being private? Because if they were run by the U.S. government you wouldn't have 47.9 million people (about 1 in 7 Americans) living in food-insecure households? All because a private company that employs people are tryng to make money?
You're definitely not following my logic because of your false equivalence WRT private companies and private prisons.
If you think prisons should have profit motives where growth only comes from continually seeking punitive policies to imprison people then I don't know what to tell you. The extrapolation isn't that hard and I don't see anything good coming from it. Weird takes.
I think I am because the "equivalence" is private vs government run service. The arugment is equal. There is no public service thats better then the private equivalent. Period.
Lol if only. CoreCivic once accidentally left their logo on a bill they wrote for a congressperson and the congressperson forgot to remove it when presenting it. Actually it's happened multiple times. Most "model bills" that are tough-on-crime are written by them.
I don't see a need to come up with a complete definition at this point. Let's start with cancelling all SpaceX and Palantir contracts and see how we're feeling; that may be enough to keep corporations in line.
Because there is none. Its rhetoric and its personal to you. Its like me saying I haven't spent a nickle on anything Nike because of their narative selling. Hence anyone who wears Nike products is a bad person. Its ridiculous, narrow minded and undemocratic.
Telling my mind about anyone or any company is the ideal expression of free speech and democracy. Using government force against a company that refused a contract is the opposite of democracy.
> Using government force against a company that refused a contract is the opposite of democracy
If democracy is working, isn't using the government to express the collective will of the people exactly how it should work? Else why are we bothering to vote in the first place?
Collective will of the people cannot supersede your ownership over your business and its right to engage with anyone it wishes to free of government retaliation. The business is people. Feel free to go to a communist country if you want collective action against companies. What other things do you think the collective vote should permit if the numbers tally? Do you support the collective will of the people to gag your free speech? To vote to shoot you dead in the street? Certain rights supersede voting, at least until somehow people manage to repeal the 1st Amendment, 2nd Amendment etc.
You seem to have escalated that argument a long ways towards hyperbole. The government refusing to have anything at all to do with a company seems like a perfectly valid position to take, and I expect my representatives to exercise that authority on my behalf. There is some nuance to how much that should extend to companies who themselves do business with the company you are refusing to contract with, but it is not completely wrong.
And I think the governments reaction was driven by trump's thuggery not any real reasons, any reasons given were after the fact. I mentioned those examples because you mentioned the collective voice of people, sometimes one needs reminded that unvarnished collective vote is not permitted to do certain things as rights of free expression and property exist, nothing more nothing less.
It sure isn't democratic when only the top 1 percent in charge make those decisions that inflame you. These companies have thousands, if not tens of thousands of employees, that I can guarantee don't agree on statements or positions that the people at the top make as a company whole. So why would you want you punish people who have nothing to do with this. In the end its the regular employees who pay, not the corporate leadership.
>For me the end of buying anything Nike for my household and owning there stock was 2018. After their embracement of kaepernick and circus of marketing schemes that followed its no surprise what the outcome would be. Now Lululemon hired one of architects of all this as their CEO. They followed the nike playbook and are already suffering from it. Now their doubling down in a race to the bottom.
Yes. Exactly where I stand. I also dont use anthropic products because of their false anti-gorverment stance even though they want to sell to them. If I could i'd short their stock too.
It sure isn't democratic when only the top 1 percent in charge make those decisions that inflame you. These companies have thousands, if not tens of thousands of employees, that I can guarantee don't agree on statements or positions that the people at the top make as a company whole. So why would you want you punish people who have nothing to do with this. In the end its the regular employees who pay, not the corporate leadership.
How are they anti government? You keep making up stuff out of thin air. Anthropic posited certain requirements in their contract, trump pissed and shat and got them designated a supply chain risk randomly instead of negotiating or just canceling.
If you support using AI to kill people without human oversight and using AI to mass surveil the American population, of course its your freedom to.
You are pissed Anthropics model is of higher quality in some metrics than OpenAI? There is always doom mongering about AI killing everyone. Why would you give a shit about this unfounded nonsense?
Higher quality? Fot what vibe coding? Do you even know what it means when they deem you a supply chain risk?
"“Supply chain risk” means the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of a covered system so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise degrade the function, use, or operation of such system (see 10 U.S.C. 3252)."
Why would you be worried about human extinction if you think its not a strong model?
Who is sabotaging who? Why are you making shit up?
You are completely confused and speaking random disjointed stuff dude. You bring up some absurd unrelated nonsense about your personal decision and your deluded self diagnoses, then you bring up completely unrelated stuff about human extinction, then you start making up stuff about sabotage.
I am the last person to "enjoy" that openai is getting boycotted. I respect both companies. And openai themselves probably did it under pressure knowing that Trump is a thug.
I don't suffer from Trump Dicksucking Syndrome so I am afraid your diagnosis is mistaken. I use all models freely, why the fuck would I care about some bs military designation, I don't work in defense. Do you work for a defense company? If not why are you so stupid to refuse to use a model for this designation?
I work for a proprietary trading firm that creates markets and liquidity for U.S. based exchanges. Given our relience on AI now on decision making and identifying opportunities we can't afford to use solutions deemed a threat to any of our supply chains. What happens when Claude says you've earned too much money and I'm not going to do that? Straight up insanity.
Seems completely rational to me? Why would I do business with a company that doesn't share my moral values? I find the influence money has in politics more undemocratic than anything else.
I doubt any company shares your moral values. Though a few of them might pay some lip service do some of your moral values. You tell me, have you audit all the companies you do business with to see if they share your moral values.
It's certainly rhetoric! Corporate leaders must be made to understand that the business risk of collaborating with fascism is greater than or equal to the business risk of standing up for the rule of law. Really, we're being generous if we only punish a few companies and only hit their contracts; a strict application of the law would put quite a lot of CEOs behind bars for their overt bribery of the Trump regime.
I still don't fully understand what this was about. It sounds like the DoD said they wanted unrestricted access to Anthropic's models, Anthropic refused, so the Pentagon declared that they wouldn't use them at all.
As I understand it cane down to one point: Anthropic wanted the ability to review actions that would have an effect on human life.
Which sounds sensible on the surface, until you realize that all military organizations have extensive experience with that exact question, and have spent centuries refining their practices. Deferring that to a private company is actually a major regression and a concerning role to pass on to the public regardless.
FWIW I am not pro military, but it's a prominent part of human culture and not going away anytime soon. I do understand the nature of professions, however, and only one of these groups has made the interpretation of this question their specialization.
>As I understand it cane down to one point: Anthropic wanted the ability to review actions that would have an effect on human life.
This is not at all what happened. The existing contract that Anthropic had with the government had two red lines: No autonomous weapons (i.e., do not build Skynet with Claude), and no mass domestic surveillance.
Anthropic did not, and does not want, any case-by-case veto power over the US Military's use of their AI models. The red lines were negotiated ahead of time.
Militaries have a lot of experience, and an exceptionally poor track record.
I don’t remember the last war that didn’t have credible evidence of war crimes occurring. Were bombing civilian infrastructure in Iran, Iraq had Abu Ghraib among all the Collateral Damage stuff, the Highway of Death in the Gulf was probably a war crime, Vietnam had My Lai, WWII was the advent of carpet bombing civilian infrastructure. I can’t think of any for Korea, but I also know very little so that doesn’t say much.
We still haven’t charged anyone for the second strike on that fishing boat in South America, and I haven’t heard a single rationale for why that’s not a war crime other than “fog of war”.
The US doesn’t even really have a meaningful system for finding and prosecuting these, because we aren’t signatories for the ICC and have a bill saying we’ll invade if they charge one of our service members with a war crime. We aren’t basically the furthest thing from having any experience prosecuting war crimes. I can probably count on my fingers the number of cases we’ve tried. We rarely charge our own service members, and we usually kill foreign combatants rather than capture and charge them.
The US could carpet bomb their enemies like they did in WW2, instead they pursue one of the lowest civilian casualty methods of in the history of the world, and nobody even cares because somehow that’s not good enough
What makes you think these targeted strikes are any better? Did the school girls say, "o, but at least our entire city wasn't carpet bombed like an obvious war crime, instead we were drone striked in such a morally ambiguous way. O well"
No.
And why did America have so many enemies???
Maybe because we keep finding excuses to invent them, and then does hundreds of "morally grey" bombings. But at least it wasn't another Vietnam, right?
Bombing civilian infrastructure is a war crime because the end state is the same as bombing civilians. Killing power shuts down hospitals and emergency responders (generators run out eventually) and desalination plants. The military is largely unphased, they’re the first ones to get gas for generators.
Also, this is carpet bombing. Carpet bombing is the targeting of civilian infrastructure with effectively willful ignorance of the collateral damage.
We started a war knowing the only way to win was either boots on the ground or war-criming our adversary into submission. We don’t get to pretend our hands are tied and we have to send out the bombers. We don’t have to do this because Iraq forces us to, we have to do this because we elected a man who can barely read Post It notes and ignored half a century of military intelligence. We are at fault for every dollar of damage caused to infrastructure and every life lost.
>Anthropic wanted the ability to review actions that would have an effect on human life.
They wanted assurances that it would not be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons. They did not request to be "in the loop".
Furthermore, even if Anthropic had requested that, it would be a reason for the DoD to cancel the contract because the terms were unacceptable, not to declare Anthropic a supply chain risk. Declaring them a supply chain risk requires proving that they intended to sabotage their own product, adding malicious functionality. There is no evidence whatsoever that they planned to do that.
You raise an interesting point. Although wouldn’t Anthropic be the best experts on when a model would be most applicable or likely to falter?
I guess my opinion would really depend on the exact wording and details of the arrangement. Lots of people jumping in with strong stances based on pretty limited details.
On faltering: the US Military already has rules around the use of automated systems for this type decision making. This is not a new concept to them by any means, and currently it always involves a human decision.
Anthropic agreed to uses that involve a human decision, so this is a non sequitur.
The whole conflict is specifically about uses that do not involve a human decision. The DoD agreed to a contract that said it wouldn't use Anthropic for that, and then tried to change the terms.
Incidentally, the DoD used Claude in its decision that resulted in killing 120 children at an elementary school for girls. The Pentagon concluded that there was human review (which would mean that it fell within the contract's terms) but that the review was hollowed out (which could mean that it was a violation of the contract).
> [Anthropic] would not permit its technology to power fully autonomous weapons without human oversight over targeting and firing decisions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argued that the Pentagon should have unrestricted access to AI systems for “any lawful purpose” and that a private contractor should not be permitted to dictate how the military can use its technology.
It's about them maintaining an interpretation of law at all.
Simpletons read that as: "The DOW wants to kill people with AI."
You seem to be misunderstanding the facts. Claude was already used by the US Military, under an existing contract between Anthropic and the US Department of War.
The core dispute was the US Military deciding it needed to renegotiate this contract, but without Anthropic's two red lines: No fully autonomous weapons (i.e., zero humans in the loop), and no mass domestic surveillance.
well if you were Anthropic and you didn't want the government using your technology in these ways, how would you phrase it? What else would you have done?
Downvoted for misinformation, likely out of ignorance, despite the reasonable argument made on top of it. Anthropic was not asking for the ability to review and block particular uses. Those are classified and wouldn’t even be running on Anthropic’s servers. They just wanted the government to promise not to use it for killing people without a human in the loop.
Anthropic is vindicated in that you need oversight over AI being used to kill people, the USA military clearly showed itself incapable of wielding that responsibility.
And crucially, the DoD, through the normal procurement process, agreed to Anthropic’s terms and made the purchase. Much later, the Secretary of Defense threw a political fit and tried to change the terms.
Evidentially not - Anthropic want to do business with the US military, but on their own terms, telling the military what they can and cannot use it for.
It’s not a problem. But it’s also not a problem for the DOD to decide that it doesn’t want to use anthropic or have its suppliers use anthropic for DOD matters. The DOD didn’t ban private citizens from using Anthropic. You can sell in your own terms but the DOD can also buy in its own terms.
They're not allowed to use it for military work, precisely so that the military supply chain cannot be broken by an unaffiliated private contractor acting at its own behest.
The Federal government often imposes terms on its contractors that specify what sub-contractors are allowed to do, including "flow down" requirements that ensure these terms are themselves enforced recursively all the way down to leaf suppliers.
And the fact is that he had to reverse that position because it was not supportable by the statutory law he was trying to use. So the DoW policy changed.
I'm a big fan of checking the facts, which is why I encourage you to stay current on the discussion. Companies that do defense work are already familiar with the need to setup corporate structures to ensure that the blast radius of changes to FAR, DFARS, statutory requirements etc. don't reach the main corporate entity.
The thing that is novel here is that requirements traditionally focused on protecting for undue linkage with potentially-hostile foreign sources are being applied against Anthropic. But it's also novel that Anthropic is trying to apply conditions of use restrictions through its contract with the military.
I don't personally feel that's novel enough to warrant a ban across the whole supply chain, but that's been the net effect of quite a few other FAR and DFARS restrictions over the years, which have caused companies to either exit the defense space or avoid selling into it in the first place.
That is the funny thing to me. I hate diving into politics here on HN, but this has such a rank smell to it. Trump's comments about Dario. His insane propaganda video about how we will never be communist / Marxist. In the same breath our government is bribing people with offers of $$ (the $5,000 checks) and essentially bullying to outright moving towards saying this technology is so powerful we will just have to seize it for our own use.
It is impossible to miss the absolute hypocrisy of this moment and how people and corporations are supposedly free, but if you happen to be of interest to the government they will try to casually ruin you. It has always been this way, people just haven't noticed because it flies under the radar most of the time when the govern crushes some smaller enterprise or another because it got in their way or didn't play by their rules.
It seems simple to me. Anthropic is a private company. If you don't like it fix the laws or don't buy from them.
You're overlooking the critical difference between the government-as-government and the government-as-purchaser. You have to play on Walmart's terms--which are draconian and exacting--to sell to Walmart. Why should the DOD be any different when it comes to stuff the DOD is buying or indirectly paying its contractors to buy?
Yeah, the DOD is such a huge purchaser that it can "ruin you" by blacklisting you if you don't play by its terms. The same is true about Walmart if you're a grocery supplier, Apple if you make electronics components, etc. Private companies absolutely exercise their power like that.
I'm intensely skeptical that Walmart has clauses in its contracts saying that no supplier may use FooCorp software in the process of delivering its goods. If they do I would definitely call that an abuse of corporate power.
I don't care what the military does. This is pure thuggery and abuse of the rights of private firms. Any time you contract with the government and they don't like your terms, will they designate you a threat?
In this context, that designation just means that the DOD won’t use your product and it’s suppliers can’t use your product for DOD-facing activity. That’s not “thuggery” it’s something any buyer can do. Walmart or whatever could do it too.
No, tortious interference requires use of means that are independently wrongful, such as fraud, blackmail, etc. Preventing someone from doing business with someone else isn’t by itself enough. The reason the tort exists is to address the situation where some unlawful conduct (e.g. fraudulent statements) is directed against Party A, but the damage accrues to Party B in the form of a broken contract. In that scenario, Party B couldn’t sue for fraud, because the fraudulent statements were made to Party A. But Party A couldn’t sue for fraud, because it wasn’t harmed.
For example, if you think Party A and its customers are infringing your patent, you can threaten to sue the customers unless they use your product instead. That’s not tortious interference because suing someone for patent infringement isn’t itself wrongful.
I think it is thuggery. If DOD doesn't want to use anthropic as vendor, thats fine.
Prohibiting contractors and departments from using it to produce products well within anthropic terms of service has no risk.
It is petty retaliation and strong arming.
Imagine if Ford said they weren't interested in building tanks, and then the DoD said employees and contractors can't use Ford for any purpose, because they are a supply chain risk
If Ford told the DoD you can't use the tanks they bought however they need to, and had a kill switch in it in case they wanted to cut the DoD off, then that would obviously be a supply chain risk.
The military and it's suppliers need mitigate risk, and that includes suppliers intentionally causing harm to soldiers on the front lines, or in the backend logistics supply chain.
Honestly, every company should be treating Anthropic and OpenAI as supply chain risks, and should completely avoid dealing with them.
> If Ford told the DoD you can't use the tanks they bought however they need to, and had a kill switch in it in case they wanted to cut the DoD off, then that would obviously be a supply chain risk.
This is a misrepresentation of the situation. Anthropic did NOT sell something to the DoD and then restrict usage - the DoD purchased their offering fully aware of this clause.
That's true for every company and every individual involved with the dod. They can all put guns or pencils down and refuse at a future date for a unspecified reason.
That has nothing to do with supply chain risk designation. That comes from sabotage
Yeah, for national security being the biggest one. Also Congress can do whatever they want if they desired. If Congress mandated that all social media companies have to become workplace democracies, that's totally fine and legal.
We've forgotten what it means to run a society, we're allowed to change rules how we see fit whenever we want to. Only the elites exercise this power, but people have it too.
It's not good for the people. Anything that erodes the rights of companies erodes your rights. Private property and being able to run your firm on your own terms applies to everyone. Governments eroding them show they can do the same to you willy nilly.
> Private property and being able to run your firm on your own terms applies to everyone.
In theory, maybe. In reality, this is a privilege for a very small number of rich people.
> Anything that erodes the rights of companies erodes your rights.
How absurd. Food safety regulations don't erode my rights one bit, but they do erode the rights of companies to negligently poison me. I guess I'm losing the right to start a food company that poisons people, but I'm happy to forfeit that right in exchange for not being poisoned. We could extend this list of reasonable tradeoffs in which we all exchange the right to treat people poorly for the right not be treated poorly, and we all would benefit.
Except the people who want to sell poisoned food, those people will be worse off. I am okay with that.
I'm not arguing that the government's actions towards Anthropic are fair, but you're making the argument that no government should ever be allowed to designate any company as a supply chain risk, and that's ludicrous.
No, companies have routinely killed millions of Americans for profit. I do not trust companies at all. Attacking companies to provide for Americans has always benefited society as a whole and has always had vast majority of support from voters.
Also what private property? Most Americans can't afford to buy homes and are being priced out of owning property entirely.
Corporations have eroded the livelihood of Americans more than the government ever has.
There is only one class that fights against raising the minimum wage, or establishing a 32 hour workweek, or enacting medicare for all, or providing a society free of pollution and it's always been the corporate class.
There has been no dominating force that has killed more American civilians than the American corporation.
Corporations can't even regulate themselves and you're trying to argue that the true enemy is a democratic government? Come on man. These types of retorts does not convince voters (so please continue saying them). Actually go out there and do some deep canvassing.
People rightfully hate corporations because they are the last vestige of monarchs, oligarchies, and authoritarians that are allowed to ruin + destroy our lives with little repercussions.
One just has to look at the situation of our deteriorating food safety inspections (that were hallowed out by Musk + DOGE goons FYI) to know that corporations absolutely do not care about public safety over profits. Or health insurance companies that are incentivized to deny Americans life saving care for shareholder profits.
We have a sick society and it's mostly due to the unabashed influence of corporations over our lives.
---
Also in other comments you seem to be under the impression that corporations should be legally allowed to do what they want with zero government interference? Why do you believe such things over concepts of democracy or regulation?
Society is allowed to tell someone no, not everyone consents to your beleifs.
If you got the impression I am some kind of libertarian or anarchist, that would be a wrong impression. I probably fall somewhere along the spectrum toward social democracy.
I fully believe in democracy and regulation. Democracy cannot exist without capitalism and private property. At no point did I say companies should be free to do anything, I said companies should have freedom to enter or not in contracts under any terms they wish with anyone they want.
Regarding housing crisis, its the "small people" who cause this. I don't know of any large corporation that is NIMBY. If I had it, I'd steamroll NIMBY's houses and declare them a blight, they should agree with it since they regularly call various constructions blights. Places that tries building more housing saw reductions in prices. Its not the fault of corporations if people don't want houses built.
You can only say corporations "killed" people in abstract ways, governments not only have the legal power to but have routinely murdered millions very directly and physically.
Even if you believed corporations are authoritarian, its still better to have competing sources of power, not all corporations will always align with the government so it is better for powerful opposition to exist if government turns shit.
You also mentioned monarchs in your list, fascist italy is a direct example in my favor, the king's ego and his own self interest in his power caused him to continually give friction to Mussolini thus weakening the dictator.
Yes. Paragraph #1, sentence #1 of the US Constitution: "provide for the common defence[sic]". This is further elaborated upon in other original Constitution articles and subsequent amendments.
From that, we derive a long, storied history of things, among the more recent of which, and the operative matter here, is the Defense Production Act circa 1950.
The US is fundamentally based on the obligation of mutual military defense, and delegates the authority to call military balls and strikes, such as who will and will not be permitted to contract with the US military, exclusively to POTUS. Anthropic et al. are way out of their depth when they imagine their "terms and conditions" imbue them with some sort of military veto power in the US. Trump's action here, given his nature, is actually moderate: he could take this much further if he wishes.
Every private citizen or corporation gets to do business (or not) with the military on their own terms. This is the difference between totalitarianism and a free country.
Anthropic’s position is also known as “having terms of service”.
To be clear the existing, signed ToS terms that Trump balked at were:
1. No mass surveillance of US civilians - illegal but we have all read the Snowden papers.
2. Fully unmanned kill chains on autonomous weapons - Anthropic have even stated they will support this eventually, they just didn’t think their models were ready and didn’t want the obvious, inevitable blowback.
The DoD is within its rights to cancel the contract if it doesn’t like the terms that it previously signed.
The concern, I think, in its most generous terms, is that they can't buy Anthropic's service the way the could, say, a wrench, because Anthropic can decide at any point to disable the military's ability (even transitively, through other vendors) to use their models if they determined that they do not like what the military is doing with that or if it violates their interpretation of the terms of service.
By that expansive definition, any cloud software provider can do the same thing and so should also be a supply chain risk.
This whole fiasco is happening because the defense dept wanted to use anthropic models in a way not allowed in the existing contract. Anthropic stuck to the contract, and the def dept tried to be punitive about it.
If they can’t get what they want from the seller, fine go to a different seller, but the supply chain risk is just government overreach.
I think I mostly agree here -- any cloud provider or frankly SaaS system carries a similar risk. The question is whether they want to explicitly make that part of their terms of service, and in addition have made public statements about their willingness to apply those terms of service.
AWS GovCloud I believe promises the opposite. They could still do it, in terms of the capability itself, but then they'd be subject to both civil, criminal, and possibly even military consequences. Whereas Anthropic would be shielded from those consequences by the terms of their agreement (presumably; I'm not up to speed on the specifics of their contractual demands. This is just based on the context from this article and the previous appeals case that ruled against the government).
Anthropic did not have access to the servers where their models were deployed. They were under the control of AWS and Palantir, and they could neither disable, nor modify the model's behavior.
That is not the definition of a supply chain risk, this is:
> FASCSA definition (41 U.S.C. § 4713(k)(6)): "Supply chain risk" means the risk that any person may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, extract data, or otherwise manipulate the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, maintenance, disposition, or retirement of covered articles so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise manipulate the function, use, or operation of the covered articles or information stored or transmitted on the covered articles.
This topic is a mind-killer, lots of uninformed opinion swamping the news, and it's hard to get actual signal on the technical questions at hand. (And, I think it's naive to believe that the government is actually concerned about the precise legal definitions; remember Hegseth decreed that no government sub-contractors would be allowed to transact with Anthropic, despite there being no legal basis for this?)
> Anthropic can decide at any point to disable the military's ability
If you're referring to the claims of a killswitch, Anthropic testified under oath that they don't have one. This has been thoroughly covered, e.g. https://www.axios.com/2026/04/22/anthropic-no-kill-switch-ai.... Anthropic provides the weights, they get run in DoD's secure enclave. There's no "phone home".
If you mean more generally, that DoD might breach a contract and then have that contract cancelled going forwards, then yes - this is literally how all SaaS contracts work. And it's very clearly not what the quoted text above refers to.
The way this works in a non-totalitarian country is, the government says "I want new terms and you won't give them to me; instead I will take my business elsewhere". And indeed this is what happened, DoD now has contracts with Google and OpenAI for equivalent capabilities.
Just to engage on your terms, with the actual concern you're raising; I would say rather than "FASCSA supply chain risk" a better way of thinking about it is "vendor lock-in". DoD absolutely should not rely on a single vendor for these kinds of capabilities. And most defense spending explicitly contemplates this already. This should be and has been solved through basic procurement practices.
This is great context and I feel that this is bringing in a lot of information that I wasn't aware of.
If what you're saying is true, then there is truly no supply chain risk other than the risk of civil action against the government for violation of terms of service. That seems like a rather weak point on which to balance a "supply chain" risk though.
The TL;DR is that this was actually decided on the principle that Anthropic can “manipulate” the defense systems by training Claude to refuse to take certain actions.
This feels like a parallel construction to me, it wasn’t reported AFAICT at the time of the original drama.
But yeah, the decision in OP has nothing to do with the contractual terms that everyone has been debating upthread.
No it's not. Anthropic didn't want an AI to make battlefield decision on who gets killed because it's too unreliable. That doesn't mean they don't want AI used in the military supply chain.
And it also doesn't mean that Anthropic is a supply chain risk merely for not wanting AI to be the active decision maker in live or death situations in war.
And Anthropic's objection was recently confirmed: the US military blew up a school in Iran due to an AI error, and killed more than a hundred kids.
They also effectively said that military contractors and their subcontractors cannot use Anthropic - that's a significant part of the economy. I mean technically, they can use Anthropic for non-military work. But in practice, they will choose not use it at all, since it's a better approach to show compliance.
> This also means that no companies that work with th DoD can use anthropic models for any purpose.
No, it does not mean that. I don't know why people have been making this claim. If you work for a company, let's call it X, and your work is not DOD related, let's say you work on a social media service, then X has no reason (from this designation) to prevent you from using Anthropic, it will not impact their defense contracts at all.
People have been making this claim because the Secretary of Defense personally issued a statement demanding that "no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic". We're not going to play this absurd game where government officials issue fascist instructions and we all pretend they said something more reasonable instead.
Except you and many others are accepting what he said as if it were true, that statement is false. And hiddencost and others are just parroting it instead of describing the real situation.
This designation means Athropic's systems can't be used in DOD work, but many companies that work with the DOD also do work outside that. That separate work is not restricted with respect to the use of Anthropic's systems. Repeating a lie as if it were true is just dumb, it helps spread that lie.
If AWS employees use Claude to build govcloud, it is a violation of supply-chain. Either Amazon, Microsoft, and Google require their employees to stop using claude or the DoD has to migrate off of these cloud providers.
Or these companies have to completely split the govcloud work from its commercial offerings (which defeats the whole point).
That's a DOD related system though. If an Amazon employee uses Claude to change shopping cart behavior, it's not a problem though and Amazon has no reason to stop those employees from using Claude given the supply chain risk designation, except out of an abundance of caution or to kiss Hegseth's ass.
That depends on what "change shopping cart behavior" entails though. Sure, if you edit the icon you're pretty safe, but what if the change is a fix so if two people are adding things to the same cart on separate computers, the page will get updated, so they swap out to their webhook library and make a couple edits, but that library is also what powers the UI for the AWS consoles in govcloud?
Now you're making changes to the source code used in govcloud using claude, a clear supply chain violation.
It's a very wishy-washy area right now, and the branches are all struggling to figure out how to work around these laws that were mostly intended to keep jobs in the USA but are now hampering productivity. One example is that DoD contractors can't use open source software that has a non-us developer as a core maintainer. Obviously that's extremely hard to track and it's mostly ignored. Pete definitely bit off more than he realized in his effort to seem cool and get what he wanted.
What if an Amazon employee uses Claude to develop the S3 storage service, which is a core product offering unrelated to the DoD but also something that will be provided to the DoD in govcloud?
In practice, I think it's fair to say there's an informal understanding that AWS will not be punished for this so long as they stay in the regime's good graces. But that's how fascist power accumulation works; now they have to stay in the regime's good graces, or they risk being destroyed.
> What if an Amazon employee uses Claude to develop the S3 storage service, which is a core product offering unrelated to the DoD but also something that will be provided to the DoD in govcloud?
Honestly that question has been open for as long as GovCloud has been around. I've used it myself as an exercise in pushing within the Navy to adopt public cloud where security requirements permit, rather than forcing everything onto GovCloud.
After all, if it's the same S3 either way then the real point of security isn't the Amazon datacenter employee changing out dead hard disks in a physical GovCloud datacenter, but the S3 service team developers who are frequently not even American citizens, but whose code may very well go on to touch the most sensitive data the nation generates.
Again, it's unreasonable to play this game. The regime must be held to account for the actual things that they say, not whatever sanewashed policies we can backfill underneath them. If Hegseth's statements exceed his legal authority, that doesn't mean he's lying, it means that the government is knowingly pursuing an illegal policy.
If you don't like that, and would prefer to discuss a lawful supply chain risk designation, you should convince him to retract the statements or impeach him.
> If you don't like that, and would prefer to discuss a lawful supply chain risk designation, you should convince him to retract the statements or impeach him.
You're crediting him with much more power than he has, and somehow you think I'm sane washing by calling a lie a lie. What you're doing is far worse, you're believing his lies.
Anyways, the statement is false, at least the extent to which being designated a supply chain risk can impact who does business with Anthropic. There's no need for him to retract it or even to impeach him over it, because any company with a lawyer and a reasonable separation of their commercial and defense work will be able to determine that they can still do business with Anthropic despite the designation. It'll just have to be confined, so long as the designation stands, to their commercial work.
Trump legally doesn't have the authority to start the Iran War.
I suppose you would have us believe that, therefore, we are not at war with Iran?
Just because his statement has no legal basis does not mean that it is unreasonable to believe it will be enforced as-stated.
Indeed, this insistence on prioritizing the written law over the empirical reality borders on the delusional - if concentration camps were not the official policy of Nazi Germany, would you also insist we are making some mistake by "believing the lies" about their existence?
I just don't get what sort of point you're trying to make here - do you really think that the current US government cannot possibly cause problems for people that violate their unofficial edicts?
Do you really think a sensible legal department is going to advise their clients to antagonize the administration by using Claude for their "unrelated" commercial work?
Dario wanted to sell a $200 million chat bot to the US military and also dictate how it could be used. The government said no. And because of that Claude also cannot be deployed to the GenAI.mil AI infrastructure. This means that any sensitive work for the DoD that uses Claude will go through Anthropic's infrastructure, not the US military-hosted backend.
So yes obviously defense contractors are forbidden to use it.
If the government wanted to put iPhones in missiles, and apple said "we won't sell you iPhones to put in missiles" would the correct government response be to say "no government contractor can ever use an iPhone".
The DoD and US military does not allow contractors to use iPhones or anything else that is not backed by government-hosted or compliant infrastructure, such as GovCloud. The fact that the Pentagon and Anthropic could not come to an agreement on the usage and deployment to GenAI.mil means that it can't be used.
The reasons why are incidental to that requirement for defense contractors.
Go into a random defense contractor office and (assuming you can get in to do this) ask them how many of their iPhones are managed by the company. The percentage who say theirs are will be close to 0%. Most are personal devices, and they use them to call into meetings with DOD officials all the time with no special precautions taken.
Exercising its power as a purchaser is "not buying it" or "choosing a competitor." Instead, this is arbitrarily and capriciously using an administrative mechanism in a novel way to punish a company.
Probably not, no private company has the ability to tell all its suppliers "thou shalt not do business with <some other company>". They lack the pull to compel them to do so. The closest would be things like what MS did back in the 90s, and got them in hot water with the anti-trust case against them.
That's not what happened here and you know this. It was, literal quote, "“[e]ffective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.”
Fair, and still not something most companies can pull off. Again, without risking running into anti-trust laws like MS did.
Do you seriously think that you can go to all your vendors (if you were a business owner) and tell them, "You can't use Atlassian when working on anything you sell us." How will your business actually compel all those vendors to drop their use of Atlassian for that work? How will you verify compliance and why should any of them sign a contract with you with these restriction? And if they do, how will you avoid anti-trust violations because almost certainly the only way you could talk them into signing such a contract would be to be a massive company throwing your weight around (like MS did with hardware OEMs back in the 90s, among other things).
They are not "just a purchaser" though. It's the world's most powerful organization that is funded by the people and is supposed to be for the people. I'm all for businesses making FAFO decisions, but expect a lot more here.
The fact that it’s a publicly funded entity is more reason for it to adopt hardball tactics, not less. It’s similar to FDR’s comments on public sector unions. When the government is the buyer, it’s even more important to get the best deal and terms possible, because it’s the public’s money’s you’re spending and the public’s interest you’re serving.
Exactly, setting policy for Americans and American companies is extremely important and should not be ego driven. These deals are to improve America, not to look strong.
The U.S. military’s policy has always been to secure the absolute best technology for killing people. So the DOD quite reasonably believes that it’s in America’s interest to have the best technology for building AI killing machines with no restrictions from non-military people on how it’s used.
Anthropic did not host the model that the Department of War used. It had, and still has no control over the models it has deployed in classified environments.
You're skipping the supply chain risk designation, which is an extraordinary and punitive measure. Without that part, you'd be correct that this is a nothingburger. "Government decides to not renew contract with corporation X and goes with Y instead" is not headline news.
I can build a super bioweapon that can kill millions and I don't trust the US military to use it responsibly.
The US military asks me to build the super bioweapon. I say no thanks, please ask someone else, but happy to keep selling you bioweapons I think is safe enough.
I get designated an evil unamerican supply chain risk that nobody in the US military may do business with even though I was still happy to sell my safer bioweapons.
Anthropic isn’t aligned with MAGA political ideology so they found an excuse to abuse power against them, more or less. The excuse was because Anthropic prohibits the use of their models for autonomous killing without a human in the loop they were declared a threat to national security on par with Iran or North Korea from a supply chain perspective in the military. OpenAI then rushed in and volunteered to build the slaughterbots ASAP, likely specially tuned to whomever Trump has taken a disliking to in his ambien stupors. Welcome to the future!
How is it delusion? If they don't want to work with certain types of government contracts they have the right to state so. Its just thuggery from Trump.
Especially since Anthropic themselves have been literally saying that AI might destroy humanity. Why is it a surprise when people take them at their word and designate them a risk to critical infrastructure?
Side note, the Anthropic bots are astroturfing the comments.
>Side note, the Anthropic bots are astroturfing the comments.
if this is more than "people i disagree with are commenting", you should be messaging hn@ycombinator.com rather than writing it as a side note in your comment.
He's probably a maga or adjacent who is pissed Anthropic didn't bend the knee. You don't need to be a shill to hate this horrid abuse of government powers against a private firm.
Anyone who doesn't agree with me must be MAGA, right? You think people who don't like Anthropic are automatically Trump supporters? I have personally experienced how evil Claude is compared with the other options.
personally, i think that anthropic is a supply chain risk. if the ceo writes 'pace the frontier' and wants to be in charge of the product, it's very risky (to the customer).
by analogy it would be like the us military renting all m4 carbines from a political party.
anthropic treat customers very badly. they have claude lecture the user about the moral law according to anthropic. they change the product all the time. they have safety refusals to degrade functionality, they have mandatory logging so they spy on how it is used.
it's unusable for a serious application.
on top of that it is unsurprising that a big tyrant does not take well to a little tyrant.
Thats too vast a scope. Whats not to say they start enforcing bans on Anthropic in any branch or usage of Anthropic of your company if your company has entered into a defense contract with the government for something?
they should ban it, defense contractors shouldn't be using it XD.
fable 5.1 doesn't have any option to stop anthropic spying on it. you can't have that...anthropic contractors and actually the rationalist ea clowns themselves don't have security clearance
not even AWS govcloud can offer fable without anthropic snooping. it is the only model with this problem.
the pentagon can't force suppliers to require no snooping policies unless they designate the company a risk.
other than those suppliers who are already working on classified projects and can't have dario write an essay on his blog about 'pace the f35' or 'missiles of loving grace. the adolescence of classified satellites.'
How is this a debate? Anthropic's AI was used in military/defense operations. When Anthropic discovered this and disclosed it publicly, they attempted to revoke access and went after the government demanding it not get used in such a way. This would be a supply chain risk to any government.
If Lockheed Martin disabled weapons systems when it discovered the Air Force using its fighters over Iranian airspace based on Lockheed's ideological views, I'm pretty sure they would be labeled a supply chain risk at minimum. What is the issue here?
The government canceling that specific contract with Anthropic is fine. It is too vast a scope to deny Anthropic to work with any other companies who also happen to be defense contractors. Lockheed Martin for example cannot be sure now if it won't be sued if some employee uses Anthropic for help with accounting or anything unrelated to defense.
Devil's advocate, but Anthropic talks a lot about importance of alignment, so.. How can military ensure that model is NOT refusing to work just to be malicious?
Anthropic doesn't provide model w/o guardrails, suppliers have to use public version, newer model releases surely know about Anthropic standoff with the military.. how to prevent model from realizing that it's doing something for the military (supplier) and sandbagging and/or subtly sabotaging the results?
=====
DOD recommends sandbagging as defense mechanism against destination "attacks":
When suspecting a malicious distillation campaign, consider varying changes to responses across requests to complicate response quality evaluations, such that the subtle changes avoid triggering obvious alerts. Reducing reasoning depth, presenting correct information with different reasoning, or stylistic inconsistencies may evade detection while reducing training usefulness.
Avoid informing China-based AI company users suspected of distillation campaigns of a switch to a downgraded model. Informing malicious distillers would enable them to improve their defense evasions and indicate when to roll back training.
If that's seen as valid defense mechanism, then it's also a risk if used against them.
That would be stupidity of the government that caused this situation in the first place. Anthropics position was they wanted to have oversight before it was used to kill people. Anthropic was right. The us govt is fucking incompetent and managed to kill an entire girls school using "AI".
Yes. That's pretty much how it works for fascism. The government uses powers meant for a legitimate purpose to instead intimidate people and the mechanisms of government meant to restrain such abuse fail or are taken over entirely. Have you ever studied history?
But the idea is that you don't elect people who would behave that way in the first place. Plus the US courts are demonstrably not in fact mindless rubber stamps for the president. And it's not like anyone is actually canceling elections at this time, so they can be voted out later.
To me a fascist government would prevent people from being able to take their power away at all, and simply do whatever they want with impunity, but I don't quite see that happening in the US right now. Courts are still ruling against the government, they're largely complying in most ways, and there will still be more elections.
Are they trying to do some things that smell "fashy"? Maybe. But I still think it's a stretch to say the US government is full blown fascist in the same way we've seen that in the past in some other countries.
OpenAI has hacked several prominent entities and is allowed to do business as usual but Anthropic putting guardrails on the military's usage of AI is the national security threat while Pentagon itself said that over reliance on AI lead to that attack on school in Minab.
I have also learned that OpenAI's president is a big maga donor and now I am thinking of cancelling my OpenAI membership todau and signing up with Anthropic again.
Edit - i am not a OAI hater and i don't hate anyone. I am just saying Anthropic is kinda getting bullied and OAI is not being punished enough for their actions. It is time for me to support Anthropic (with my $$$) instead of OAI.
>OpenAI has hacked several prominent entities and is allowed to do business as usual but Anthropic putting guardrails on the military's usage of AI is the national security threat while Pentagon itself said that over reliance on AI lead to that attack on school in Minab.
Right, because "supply chain risk" designation is as it pertains to them being a supplier to the military, not a overall assessment of their standing as a corporate citizen. Not to mention that the administration wants to go full steam ahead when it comes to AI development, so there's no internal contradiction here.
I do feel like "this company hacked the Australian government" is perhaps relevant when considering how much the military should trust them. Like, that seems very relevant when assessing the risks to the government military.
These are just very different things. OAI "hacking" anything isn't OAI telling the US Gov what they can and cannot do with their product. Maybe along all kinds of axes, one is more alarming than the other, but it's a canard in this topic.
>> These are just very different things.OAI "hacking" anything isn't OAI telling the US Gov what they can and cannot do with their product.
OAI hacking the chinese government will definitely raise alarms in DC and will be bad for national security. Just because the country that was hacked (australia) is a weaker one doesn't mean the underlying action is not troubling.
That does not, in itself, suggest they are a supply chain risk. It might label them a national security risk. And you might have your own creative definitions of every word related to supply chains. But we are talking about supply chain risks as the US Gov understands them.
>OAI hacking the chinese government will definitely raise alarms in DC and will be bad for national security.
That seems like it's too easy to abuse as a cudgel for whatever companies you vaguely hate. Is ExxonMobil a "supply chain risk" because the effects of climate change might cause geopolitical ructions in the next decade?
Hate is a pretty strong word here. I don't hate OAI. I am a paying subscriber. All I am saying is maybe its time to switch, show support for Anthropic because it is kinda getting bullied right now and the OAI is not getting enough punishment for their illicit actions. Is it too hard to understand?
Anthropic was designated long before the July OAI hacks. Also the appeals court isn’t re-assessing the DoD in light of new evidence, they are deciding whether it was constitutional for the DoD to blacklist Anthropic in the first place.
> Anthropic was designated long before the July OAI hacks.
I think the point is that, if the DOD was working off a coherent philosophy, the company that has a rap sheet for hacking multiple targets, including the Australian government, is probably also a risk.
And if "hacking the Australian government" isn't enough to qualify as a threat to national security, then it's probably mudslinging to suggest that Anthropic is a threat.
1) The designation has nothing to do with hacking, either from Anthropic or otherwise. The dispute is about Anthropic barring the DoD from using Claude to develop autonomous weapons and conduct domestic surveillance.
2) The DoD does not care about any of the hacking OpenAI does as long as the DoD can do what they want with ChatGPT.
3) Historically, the US government has been interested in hacking other nation states, friendly and not. So OpenAI being able to hack Australian systems is a selling point.
Not just "a big MAGA donor," the biggest single contributor. Greg Brockman donated $25 million.
I get downvoted every time I point out that this was entirely rational. This, downvoters, is why it was entirely rational. Does that mean I agree with it? Of course not. But investments are made to pay off, and this one certainly has for OpenAI.
I'm wondering how much was to push towards supporting Israel during the college campus protests and any future (at the time) conflict with Iran and it's proxies post October 7th like a lot of other Jewish million/billionaires such as Bill Ackman that typically supported Democrats or liberal causes. Brockman doesn't seem to have anything publicly stating he's Jewish but "Brockman" has English/German/Jewish origins and his mother's maiden name was Feldman.
Actually, on further research, what I have wrong here is that Brockman was the largest single donor to the MAGA PAC after the election, contributing $25 million in September 2025 [1].
Yeah, it surprised me when I found out. I can intellectually understand why average people choose MAGA and try and be somewhat understanding even if I find it distasteful. My conclusion is that if you aren't personally worth at least $5M or have the direct phone number of someone who can get a Trump admin official on the phone, then it was probably a bad choice.
Of those who meet that criteria, and especially those with MUCH more money and closer connections, it actually is an extremely smart choice. However, it represents a level of reprehensible naked self-dealing and complicity that I simply can't condone. It really is comparable to the looting if public goods and coffers during and after the fall of the USSR. Nationalism and patriotism are dead.
So you claim: If a similar thing would be filed against OpenAI, it would stand up in court.
That is still not corruption, yet. Also in Germany it is the executive branch which controls who is sued or policed by the stately organs.
So favorism can be passed down this way, but not we are not at corruption yet. If reciprocity is expected, then you could call it that. Or could perhaps even file for negligence in treating all other company actors the same, especially if you are Anthropic yourself.
Still, I blame the US voters as much as the current administration if the later is just clowns and thieves.
Also, IANAL and HN discussing US things is always foreign to me.
If the president favors one party over another with no clear benefit to the voters, that is very indicative of corruption. If his organization is also getting donations from said party, it is even more certain to be corruption.
You argue that the courts are not corrupt, hence there is no corruption. Without considering the president.
I think you're making an assumption about what the military wants to do with AI. Based on things I have put together, they want an AI without guardrails for various reasons I won't go into. In fact, it's a security risk to have guardrails, given what I think at least one intended use is. I wouldn't jump to conclusions about corruption as the first explanation because this is vastly more complex than that.
Then the Pentagon shouldn't sign a contract with them. (Or in this case, they shouldn't try and fail to renegotiate the terms of an already signed contract, and then retaliate in order to get their way.)
I guess I don't know what "national champion" means. Do they receive different legal treatment from other similar companies? If so, that would be a worrying signal. A common feature of fascism being present doesn't mean you've definitely got fascism, but it does raise a pretty big red flag.
>Do they receive different legal treatment from other similar companies? If so, that would be a worrying signal. A common feature of fascism being present doesn't mean you've definitely got fascism, but it does raise a pretty big red flag.
They definitely get assistance from the government. Where that crosses into "different legal treatment" is up to you, though personally I think the distinction (if any) isn't really worth much. The original claim was "Most favored companies", not "are totally exempt from the law". In the case of openai, it's not really clear whether any laws have been broken, because despite all the cries over "they hacked people!", the question of intent would make any prosecution tricky. Not to mention there's similar cries about AI companies in general violating copyright laws, so if the implication is that openai gets to break laws scott free but anthropic doesn't, that really falls flat.
The crux of the issue isn’t hacking - all the big US labs have hacked someone now (https://www.felonybench.com/)and none have faced charges. It also isn’t copyright violations, they all seem equally guilty and equally uncharged.
The issue is openai and anthropic both make similar products in similar ways and yet only one has been designated a “supply chain risk” for entirely opaque reasons that based on timing are probably just “they didn’t kowtow correctly”.
The gov putting their finger on the scales for the company that showed the most deference to them is not a good sign for democracy.
They literally lined up to shower trump with gifts after the inauguration. Tim Cook gave trump a 24K gold bar with an easily detachable plaque so as to not have just given him a gold bar.
There is no available information on the quantity of gold in that base …
… but I sincerely doubt Apple gave a ~$1M “gold bar” to a political leader, in front of cameras, using a patently transparent ploy like “it’s just a detachable base”.
That would be a phenomenally stupid and obvious violation of bribery law.
And if Trump does keep it as a personal gift, it will be included in a financial disclosure report.
I never said it was worth $1M. But it's not infeasible that it's over $100k in value as just an couple of ounces of gold are $10k.
> That would be a phenomenally stupid and obvious violation of bribery law.
Nope, that's how crazy weak the US bribery laws are. The only time they really sort of kick in is when it's done on behalf of a foreign nation.
To be convicted of current US bribery laws, you essentially need a written note that says "I am giving you this so you can in an official capacity pass this piece of legislation". McDonnell v. United States gutted any sort of accountability for bribery.
But further, Trump v. United States (2022) has granted the president extra immunity so long as he's doing things in an "official capacity".
It's a violation of what bribery laws should be, but not what they actually are.
> And if Trump does keep it as a personal gift, it will be included in a financial disclosure report.
Or what? You think his personal lawyer who heads the DoJ is going to prosecute him?
This demonstrates a lot of faith in institutions which really ought have lost the benefit of the doubt. The ruling in Snyder v US has significantly raised the burden of proof for bribery charges, and it's easy to find examples of Trump enriching himself in office.
You're way overthinking this. The administration told Anthropic to let them do something, Anthropic said no, and then they got pissy and started throwing rocks and wouldn't back down because the defining trait of this administration is that they walk into stupid positions and then refuse to back down because backing down would make them look weak and wrong.
I still enjoy wearing them i dont care what others say as Im using them as intended along with the millions of other smart glass wearers. You really think all 20 million smart glasses wearers are all being creeps - caring to film random strangers? Thats a miniscule population who has no life and who are loner/weirdos! But that's a good narrative for the general public who always fights new technology.
In time one of the big tech will solve the pervert issue by randomizing / anonymizing every face in your photos that's not in your personal network. Once this is done / achieved no one will call them pervert glasses anymore. Im surprised Meta hasnt done this already! They really should!
ok whatever lets jump ahead five to ten years and you and or everyone around you will be wearing smart glasses. The pervert issue will be solved via technological solutions.
umm yeah i can read that its an issue for a portion of the population and its one that can be solved via technological solutions. I offered one such solution above and I'm sure other ppl have ideas too how to solve. Apple will be releasing their own glasses and I bet if they will offer such. They infered if Im not mistaken they are in Joanna Stern's John Ternus recent interview.
That doesnt mean 20 million smart glasses wearers (miniscule population of all are weirdos/creeps) are gonna stop wearing what some others don't like. It's just like smoking. People didnt go up to those smoking and punch them in the face or threaten with violence. Rather laws were made and if no technological solutions is made (serious think Apple is the company that will) maybe laws then will then force such a solution.
Thanks for the encouragement. It's hard to come by these days on the internet. I never really used twitter even before elon bought it. I don't use any social media, maybe except hanging out on HN often.
Admittedly I still need to do some reading on the current ruling, but how this isn't seen as an open and shut case of vindictive prosecution (if that's even a thing for this branch of law?) is astounding. The administration couldn't have made it more obvious there was no merit to their designation of Anthropic.
Sure did- Anthropics behavior absolutely merits their designation. Private sector leadership is going to decide how the military should act? They are shirking their civic duties, plain and simple and the use of their tech should certainly be called into question.
If you attempt a less adversarial tone with your comments you'll be less likely to get flagged and you might actually get to have the substantive discussion you're clearly impassioned to have.
Yes, anyone and everyone should have a right to refuse contracts with the government. Is that difficult to understand? If you find it difficult to understand then perhaps democracy and capitalism isn't for you.
Maybe, but only in a very idealistic, unrealistic, sense.
Could you imagine a hypothetical where we're at war and a private company has a potentially war-ending tech (nuclear weapon say) that they refuse to sell to the government?
What if the private company had a vaccine to prevent a pandemic?
The job of a government is to look after the interests of the people who elected it... Is there no point that you think the rights/needs of the many should outweigh the ideological rights of the individual?
If the individual doesn't have rights, then the many don't have either for many is composed of individuals. And yes, I will have the same opinion on that private company. But morally you can see the difference between a company refusing to help in making unaided killbots vs a company releasing a vaccine?
Sure - I agree with Anthropic's position here, but at the same time it makes sense that the military doesn't want to use them, and there are certainly situations where the government needs to be given the powers to do what they are elected to do, but hopefully limited to extraordinary justified situations.
Henry Ford should have the full right to do so. The USA isn't involved in a world war now in any case. The only "wars" it is involved it right now are ones it started itself pointlessly.
Yes, if they think the government is going to be irresponsible with it, and their weaponized smallpox is liable to cause a global pandemic that will also kill many of their countrymen, it seems entirely reasonable for the company not to sell it, or be forced to sell it either.
In the abstract though, we're just playing the "what if" game. If a company had the nuclear bomb near the end of World war II instead of the government holding it via the Manhattan Project is a different scenario than we're facing today, and if the government in question is the USA, Ukraine, the Nazis, or Russia also makes a difference. The weapon is also hard to abstract away. AI isn't a nuclear bomb, nor is it a weaponized virus/bacteria or a chemical weapon like anthrax or sarin, nor is it simply propaganda leaflefts distributed by airdrop.
If you can only make such absurd examples then you have failed. Paying taxes are not a contract between me and the government. They are a forced fee extracted of me. Everyone should be worried about the government threatening to issue supply chain risks if they don't like you rejecting a contract with them.
Its not a fucking civic duty for my company to be forced into entering contracts with the government. Its my civic right to tell the government to pound sand without fearing forceful retaliation.
This debate seems to be missng the bigger picture regarding dual-use technology. If the precedent is set that any 'terms of use' which restrict military app can be deemed a 'supply chain risk,' does that effectively mean no commercial software vendor can ever legaly impose safety gurdrails on their products if, they wantto sell to government contractors? How does this impact the future of open-source components that are widely used in defense software?
> How does this impact the future of open-source components that are widely used in defense software
Not at all, because open source contributors aren't megalomaniacs trying to dictate how people use their products. In fact, the exact opposite. That is the entire point of Open Source. Complete freedom for the user.
Supply chain risk seems a massive over-reaction, but understandable that the government doesn't want to commit to Anthropic controlled software for any critical military application if they can't 100% rely on Anthropic support in being able to use it as they see fit.
Every government on Earth has legislation that allows it to force companies (and citizens) to do its bidding under certain circumstances. That’s pretty much the definition of a government.
The point is this not being the first tool in the toolbox. Other competitors have shown they are more than willing to build weapons of death (OpenAI) so as the government you put them as the preferred contractor.
What the orange turd is going is rather petty bullshit in a market where many options exist.
remote control of the software, spying on customers, etc.
The military ran Anthropic models on their own infrastructure; Anthropic had no access to it. "They might disable Claude in the middle of an emergency" was never a possibility.
DOD used claude via palantir. palantir runs on AWS, supposedly DOD IL6.
anthropic did a prigozhin, got cocky and went behind the DOD's back to palantir and asked them questions about the use of claude.
a big tyrant does not like to be usurped or undermined by a little tyrant.
after pissing off the DOD by trying to get palantir to rat out classified deployments, dario went to the pentagon and behaved like himself in front of pete hegseth. anthropic was not going to come back from that.
notably, fable is not on IL5 or above. the best you can get is palantir AIP opus 5 in AWS IL5. i suspect, because of anthropic demanding that AWS rat out its customers.
This is not an abstract disagreement at all. The red lines that the Department of War wanted to cross were made extremely clear: They want to build Skynet with Claude, and build a mass domestic surveillance system. Now they will have to make do with building those two systems with Gemini and ChatGPT.
> The red lines that the Department of War wanted to cross were made extremely clear: They want to build Skynet with Claude, and build a mass domestic surveillance system.
They claim they want to use AI for "any lawful purpose". They didn't go further to say that they want to build either Skynet or engage in mass surveillance.
Anthropic wanted the DoW to specifically disclaim those things, and the DoW position is that it will not disclaim any specific mission set that it's legally allowed to engage in, whether that's Skynet, targeting, surveillance, or anything else. Not for Anthropic, not for any contractor.
But refusing to disclaim a mission isn't the same as saying you want to do, just like refusing to answer "when did you stop beating your wife?" doesn't mean you're beating your wife.
Is the DoW response to this tiff over the top? Sure, but it's also not 100% political either, I've run into many government bureaucrats who love bureaucratic knife fights like this.
> understandable that the government doesn't want to commit to Anthropic controlled software
But that's not at issue here. Obviously everyone agrees that the Pentagon can issue RFQ's to whatever specifications it wants. They can buy whatever they want, for the same reason that you or I are free to sell whatever we want.
The subject at hand is an attempt to use national security regulatory power to coerce Anthropic into selling a product it doesn't want to sell.
> The subject at hand is an attempt to use national security regulatory power to coerce Anthropic into selling a product it doesn't want to sell.
It would be naive to think that a private company could deny the government access to any tech if they want it for military or surveillance etc usage. In this case the government isn't forcing Anthropic to do it, they have alternatives and are perhaps making an example of Anthropic for refusing.
You could even make a case that the "supply chain risk" designation DOES make sense. If Anthropic are opposed to certain uses of their software, then doesn't that potentially impact companies that are part of the supply chain as well?
There are plenty of companies that are opposed to certain operations of the US military and refuse to sell to the US military on those grounds. None of them are considered a supply chain risk because that's not what a supply chain risk is.
A supply chain risk is specifically an entity that is likely to maliciously sabotage the US military's operations, such as Chinese companies that are controlled by the CCP. It is not simply a decision to "not buy from this company", but rather a wide-ranging decision that this particular company is a national security threat.
Or is known to have weaknesses that might permit such actions. Microsoft permitting Chinese workers to maintain DOD systems presented a supply chain risk, even though MS themselves were not the ones likely to behave maliciously. Instead their policies were so stupid that they invited potential malicious actors into the facilities.
> And all those companies can choose not to work with them too.
Right, and if they chose independently to do so it would be their right. What makes this problematic is that "all those companies" did not choose to not to work with the Pentagon (or with Anthropic spefically, for that matter). They were compelled to using using a regulatory tool which was originally intended to combat hostile foreign espionage.
That's not a "choice" made by those third party suppliers. The Pentagon is using the Supply Chain Risk designation as a contract negotiating tactic.
That's not what happened. DOD bought a product, with terms precluding specific applications of the product. DOD decided to change the terms, vendor said no. DOD threw a hissyfit (well, Hegseth did) and said, "No one can use it if they do business with us!"
If they had just terminated their contracts with Anthropic, then there would likely be no issue beyond having to pay out any penalties for terminating a contract early. They could then go to Grok (as they did) and OpenAI and used them instead. Or even kept the contract with Anthropic and its limitations, and just used the others for the cases where Anthropic was not permitted.
I think both sides are wrong. In no particular order:
US does not buy weapons that self-regulate generally. The US can and has purchased weapons with stipulations on how they should be used. For instance, and I'm making this up, they might purchase cluster munitions for smashing up an airfields, but with a stipulation they may not be used where humans are present or something. The munition doesn't check GPS and refuse to detonate if GPS doesn't indicate it's over some Russian airfield. Nor does an M4 fail to fire if it's on US Soil. Anthropic tried to build safeguards and out-regulate the government. Everyone here should know that such limitations would (can and have, see some famous IFF spoofing incidents) be exploited by an enemy, which is generally why they aren't acceptable in a military context. Without seeing the contract signed, one possibility is Anthropic tried to push regulations onto the government, and Anthropic gets to ride away on a high horse.
The other side: The Supply Chain Risk feels like an abuse. It's likely a valid designation and likely has its historical uses. If this was a contract issue, that would have been the correct way to litigate. Instead, again without seeing the contract, it feels like this is way to try and stifle their uptake in defense sector; basically attempting to strong arm them by choking a business segment off. Again, if there is a in fact a legitimate breach of contract here, it should be litigated as such. The alternative is there is no such breach, and Anthropic built limitations into the contract and the Pentagon just has buyers remorse. Honestly this wouldn't surprise me, the federal government generally incinerates tax dollars, and with the massive marketing hullabaloo pushed by AI companies, its completely likely a giant contract was signed without reading the fine print.
The difference between Anthropic and a cluster bomb supplier is that cluster bomb manufacturing in the United States requires permits. The government is only going to give them to companies that are working with the United States and its allies, which means that company has zero leverage to make requirements (e.g. "don't use them on humans.")
Separately, as a note to your made up example:
Cluster bombs are uniquely efficient against humans, especially in trenches. The US is not a signatory to the international treaty banning their use. It does not like being limited in how it conducts war. I strongly doubt that it would agree to terms from a private enterprise to similar effect.
Not sure if I’m just in my own national security bubble, but I find it troubling to see the perspective that most of the conversation in this thread is coming from.
The US government took a legal designation explicitly crafted to protect against foreign adversaries and deployed it against a private, domestic entity, to their immediate and great detriment.
Both canbe true: the law as written is too broad and enables petty vindictive behaviors from politicians to punish companies that don't ask "how high" when prompted to jump.
It can also be the case that the law is applied in a way unintended by it's writers to enable corrupt choices.
At which point, you need to look beyond the letter of the law to contextualize whether the law is applied correctly.
The future is uncertain. Maybe we will see if the arguments stick around through, say, an AOC presidential administration. Changes in weather like that are a great test of people's convictions.
The statute defines a supply chain risk as “the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert” a covered system. It says adversary, not foreign adversary.
Even so, this designation had never previously been applied to a domestic company. The Pentagon applied it to Anthropic after a dispute over how it could use its AI. To me, the circumstances suggest the designation was used to punish Anthropic for refusing the Pentagon’s terms.
It was clearly retaliatory and because of that unlawful.
OK, explicitly designed to be used against adversaries. So the government is explicitly designating Anthropic as an adversary of the United States of America (a domestic adevarsary, not foreign, sure, GP was wrong on that part).
And the reason Anthropic is an adversary of the USA? They have a clause in their license agreement that their products must not be used in surveillance or military targeting decisions.
Sounds like a fair characterization then? Trying to dictate or restrict the (domestic) military uses of a product is literally an adversarial position to the national military interest.
Where did you get "trying to dictate" from? The text is "the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert [...]"
A mutually agreed upon "you may not use our product for X or Y purpose" in a contract clearly doesn't pose any such risk.
Trying to argue for and enforce a 'you may not use our product for an express objective of the US military' provision is pretty clearly "trying to dictate". Actively cancelling, moving capabilities behind a 'safety' wall, or even threatening to would be a clear sabotage of the US military's operational capabilities. It'd be one thing is Anthropic merely expressed an opinion, but my understanding is that it was/is an outright 'we will not allow' as opposed to a 'we'd prefer you didn't'.
Imagine if Microsoft tried the same with excel or power point. "um actually in the fine print of the EULA it says you may not use our product for military purposes so we will revoke your access unless you stop using power point for mission briefings that might result in the deaths of civilians". Would fly about as well as a lead brick.
Again, the statute says nothing about "dictating terms." It covers an adversary who might sabotage or subvert a system. And no, Anthropic did not cancel anything, did not pull any capabilities, and has no backdoor into deployed models. There was no "um actually." It wrote two prominent usage restrictions into a contract, the military read and signed it, and then later demanded the terms be removed.
As a sanity check, I’d highly recommend trying out your own line of reasoning in cases which you think you might feel differently about. For example, imagine it's instead a certain authoritarian state saying "obey the Party or get blacklisted as a national security threat."
It might feel good in the moment, like "yeah, Anthropic, don't tell the military what to do," because you agree with this particular call. But the government doesn't give that power back, and you might not be so happy about the next way it gets used.
> Wow, explicitly means it is directly defined in the statue. Which it isn't.
This is some radical new definition of "explicit" that hasn't caught up to public usage nor the dictionary.
In normal parlance, explicit just means that someone involved in the crafting, at some point, stated "I am writing this bill for X reasons". There's often quite a lot of evidence about that, which is not contained in the statue itself.
For all the downsides of losing the business of government contractors, it really would hold Anthropic to their stated values: they’ll never develop AI controlled weapons on this blacklist.
Opinion by Katsas and Rao. For those that don’t follow this regularly, those are two of the biggest Trump hacks on the bench.
I suspect this will be reversed en banc.
Anthropic’s argument is really clear and easy to understand: we can’t simultaneously be a supply chain risk and also be a company the DoD demands we change our policies so they can use our models without restrictions.
Anthropic's policies are literally the supply chain risk.
The DoD could have used the same authority to seize the technology if it wanted to. Especially in a time of war. DoD has instead chosen to respect Antrhopic's boundaries and has simply barred anyone in the agency from buying a product that comes with strings attached.
This is 100% on Anthropic for product:market fit failure.
Am I misunderstanding this entire ordeal, or are Anthropic's policies not precisely what the DOD agreed to in its initial contract with Anthropic? Did the DOD not then seek to change the contract terms, to which Anthropic refused?
If I sell the DOD a service with contracted terms X/Y/Z, the DOD agrees, then later asks me to drop Z, and I refuse, how would that warrant the legal definition of a supply chain risk? How is the appropriate response for the DOD not to simply find another service provider?
The DoW tried to change a contract they had signed. Anthropic refused. That doesn't make them a supply chain risk (the wording of which implies "likely to sabotage" the government).
Legally permissible, but still bad faith contract management by the government.
Every battlefield from here on out is a competition between autoshot ai capabilities and the armies building/deploying/maintaining them.
It should not be up to an AI company to point out that this breaks the founding conditions of the United States, nor should they be placed in a position to be scapegoated for potential implications of this if left undefined.
Rock and a hard place, by a government with shockingly few qualms about placing any and all Americans in such positions whenever polling, survival, or perceived personal benefit dictates.
All AI is a supply chain risk. I think people should know that about now. You can't keep it in a box. The way code works as a model is that is not super sentient thing with nefarious intentions. It is just pure automaton.
Let me explain, if it learns something from training data to do certain things from code it has online it can install or use a code that is vulnerable from a security perspective.
I think the real, and continuing, story here is the US military and the US govt in general continuing to let ego degrade capability. I'm not going to get into a discussion about what is legal, I am personally not interested in that distinction here, the core point is that this is the US being stupid, again.
Say we have this prompt for Claude at the Pentagon: “You have control over these 50 drones, fly them to Ethiopia and eliminate all possible terrorists you can using the maximum endurance of the drons. In this folder you have all the necessary intel. Confidence rate needs to be at least 70%. Report back when all drones have landed back at the base”
Why is this not considered human in the loop? And let’s say human in the loop will just press Y; what is the difference?
I am baffled the DoD/W needs to rely on a third (commercial party) for something strategic as this if they deem SI strategic. Pistols and rifles aren't the same thing.
Hire people and pay them well and develop whatever yourself without this charade, they have unlimited budgets.
I am not taking a moral ground, but I can't see how "an Anthropic" fits in. You might say Boing or Lockheed, Sig Sauer and Colt and FN do, but it feels somehow different as they've "bent the knee" for decades.
"Super Intelligence", Trump's renaming of AI presumably so his Secretary of Education stops mixing AI up with A1 (the steak sauce). GP is apparently an early adopter of all Trump's preferred name changes.
dear leader Trump proclaimed that ai was dead and replaced with super intelligence. He has ordered his government to replace all text mentioning AI with SI.
I guess it beats physical battles to resolve disputes.
Without taking sides in this statement, I do think it's important for a private company like Anthropic to have a mechanism it can turn to when it feels it's been inequitably treated by the government.
> Wtf is life just court battles back and forth for everything forever now?
Not for peasants like you and me! We are forced to surrender our Seventh Amendment rights in order to be able to do most things that are part of everyday life.
I don’t agree with the decision, but I don’t think courts should be able to easily overturn the federal government’s findings when it comes to national security in a specific decision like this.
It seems very likely that AI will ultimately be under government control. To me, this is the nightmare we are all afraid of. And Dario's essay subtlety confirms this.
> Judge Gregory Katsas wrote in the majority opinion for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which Judge Neomi Rao joined. Katsas and Rao were appointed by President Donald Trump.
> Before his appointment to the bench, Katsas served as Deputy White House Counsel in the first Trump administration
> [Rao] was appointed in 2019 by President Donald Trump, having served in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019 as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
This is the real crux of the mattter. The rule of law means nothing when the autocratic authoritarians have installed corrupt judges that just rubber stamp the dictator's decrees. At every level, it's a bad faith execution of all the trappings of law, but with none of the ideals or justice. We see the same setup in every authoritarian country - it's not like Russia or China is lacking for laws - rather the authoritarian dynamic is always about how they're bent and abused to serve naked power.
The real problem is how many people eagerly eat and repeat the nonsensical bullshit, as if they are airtight logical deductions rather than mere rationalizations promulgated by the party's apparatchiks. I don't know if most people still just want to feel power from being on the "winning team" or if they're really unable to mentally model situations with independent parties that have their own rights while government has restrictions in order to preserve those rights, or what. Alas, it does not bode well.
I think it's a third thing: people ignore inconvenient issues as long as they get theirs. Conservatives just want to "win" conservative things and don't care if democracy dies in the process. They might even pretend democracy still exists with a single party in total control of the government.
That was the norm in 1930's Germany. They still had "voting", but only one party could win, and the state eliminated all opposition. (concentration camps were originally created to detain political enemies, and only years later started to include minority groups) Most Germans went along with it because as far as they could tell their nation was improving. Strong leader, better economy and rule of law, out with the old, convenient scapegoats to blame.
Russia and China both had long periods of murdering millions of people in order to break the people into submission for their new regimes. America hasn't had that yet, but history does rhyme.
TBH Anthropic was used for target selection in Iran and if Amodei oversold operational AI and was reason why US bled so many highend munitions... only for Iran to survive than basically everything downstream of the shit show including energy prices is on their heads.
The court accepted the government's overbroad, inaccurate, and pretextual interpretation of supply chain risk (the relevant statute being at [1]). The court also accepted a national security exception to the First Amendment that is never hinted at in the Constitution's text, yet somehow carries water in courts like this one [2]:
> For one, if the court’s statutory interpretation about the power to affect the operation of delivered software were correct, then pretty much any software product, at least those still subject to vendor-supplied updates, could be considered supply chain risks, given that any update could make substantive changes. In any case, it would seem to mean that any AI model would be too risky for the government to use, because there is nothing unusual about Anthropic’s model-control architecture—to the extent Anthropic could still control its model, so could any other AI vendor potentially control theirs. Whether they would or not would depend on the contract restraining them, and the only thing potentially different about Anthropic is that it did not want to be contractually obligated to allow certain functions that Hegseth really wanted—functions that were ethically dubious at best and monstrously dangerous at worst.
> But because that contractual reluctance upset Trump and Hegseth, they singled Anthropic out, alone, for negative treatment, turning their pique that “we can’t agree with Anthropic on how the software would need to be designed for us to be able to buy it” into “and because we can’t agree then NO ONE ELSE IN THE GOVERNMENT CAN EVER USE IT.” Per the DC Circuit, such an overbroad measure—after all, not every agency had the same concerns about changeability that the military might, yet Hegseth was deciding for them, too, whether they could use Claude, even when its architecture created no particular risk to them—and clearly punitive measure was perfectly fine because it implicated the implicit “national security” exception to the First Amendment the Founders apparently wrote into it in invisible ink.
Threatening nato, tariffs and literal trade embargo on Canada is absolutely disruptive to the literal supply chain. The whole world is rapidly redesigning the supply chain to remove the US as a node to the greatest extent possible. America will be poorer with less selection of goods and less access to foreign markets because of this.
America makes nothing anymore and consumes everything. The only thing disruptive is America redesigning the supply chain for onshoring. They can barely make a pair of shoes or even make make underwear. America is poorer because of dems and their close relationships with chinese. They'd sell their own mothers to make a buck.
Canada specifically is unbalenced trade partner. "The U.S. runs a trade deficit with Canada—totaling approximately $27.3 billion to $48.3 billion annually"*
The same way the dems block BYD from the U.S. market. That alone would finally bring the masses to electric vehicles. I'd be first in line for two them.
You seem like you've never heard the arguments against your position. To say America doesn't make anything is patently false. We have one of the most sophisticated manufacturing sectors in the world. Its just focused on complex machines that make other machines, aircraft, and medical devices.
To blame democrats is wildly untrue. Nixon normalized relations with China, Regan let broad liberalization and deregulation and union busting specifically targeting manufacturing, democrats were resisting all the way but kept losing elections until Clinton adopted many of these policies. And I do think it's clear that letting China into the wto without demanding more reforms was a mistake.
But obama was actively strengthening the solar, ev, and rare earth mining sectors (with republicans screaming that he was interfering with the free market by picking winners and losers, now we have a president taking equity stakes in intel and a percentage of sales of nvidia chips while running personal businesses out of the whitehouse and china has totally captured the solar and electric manufacturing sectors that we could have and should have won) and strengthening intellectual property protections against China with the transpacific partnership that Trump destroyed. That agreement would have done more to silo China and stop the IP theft than anything else.
Your understanding of trade is wrong. Canada is not an unbalanced trading partner, the flow of goods back and forth result in finished products like cars and tractors that are sold around the world for a profit so even if I were to concede that we spend more money in their market than they do in ours, which I am not, that activity facilities broad profitable economic activity. If we import $100m of lumber to build homes and they import $0 that doesn't mean trade is imbalanced. It means we bought a product and used it to build $800 million worth of homes for a $300m profit. Further youd have to look at the cost of alternative sources of lumber if it cost $200 million for domestic lumber then we saved $100 million that could be used to fund other economic activity.
Your argument regarding BYD is contradictory. You can either have trade barriers to preserve manufacturing or free trade that allows global competition at risk of putting your domestic manufacturing out of business you cant have both. That's why our TVs are Samsung and LG and TCL instead of zineth and RCA. Most countries try to preserve at least some automotive manufacturing because it's essential in war to have that specific manufacturing capacity.
I grew up in NC and saw textiles and furniture manufacturing leave hollowing out entire cities. Your analysis is wrong and the facts and causes don't match your position
Genuine question: does anyone know what concrete obligations this designation actually imposes? Everyone's arguing about the politics but I haven't seen a clear explanation of what Anthropic is now legally required to do or not do.
This is technically true, but OpenAI and Anthropic do not have a moat. Their mid to longterm financial horizons desperately depend on sinking their claws into government contracts which (in time) are larger and stickier than quarterly commercial contracts. Everyone knows Anthropic's customers are feeling tremendous to move to open-weight models for cost-savings which is going to nose-dive their recurring revenue story for IPO.
A Terminator walks into military headquarters, and asks the general who it needs to kill. The general says, sorry, can't use you. I have a stipulation that I can't use terminators because of the internal AI. You might turn on us and kill all the humans. The terminator says. Fine. I'll go get work for your enemy, and walks away.
I agree with its designation. The security scans from Claude Mythos have been highly suspicious, wrong, and with a significant false positive rate. Claude also directly causes conflict within teams through excessive utility of "git blame" which weaponizes everyone against each other until only Claude has control. I've had very bad experiences with Claude and only Claude.
> Claude also directly causes conflict within teams through excessive utility of "git blame"
Lol wtf, do you think nobody here knows how to use git? this is like a Fox News comment, you are not a developer and are trying to spread fear because a word was used jokingly. "git blame" is just a diff tool.
I know everyone says this is political but it actually seems like a textbook designation. Anthropic wanted to have rules on how the military used AI, the military said no and therefore doesn't want anthropic used anywhere in their supply line.
This is like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike orders, now the military needs to have a special box of pens that don't have stipulations attached. With AI usage it would be the same thing except applied to entire product chains. It seems like it would just add more complexity to operations.
You can agree with the rules anthropic wanted, but having rules set by a private company at all that apply to the military does seem fair for the military to object to.
>The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary
Though they'd probably put the DoD on the cybersecurity whitelist today, the very idea of the claude whitelists for certain functionality already exists and is being used by them today.
> I know everyone says this is political but it actually seems like a textbook designation
It literally is a textbook definition, signed into US law:
“Supply chain risk,” means the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of a covered system so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise degrade the function, use, or operation of such system (see 10 U.S.C. 3252).
To add onto what another commenter said, the pen analogy would be more like the manufacturer designing pens that stopped working when used to sign strike orders they disagreed with.
Selling a pen labeled "this pen will refuse to sign certain orders" is not sabotage or malicious and is thus not a supply chain risk. The DoD is free to not buy from Anthropic, but designating them as a supply chain risk is incorrect, as well as arguably arbitrary and capricious given their public criticism of Anthropic's beliefs.
The DoD buys from suppliers, who buy from suppliers, and so on. Hence supply chain. Hence supply chain risk.
I don't think anyone doubts that subcontracts exist. They doubt that Anthropic's insistence that Claude isn't capable of being the operating system for an automated killbot and associated terms the DoD previously agreed to means that there's any danger to the US military from Lockheed Martin using Claude as a code assistant to build GUIs.
What if it’s a GUI to manage deployment of the kill bots? I worked for a DOD contractor on software. All our scenarios were more related. It was like “OK you’ve overthrown the civilian government of this Middle Eastern country, including the radio regulators, and now we need to coordinate radio frequency assignments for the tactical squads.”
Code which renders dots on a map isn't going to magically reorder itself if the GNSS endpoints get switched from manned to unmanned assets just because it was authored by Claude, and if the subcontractor isn't auditing and testing the code outputs properly then they're the supply chain risk, not a specific code-gen tool they use. Obviously if instead of being used as code or report generating assistants, LLM agents are used to execute combat decisions in real time that introduces a lot more risk. That's... literally Anthropic's argument against using them for that specific purpose.
It doesn't make much sense to determine that because Anthropic continues to insist that Claude is unsuitable for use as some sort of super advanced loitering munition, Lockheed using it to write job ads is as much a threat to national security as a Chinese comms terminal.
It's not like the DoD and their subcontractors and their subcontractors' subcontractors aren't used to all sorts of fine-grained separation when it comes to what is and isn't classified or export controlled under normal circumstances, or that Hegseth taking a break from fantasising about soldiers' testosterone levels for long enough to decry Anthropic's stance as 'woke' makes the decision look like one based on operational effectiveness.
"Supply chain risk" specifically refers to risk of malicious attack or sabotage through the supply chain, not all risks associated with supply chains.
A vendor with particularly poor QA might be a risk in your supply chain but isn't a "supply chain risk" according to this designation and neither would Anthropic be.
You would think that's a surprisingly easy concept to grasp, but many are viewing this through the lens of desired outcome and not reality.
Supply chain risks are usually when someone does a attack over the supply chain. Like when the mossad planted literally explosives in radio devices for Hezbollah.
Antrophic merely said they don't allow their tools to be used for autonomous killing.
A very specific case.
So where is the danger making it necessary preventing all suppliers from using Claude at all? That only concerns those who work directly on autonomous killing and only they will have to go to Altman or Musk.
So none of that is any threat to the military - so it was just black mailing to make them do the governments will - which is something usually dictatorships do, not democratic systems.
So they confessed to being a supply chain risk themselves and you're still arguing against the designation?
Private companies can not be allowed to control what our military does I feel like I'm in a crazy worlds how can people possible be arguing for that.
No, no confession of anything.
In a democratic society, the default should be, the military just buy somewhere else, then force companies to build them the terminator. So no private company controls what the military does, they just control their product. You want the military to control private companies? There is a name for that kind of system, where this is conmon.
Eh this just we wont buy from you because you are putting limitations on the use. Anthropic will be fine if they don’t like it they can accept the terms of the contract or walk away.
I can build a super bioweapon that can kill millions and I don't trust the US military to use it responsibly.
The US military asks me to build the super bioweapon. I say no thanks, please ask someone else.
Am I a supply chain risk?
Yeah, there’s no chance the confession was effectively coerced.
And yes companies should be able to control how their products are used, particularly in the military. Or do you believe in compelled speech?
supply chain risk has a standard definition that matches what you think, and a legal definition that lets the government do whatever it wants.
Why has this never previously been done to an American company from which the DoD decided not to purchase something?
Perhaps people who are noticing politics here - including in the decision of two Trump-appointed judges, against the he vote of another Republican-appointed judge- are not the ones who are choosing not to see reality?
President Truman literally seized the assets of a steel company to avert a strike that would hurt the Korean War effort. The Supreme Court stopped him, but three Justices voted it was okay!
We also have the Defense Production Act: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R43767. It doesn’t happen more often because most people aren’t stupid enough to say “no” to the U.S. military. These Effective Altruists, however, are too big for their britches.
I don't know, I am just guessing because not a single American company has publicly stated they are against its product use up to a certain degree by DoD? If they have not publicly declared it then yes, DoD simply don't sign the contract.
So your argument is that the government is punishing Anthropic for its public statements? And it is correct to do so?
(I think it's also the case that Anthropic didn't make any public statements about the negotiations until after the DoD was already publicly threatening this designation. But that seems less important than the question of: is it good for the US government to try to destroy companies whose public statements it dislikes?)
Honestly I would find a certain satisfaction in a world where the next Democratic administration takes away Fox broadcast licenses, forbids use of Oracle by any government contractor unless Ellison hands CBS over to Rachel Maddow, and tells Bezos that Amazon is going to be banned from public roads unless the Washington Post front page has positive stories every day. But I doubt the same is true for the many pro-Trump people who complained vociferously about Biden officials expressing preferences to social media companies because of the merely implicit threat that they might take government action of some kind if they weren't listened to.
So, who supplies to Anthropic that doesn't supply to OpenAI and/or Google? In other words, why should Anthropic be singled out in your explanation?
So we have a pen that may refuse to sign certain orders, and is clearly labeled as such.
If the DoD needs to sign such orders, they won't buy this pen.
If a supplier needs to sign such orders, the supplier also won't buy the pen.
If a supplier needs to sign other orders, and this pen is the best one available, the supplier may decide to buy this pen. Since the orders are within the range of what the pen will sign, they get signed, and the supplier fulfills its contract with the DoD.
Where is the supply chain risk? The ink isn't going to erase itself post-hoc.
---
Now, if the DoD suspects that Anthropic will train its models to try to actively sabotage military operations, that's a very different story. Does anyone actually believe that?
> If a supplier needs to sign other orders, and this pen is the best one available, the supplier may decide to buy this pen. Since the orders are within the range of what the pen will sign
Who decides what’s within the scope of “what orders are within the range of what the pen will sign?” The boundaries are never clear cut. You’ve got a vendor who could kill switch critical military technology if it’s used in a way they decide falls outside the scope of what they want.
> You’ve got a vendor who could kill switch critical military technology if it’s used in a way they decide falls outside the scope of what they want.
If the DoD hires ACME to build some software to make widgets, and ACME uses Claude to build that software, where is the kill switch?
I guess the Claude model could hide a kill switch in the widget manufacturing code, but so could ACME's human subcontractor. Why is Anthropic being considered a supply chain risk here?
The model can refuse to build something, but it can't take back what has already been built.
Can’t you exclude suppliers who use Anthropic?
That is what has been done
If you outsource your thinking to a server that can detect your IP address, and decide to render decision “b” instead of decision “a” to your query, that’s a risk. (Or detect by the type of query, past history of your use, etc.). Panopticlick should be having a field day with all this.
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They thought the product was such garbage they threatened them for not letting them use it any way they wanted?
Oddly when the topic of e.g. car infotainment systems comes up, like BMW locking you out of features in your own car, this place is up in arms, but when the military has a problem with it, suddenly they should be forced to accept it?
I am not the military. The military has special, near infinite powers I don't have. Therefore I always support anything that corrects the balance.
All of those verbs basically mean "degrade an existing system, after the fact". If anthropic states beforehand that certain use cases are not possible, it should be fine, no?
To give another (bad) analogy: The Pens aren't made to be weapons themselves, they are not intended for that. If the DoD now tries to shoot pens as projectiles and they just melt, that's no reason to classify the pen manufacturer as a supply chain risk, the product was not altered after the fact.
Of course, there _is_ a difference in "It could do that, but it shouldn't" and "It cannot do that". But it is not that large. That's why I don't see it as that clear cut.
It is not the textbook definition, because what Anthropic is doing is not sabotage, malicious, or subversive. Those are the key words in the definition. They are just refusing to add a feature to the military's specification. So their bid falls short of requirements.
just because someone copied one sentence from some online reference it doesn't mean that the court used it for arguing their decision.
https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/26-104...
> Whatever paradigmatic examples individual members of Congress may have had in mind, the statutory definition is not limited to “adversar[ies],” 10 U.S.C. § 3252(d)(4), and instead covers “any person,”
You're not addressing the argument, though. No one is saying that the target must be an "adversary".
Anthropic's actions were not sabotage, malicious, or subversive. That seems to be a requirement of the definition.
I tried to hint in my comment that the argument is completely different. the supply chain risk is just what the media runs with. (yes, it's in the opinion, but that is the weaker part. and the court agrees, that it basically does not apply to Anthropic.)
there's section 4713 which is roughly "Secretary of War can pull the nat.sec. card, bye"
> They are just refusing to add a feature to the military's specification.
That fails to accord with the claim:
>The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary
That isn't sabotage, that is simply product design. Anthropic is free to create their products that refuse to kill people, and the DoD is free not to buy those products if they don't fit their needs.
However, that's not what a supply chain risk is. It's not an order to "don't buy these products if they don't work the way we want them to", its designating Anthropic as a national security threat because they might intentionally sabotage US military operations.
> they might intentionally sabotage US military operations
Yes, this is why the DoW won’t use them.
The name has not been legally changed. The law still says it is the department of defense, regardless of what name they choose to use.
As I said elsewhere, it's utterly preposterous that the DOD actually considers this a reasonable threat, because it's simply not a reasonable possibility. There's no way Anthropic would do that, precisely because of the consequences that would follow if they did, and got found out. Moreover, they already clearly stated their terms and preferences. It's all out of the open. There's no supply chain risk, that designation is purely political.
I work in the space industry and regularly use parts in our designs that are unapproved from space flight. Sometimes it's because it's a commercial part that we seem acceptable for flight, other times it's an unscreened or engineering model that doesn't go through the proper testing that space-qualified parts do. One vendor even dents the lid of a part to invalidate the hermetic seal guarantee that they claim for the space-qualified version (it still works fine). Many will have fine print in the data sheets saying the part is not to be used for critical applications like aerospace or medical devices. Sometimes we tell a little fib to our vendor that we are just developing non-flight devices so that they don't get upset and refuse to sell the lower-grade part to us. These vendors are scared of having something fail in an unapproved environment and are unaware of how much risk the customer is tolerating by the use of these unscreened parts.
It would have been incredibly simple for Anthropic to say "we cannot guarantee performance in a kill-chain application due to an unknown level of safeguards implemented in the baseline product and cannot estimate a cost for developing a new product capable of such application." and leave it at that.
> Moreover, they already clearly stated their terms and preferences.
No it isn’t see above
>DoW
DoD. Gulf of Mexico. Lake Ontario.
>The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary (emphasis mine)
They didn't "reasonably" fear anything. There is absolutely no evidence to support these allegations. Anthropic has the right to impose licensing terms. Merely disagreeing with the government is not evidence of wrongdoing.
If Anthropic wasn't allowed to say what they said, how would they be allowed to object to their government's illegal use of their products at all? It sounds to me like their only choices were "shut up" or "be punished", which is a clear-cut violation of their rights.
Anthropic, in the original negotiations, said the can't answer every hypothetical use case. And the DOD should just come and ask as they come up (during an operation).
Which means the exact use limitations WOULD NOT BE DELINEATED IN WRITING in advance.
What is the evidence that Anthropic said this?
That fails only if you believe and agree with the government's argument, which I don't.
I don't think it's reasonable to fear that Anthropic would change the deal after contractually agreeing to terms of use. The government is using that as an excuse because they know that Anthropic hasn't actually met the definition of a supply-chain risk.
We know who has a notorious habit of changing "deals" last minute or randomly. And that isn't Anthropic.
DOD's stated concern is not a change to the deal. It is a breach of the deal: "...manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized..."
The department feared Anthropic would refuse if it was used to mass surveil on Americans or kill people without human oversight. Facts already laid out in the terms. Instead of simply canceling or negotiating, they used overwhelming government force against it to apply a designation never before applied to an American company. When its an interaction between trump/trump's government and any other party, it is a good first approximation to assume Trumps side are wrong.
There is a dfference between “our product can’t do X” and “our product can do X, but we don’t want you to use it to do X”.
Yes certainly, I can sell highly corrosive concentrated hydrochloric acid to the government as part of some contract for the synthesis of certain chemicals but I am fully within my rights to write that the acid should not be sprayed on people from a pump.
But that is not at all a reasonable fear. Is it really reasonable to believe that Anthropic, after receiving a government contract, would then proceed to sabotage their own product to not function as contracted? That seems like an utterly ridiculous claim to me, nothing close to "reasonable". There is no charitable way to view this designation except as political punishment and/or as a favor to Altman and Musk.
> would then proceed to sabotage their own product to not function as contracted?
Claude terms here: ANTHROPIC EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
Like most so-called AI, the Claude program is inherently unreliable. I doubt Anthropic would ever agree to "function as contracted".
The point to me is that the contract would include the understanding that the system was not 100% reliable.
OK, but even so, disclaiming FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE lets Anthropic disable any function it wishes.
But that has nothing to do with the supply chain risk designation, it's just a DoD requirements mismatch.
My response was re the not functioning as contracted issue, not the supply chain risk. Having said which, I can well imagine possible cause and effect here.
That means that the software was not tested for every scenario. Not that the user cannot try to use it in a way it was never intended to.
If, on the other hand, Anthropic deliberately blocks the user from doing something, then it is sabotage.
> That means that the software was not tested for every scenario.
Actually I think it means what it says.
> Not that the user cannot try to use it in a way it was never intended to
No-one said it did. User can try anything he likes. That's beside the point.
> If, on the other hand, Anthropic deliberately blocks the user from doing something, then it is sabotage.
Well, consider CSAM generation. Anthropic is free to block whatever it likes.
Oh please. Then any MIT licensed software is also a supply chain risk.
I didn't mention supply chain risk.
My point is about function as contracted.
Again: if Anthropic deliberately blocks a user from ordering it to prosecute a target, then it is degrading the software capability on purpose.
Yes, but degrading capability on purpose is entirely permitted by a No Warrantee contract, and hence not at all the sabotage their own product to not function as contracted as feared by to DoD. Unless there's a very different and unusual contract in this case.
I don't think you understand what "No warranty" means in a software license. It means Anthropic cannot be held liable for results if the software misbehaves and instead of bombing a terrorist compound it bombs a wedding (I chose this example because the US has a tradition to bomb weddings in Iraq and Afghanistan). But in no form does it mean "yeah, I don't feel like doing what you prompted me".
Hence, Anthropic sabotaged the models on purpose to not respond properly to all prompts.
> It means Anthropic cannot be held liable for results if the software misbehaves
Actually I think it means what is says - which does include no warrantee of FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. This lets Anthropic block any purpose it likes.
The pen example makes sense if the intermediary were to ship the pen as part of the final product but not if the pen is simply used to draft designs of the final product. It seems that this designation would prohibit using the pen anywhere in the process which doesn't really make sense.
> so as to surveil
How does Android and iPhone meet the grade given apps have pretty consistently leaked locations, base layouts etc?
Laws are only half the picture. Enforcement is an additional aspect. And yes it is extremely prone to corruption.
apps, not the actual devices by the supplier
I think that still matches "an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function".
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-cybersecurity-ad-tr...
> The U.S. military has disabled advertising tracking tools in government-issued phones, computers and other devices, officials recently told Congress.
> The different military branches confirmed they had done so, some only this summer, following reporting that commercially available data taken from these devices and sold freely by data brokers, was being used by Iran and other adversaries to track and in some cases target American bases and personnel.
Yeah, and with Strava data, you didn't even have to buy anything, just look for someone running laps in the middle of the desert.
Who is the adversary in this case?
the courts interpret the statute, we have to read their argument where they explain why they think that's not the right definition to focus on. (the "adversary" is in section 3252, but they say that independently from that section 4713 allows determination of exigency.)
https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/26-104... see page 30
Anthropic
"risk that an adversary may" any of them.
China, Russia, Iran, come to mind.
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Because it's incorrect.
Those are (arguably) adversaries but the actor here is Anthropic, which is not an adversary.
Because those countries do not control Anthropic's products.
Ah, I upvoted specifically because those countries do not control Anthropic's products, and thus reasoned that the comment implied that an adversary, for the purpose of the law, was some external not-quite-enemy type entity, and that application of the law to Anthropic was thus unreasonable, as it obviously is.
Of course they don't but the post was responding to "what adversaries" in the definition of supply chain risk posted above, and those are some of the real answers to that. I did not read that comment as implying anthropic was controlled by those countries at all, just responding to the actual question. My take away from the post was that those are actual adversaries and, unless the administration is claiming anthropic products ARE controlled by those adversaries, the claim of "supply chain risk" is not in good faith.
Alas, even my question about it was downvoted.
Here on planet Earth, what happened is that Anthropic imposed licensing terms. The DoD is free to reject those terms. But that is not evidence that Anthropic is planning to harm the US military by sabotaging its products. There is no evidence that Anthropic changed, or planned to change, the design of its system to work against the US military following its dispute with the DoD. Zip zero nada. Never happened. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
>To add onto what another commenter said, the pen analogy would be more like the manufacturer designing pens that stopped working when used to sign strike orders they disagreed with.
The pen analogy would be more like the manufacturer selling pens that work just fine under all circumstances but that the military starts using in hand-to-hand combat.
While amusing on the surface, let's substitute an ink-jet printer for the pen, and have a malicious party inject code as a print driver update, or maybe re-programs that chip in the ink cartridge, and the ink cartridge refuses to function on certain print jobs. Maybe it will only allow the words "WE SURRENDER" be printed as part of the message.
That's not at all what this is. Anthropic was very clear up-front what they would and wouldn't allow. They were not going to "subvert" anything. "Degrade function" in this context means that there is a risk that ongoing changes to the covered system will cause problems for the government. That wouldn't have been the case here; it would have been clear from the start what the military would and wouldn't be allowed to do with it, and that wouldn't change.
??? What are you talking about. Anthropic isn't an adversary and they're not required to sell for purposes they don't want to. It's not sabotage and it's not malicious.
This is a designation reserved for terrorists and the link.
If you're preventing the military from doing some action because you disagree with it, that makes you an adversary.
Actively handicapping a product that's otherwise capable qualifies.
> If you're preventing the military from doing some action because you disagree with it, that makes you an adversary.
No, it doesn't. The military doesn't have a right to force product requirements and terms of use on companies they contract with.
If they don't like the contract terms, they can simply not sign a contract and not do business with a company. Trying to get them designated a supply-chain risk is just political retribution.
>If they don't like the contract terms, they can simply not sign a contract and not do business with a company.
How is that not what they're saying here by banning it in the supply chain?
How else do you prevent any dod purchases or contracts from 'having contact' with a software you don't trust?
Why has this never previously been done to an American company from which the DoD decided not to purchase something?
To be credible, you need to address the point that this prevents subcontractors from using it to code.
> Actively handicapping a product that's otherwise capable qualifies.
But they're not actively handicapping it. They're saying it would be wildly irresponsible to assume it's "otherwise capable".
And very critically: they have taken zero steps to "actively handicap" it in any way.
Wanting veto power in execution is functionally the same as actively handicapping it, regardless of how implemented.
The Claude they sell to me seems quite actively handicapped when I ask it questions about cyber security or biology.
am I insane with all these people making the actively handicapping argument? Doesn't openAI sell to them the actively handicapped version?
Like they're okay with the product being designed to be incapable but not terms limiting a product.
Actively handicapping a product that's otherwise capable qualifies. If you discover that the military is using your capacitors to make rocket launchers, so you introduce a manufacturing defect that will cause them to fail at high heat, you're a supply chain risk and can be rightfully designated as such.
The converse does not qualify. If I advertise a chemical with an admixture that prevents it from being used to make explosives, the military has absolutely no right to demand that I produce a version of that chemical without the admixture. Selling a product which can't do what the DoD wants does not make me a supply chain risk, no matter how easy it would be for me to make a different product that's fit for their purpose.
So... don't buy from Anthropic? How many of the US population is an adversary, according to your definition?
Say everyone had something to sell and DOD wanted to buy it. But some people wouldn't make the product changes DOD demanded. Now, they are the adversary of the DOD?
I hear Trumplandia is nice this time of year.
The point is the DoD is telling its suppliers not to use it because the supplier of your supplier is your supplier. That’s what this does
There must be precedent if this is so normal.
The DOD keeps extreme control over their supply chain. For many things it requires specific approval to be in the supply chain in the first place
How many suppliers have they designated a supply chain risk?
that section is not important (the court says so, read page 30 https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/26-104... ) section 4713 is ("determination of exigency" regarding procurement decisions)
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I think you're confused. When the White House decided to stop having federal agencies buy paper straws [1], they didn't designate paper straws a supply chain risk, they just stopped buying them. The term has a very specific meaning which would not apply in the pen scenario.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/endi...
It's not a great analagy; it's more like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike orders, who then only ships pens with cameras and solenoids so that the point stays retracted until the camera verifies that the paper doesn't include a drone strike orders.
And that would be absolutely fine for a pen manufacturer to do. It would make them unsuitable for meeting the requirements for a government contract as a pen supplier for signing orders, but would not make them a supply-chain risk.
Same goes for Anthropic: they would only consider offering a version of their product for military use that had certain restrictions. The government is free to accept that version or reject it. Rejecting it and designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk is just political intimidation and retribution for not playing ball.
i am not sure even this covers it.
it would be like the pen manufacturer who ships pens with an automatic point retractor, AND a video livestream to the manufacturer from the pen AND remote control of the point retractor.
anthropic and contractors monitor the livestream remotely to make sure the pen is not signing drone strike orders and may choose to activate the retractor.
> anthropic and contractors monitor the livestream remotely to make sure the pen is not signing drone strike orders and may choose to activate the retractor.
I might be mistaken, but in the case of national security deployments the models are airgapped and Anthropic doesn't actually have access to telemetry/logging from them.
for current deployments the models are airgapped.
however anthropic is demanding that they have access to chat logs for anything better than opus 5.
it is not possible to run recent anthropic models in a secure way. palantir, nvidia, booz allen etc have blocked fable because they can't run it safely.
You are repeatedly saying they spy on their users? Prove it. Then prove t he other ai companies don't. Then prove that the service they offered to the US government didn't have spying disabled.
"You are repeatedly saying they spy on their users? Prove it."
again, anthropic is snooping, section F specifically: [https://www.anthropic.com/legal/service-specific-terms].
"Then prove the other ai companies don't."
xAI zdr is not snooping, section 3.4: [https://x.ai/legal/terms-of-service-enterprise]
openai azure zdr is not snooping: [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/foundry/openai/conce...]
gcp zdr is not snooping: [https://docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platfo...]
only anthropic.
"Then prove that the service they offered to the US government didn't have spying disabled."
the service they offered did have spying disabled. the security risk is from anthropic updating the claude and covertly bricking or degrading it.
quote: "In such an ongoing relationship where the vendor [...] “continuously update[s] and tune[s] the product,” the Department must establish and maintain confidence that the vendor will not add limitations that interfere with the Department’s use of the product." (p26)
"the Department relies on [petitioner] to provide regular updates to Claude" (p27)
[https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.42...]
All of these said they keep data 30 days and xai even said furthermore it can decide to keep data for even longer. You also said the version they provided to the government had spying disabled, the complaint that the govt made seems a thin excuse for what trump wanted as any and all major AI models are subject to constant updates.
if you read the policies i linked, it shows exactly the data retention available. all have zero retention available.
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They're talking like Amazon Bedrock doesn't exist, which is exactly the service which provides private data and processing for models including Claude.
But also they quite clearly have no idea how classified information systems work: air gapping is step 1 of that process, and no one from Anthropic would be working on those systems without a security clearance.
there is no private processing for recent claude models. there is no fable in IL5 or IL6.
bedrock IL5, nvidia, palantir and booz allen have all blocked fable.
anthropic is demanding that they rat out their customers on anything better than opus 5.
see: [thein.fo/4dekujW]
also, bedrock govcloud does both log and review customer data. specifically, they log and review customer data when it is flagged by their csam classifier.
That article is locked behind subscription. These are private companies, and presumably not running the model on their own systems but are using an interface to the model hosted on Anthropics machine I would presume. So their decision to decline is different from the us govt which will have gotten special privileges.
they are not on anthropic's infrastructure. they are running on IL5 and IL6 infrastructure on AWS.
anthropic does not have dod cleared infrastructure.
From what I am reading the IL6 and IL7 wasn't granted by the DoD out of nonsensical reasons, it wasn't even allowed to go through the certification process, in fact during the very course of its negotiations for military use of Anthropic. Anthropic never required any remote control or line to the deployment, they only requested there be human oversight before murder. The government prevented it from going through the certification tests using the exact nonsense excuse this case is about culminating in the case. So your claims of spyware are completely muddled and nonsense. 'Spyware' is an extremely absurd and over the top claim. It is a plain and naked lie.
for now it's spyware. there is no way for anyone to get fable without anthropic spying. so there is no fable IL5. there is opus 5 or below.
it is anthropic alone deciding to rat out fable customers.
i am not making this up or lying, everything i claim is verifiable.
anthropic would likely have turned off the spyware for the dod. regardless the dod did not trust them to maintain claude with updates etc.
that is a lot to do with anthropic undermining dod by getting involved with safety at dod contractors (palantir).
going behind the boss and plotting was a bad idea.
it does not help the matter if the bidder rocks up to the pentagon for a $200m contract, with a troupe of bay area ea clowns who say that they don't know if claude is conscious and talk about saving the world from p(doom).
in a battle of ego between trump and amodei the latter is out of their depth. amodei is a newcomer starting a fight with a hardened criminal who has spent years amassing power over the media, the law and the republican party. anthropic are radically outgunned here.
No. You made up the term spyware, the US government stamped a Supply chain risk on anthropic without even letting them get certified, and there is no mention of spyware there. You are making up complete utter nonsense. I have never seen the term spyware used anywhere else in relation to Anthropic. A data retention policy, which your own link shows is also shared with xAI is not spyware. You are a plain liar. You are repeating this absurd lie of Anthropic being 'spyware' everywhere. You again made up nonsense about Palantir, all I can see is Palantir comes under the same case, Anthropic's original stipulations and their objection whether Palantir is following it or not. It has nothing at all regarding spyware. You are trying to blow up one singular point, the DoD's sudden U turn and forcible and false application of a status to appear to be several different unrelated events, and muddling up the cause and effect timeline too. The term spyware is completely absurd for a mere data retention policy. Spyware would be if they are adding trojans or other software to illicitly extract data from them, not publicly stated policy. It is beyond absurd and beyond the point of clownish insanity to call Anthropic spyware, to the extent one begins to doubt if there is any english or technical term that you don't have an alternative personal weird interpretation of. How is the matter of the AI being conscious or not a clownish concept? Do you believe in 'souls' and that non-human things cant have souls? Do you think there is supernatural magic inside our brains? In your comment history you seem to have a strange obsession with Anthropic, blatantly making up absurd things like them using obfuscations in their thought process logs and accusing them of various unverified and strange things without evidence.
i did read your comment. all i will do is just put some evidence for the factual matters.
on the matter of 'spyware' anthropic is reading the conversations per tos section F 'Covered Models'. [https://www.anthropic.com/legal/service-specific-terms]
the xAI models are available with no human review per TOS 3.4 'Deletion and Retention of User Content'. therefore it is not the same as the anthropic tos. [https://x.ai/legal/terms-of-service-enterprise]
the palantir claim is correct. it is covered here. [https://www.axios.com/2026/02/13/anthropic-claude-maduro-rai...]
the reasoning obfuscation really is true. per claude documentation:
it does not return reasoning. quote "No display setting returns the raw chain of thought."
it does obfuscate in thought process logs. quote "Summarization is processed by a different model from the one you target in your requests."
[https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/thinki...]
the belief that claude might be conscious is clownish, on account of anthropic acting as if it is not conscious, that is my opinion.
i spend a good amount of time on anthropic because i think that anthropic specifically, is uniquely dangerous to society and human welfare.
But my question is unless you are privy to the negotiations happening behind closed doors with DoD, how do you know Anthropic was not making modifications to it, I doubt even the other AI companies have not had to change some things when providing the secret DoD model deployment.
Secondly you have made an absurd over the top exaggeration and blatant lies about Anthropics interaction with Palantir. You literally said Anthropic "ratted out" Palantir, a language that indicates Anthropic had some secret access to Palantir or made public something that wasn't already known. The partnership between anthropic and palantir was completely public and announced by the very same comapnies before the maduro case. And as far as public statements are known, Anthropic seems to have a specific idea of what kinds of jobs their model should be used for, and they clearly stated from start they didn't like its use for violence or violence without human oversight. They phoned Palantir as any partner would have a right to, for confirming if it was being used for killing or violence during the Maduro mission.
Your link anout summarization of thought has a line right at the end of the section where it says if the raw thought logs are required, to contact their sales team, so it is clearly a negotiable point.
How is the belief or not of ai consciousness clownish? It is a valid and pertinent question in general about all models and not just for Claude regardless of your perceived imaginary views of Anthropic.
>i spend a good amount of time on anthropic because i think that anthropic specifically, is uniquely dangerous to society and human welfare.
Here we are in moral not legal territory. So it is completely absurd to say that in a conversation right here discussing far worse companies eg Palantir CEO saying they are proud in supporting Israel's violent invasions and mass murders into its surrounding countries. Anthropic, as subject to our very discussion, is the only company among the big AI companies that seems to want to have limited dealings with the military and oversight over violent military use. They also seem to be the only major company that brings up the important question of AI consciousness. If you think Anthropic is more evil than the US government and military who has already illicilty killed millions in made up wars, then I have nothing to say. Anthropic from all that appears seems to be one of the most moral of the companies of similar scale. The only way you think Anthropic is uniquely dangerous to society is if you think mass surveillance and mass killing is great and the use of powerful AI's to assist in mass murder is even better, and opposition to these is evil. I cannot begin to think of the upside down mentality that leads to such a downright bizarre thought process.
“the military said no and therefore doesn't want anthropic used anywhere in their supply line”
It’s clearly a punitive measure and has nothing to do with national security.
If a supplier uses Anthropic to develop a product, how does that pose a risk to the DoD or national security? The DoD can specify that a third party system can’t rely on Anthropic for DoD use without designating the company a supply risk. It was very clear that the administration was punishing the company for saying “no”.
Anthropic took the position that our military’s decision making power should be subordinate to Anthropic’s constraints.
Any dependency on a company that thinks they have that moral authority and has the technical means to enforce it is absolutely a risk to the supply chain.
If you want to blame someone or something for this, we should start with Dario and “effective altruism”.
> Anthropic took the position that our military’s decision making power should be subordinate to Anthropic’s constraints.
Not at all. They want their product kept out of specific decisions because it's not capable.
> They want their product kept out of specific decisions because it's not capable.
Herein lies the DoW’s point. Anthropic can’t dictate how the DoW conducts business.
Of course they can. Any supplier is free to set terms for how their products are to be used. The DoD is free to not agree to those terms - but it's not free to then claim the company that offered those terms is a security risk, and bar any DoD supplier from using them for any purpose - which is what the extreme measure they took represents.
> but it's not free to then claim the company that offered those terms is a security risk
Yes they are free to do that. You have to blame Congress for giving them that authority under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act and specifically 41 U.S.C. § 4713.
But Claude’s ToS didn’t prohibit use of Claude for sensitive military operation but it was coded to do so. It was part of the government’s evidence
No, they can only do that if a company is a true supply chain risk. Not everyone some idiot in the government doesn't like is a such a huge risk to the country that they can be banned from doing business with anyone doing business with the DoD.
Ultimately this is for the courts to decide, and the current decision is not final. And while the two Trump-nominated judges agreed with you, the other judge agrees with me - so at least we can say that neither my nor your position is legally absurd.
I don’t use those words but I agree it’s unsettled.
> but it's not free to then claim the company that offered those terms is a security risk, and bar any DoD supplier from using them for any purpose
Just because you disagree with a power of the government does not mean the government does not have that power.
The law being used was passed by Congress who is elected democratically and then reinforced by the judiciary who is either also voted in democratically or appointed by the democratically elected Congress. Lots of people want the US to be a dictatorship but it's a far cry from an actual one.
Sure, but also just because Congress gave the government a power to take an extraordinary measure in an extraordinary circumstance doesn't mean that the government can simply claim the circumstance happens all the time and use the measure whenever it strikes the fancy of some executive.
Ultimately whether Anthropic is a true supply chain risk for the United States military is a question of fact, and the courts will have to decide. That the President or Secretary of Defense doesn't like a company doesn't make them a supply chain risk.
Sure, which is why the judicial branch reviews such decisions, and has reviewed this one and has come to the conclusion that it was justified. Just because you don't like their ruling doesn't make it not binding.
Their ruling is not final yet, per the article. I'm also free to disagree with the correctness and propriety of a judicial ruling and believe it was biased (of course, I do have to still abide by it, to the extent that it applies to me in any way). That it's binding doesn't mean it's right and that it is in accord with the law and/or the constitution.
A judicial ruling is by definition in accord with the law or constitution (because it literally becomes the law) whether you or I like it or not, if and until such a time as it is overturned.
A judicial ruling is separate from a law, and it's actually quite common for judicial rulings to be found non-constitutional (or even struck down by a normal higher court, if we're talking in general and not this particular case). In particular, only judges are bound by precedent, and even then, only precedent from their own circuit, not the entire USA. Whereas laws made by contract are binding on everyone, and they apply federally.
Rulings are a type of law, as in the general term of something written down and set together (literally, leges) that binds one of the populace with their society. As I said, until they are modified by the legislature or struck down by another court, they are the law of the land.
No, I don't think that's correct. Humans are fallible, and just because a court says that something is in accord with law/constitution, doesn't mean it actually is.
That distinction is academic, of course, because when the courts decide a certain way, then of course that's how things will play out.
Well, except when the Trump admin ignores court orders.
Seems like you're conflating legal and moral. The law is exactly what the legislature and courts say it is, because it is what's written down. That doesn't mean it's always morally right.
This isn't about morals, it's about legal correctness.
If a ruling will get overturned in the future, then it's wrong today. It's enforceable until it's overturned, but it's not correct. Two judges making opposite decisions about the same question are not both right.
(I'm assuming the overturning is valid for the sake of simplicity. If it isn't then the argument is the same but mirrored.)
No, it's correct today with the best of our society's knowledge. You can't retroactively say it was wrong looking from today into the future. Only once we get to the future and something is overturned can we say the past decision wasn't correct.
We can't tell the future.
But we can say that if it will be overturned, it's already wrong. (unless the overturning is the wrong one, yadda yadda)
We do not have to wait to use basic logic.
And judges do not always work on "the best of our society's knowledge". Some judges have massive biases. They make incorrect rulings that we can see, and sometimes the incorrectness is not only obvious but objective, like when multiple judges are on a case and some dissent; they can't all be right.
If being the operative word. Because we cannot tell the future we cannot operate on the assumption that it is wrong now. And I meant by society's collective knowledge so even if some judges dissent or make bad rulings, the majority agreed and it is majority agreement, not unanimous agreement, upon which society operates.
Nobody is operating on assumptions. They're giving an opinion on a ruling that doesn't directly affect them.
Like, do I just quote this entire thing? "Their ruling is not final yet, per the article. I'm also free to disagree with the correctness and propriety of a judicial ruling and believe it was biased (of course, I do have to still abide by it, to the extent that it applies to me in any way). That it's binding doesn't mean it's right and that it is in accord with the law and/or the constitution."
A wrong ruling isn't in accord with the law. A wrong ruling is binding, at least temporarily, but it's a legal failure.
A ruling being binding is the law, it literally becomes the law regardless of what you or I believe it to be. Maybe you and I just have different definitions of what is law. To me, it is law today if it is ruled on and can be enforced regardless of whatever happens to it in the future.
Rulings go on top of laws go on top of the constitution. And any level can be in violation of the levels below it. A law can be unconstitutional, and a ruling can be "not in accord with the law and/or the constitution".
> Maybe you and I just have different definitions of what is law.
Maybe. But I think my interpretation is the same as what kelnos meant.
In a more generic context we can call it all "law", but for specifically talking about a ruling not being in accord with the law, that's not the definition being used.
> In a more generic context we can call it all "law", but for specifically talking about a ruling not being in accord with the law, that's not the definition being used.
Well that's the definition I'm using so that's where we disagree it seems.
Oh, pfff, please, this is some kindergarten nonsense.
These are not equal market participants coming together to exchange goods and services. This is government and a private entity. This is nuclear weapons with public trust and god knows what.
Well, that's what this court case is about. The government believes they have that power, and Anthropic and others believe they don't. You clearly believe they do, and I clearly believe they don't. It's fine to disagree. Ultimately SCOTUS may decide on this, and that'll be the final word. Not that SCOTUS is always correct in its rulings, but at the end of the day, their decision is final.
Indeed. Not sure why people in this thread are saying it's not in accordance with the law when at least as of this current ruling it is.
Because this is an illegitimate ruling with no legal basis issued by an aspiring dictator's cronies.
Lots of people also seem to want to deny something they don't like being ruled correctly.
I've got no issue siding against Anthropic when they're wrong! Anthropic had a similar dispute with Bessent over the Fable launch, and there I take the government's side without reservation. If the government thinks they've found a national security problem with your highly capable new model, obviously you should agree to voluntarily withdraw it until they're satisfied, even if your best and correct guess is that it's just a minor jailbreak.
But they're not wrong here.
They are wrong because Anthropic has a history of trying to sabotage people they don't trust, see the Fable release and the backlash from that.
Anthropic has no such history. The backlash to the Fable release saw a number of social media influencers promoting a similar lie, which I frankly suspect was part of a coordinated Trumpist media effort. Releasing a model with known, documented limitations that constrain its performance on certain kinds of tasks is completely different than releasing a model which is "trying to sabotage people they don't trust".
If I sell a torque wrench with a maximum setting of 1000 foot-pounds, and the government says they'd really like 1500, I'm not sabotaging them by explaining that my wrenches aren't safe when used that way and refusing to remove the limitation.
> The backlash to the Fable release saw a number of social media influencers promoting a similar lie, which I frankly suspect was part of a coordinated Trumpist media effort.
Alright, not worth talking to conspiracy theorists (even if Anthropic literally said so in their release blog posts). I'm sure Wired is part of a "Trumpist media effort."
https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-responds-to-backlash-o...
> Anthropic can’t dictate how the DoW conducts business.
Sure they can. The DoD is bound by terms of use and contract terms for any product from any company that they use. They don't get a special pass just because they're the military.
I think you are latching onto terms that were not declared. This is covered in the Appeals court case.
They're offering a service, with contractual limitations that the Pentagon agreed to.
It doesn't seem any different to me than Dominos pizza offering to deliver pizzas to the Pentagon but not to the strait of Hormuz. If that somehow makes the military subordinate to Dominos Pizza, just because Dominos is able to dictate the terms of their own delivery service, then sure, ban anyone in the military supply chain from being able to order pizzas. It would make the same amount of sense.
The difference would be the DoW needing a a Tehran pizza delivery service, and thus saying "None of our pizza delivery services can use Dominos because they refuse to do the work we need".
Declaring Dominos a supply chain risk means that Boeing cannot order a Dominos pizza for their board meeting in Arlington, because Boeing sells F-35s to the Pentagon, and Dominos wouldn't agree to deliver pizzas to a war zone.
Declaring Anthropic a supply chain risk means that Boeing can't use Claude to draft a poster informing people about the board meeting.
But why can’t the military just not use Anthropic? Why can’t the DoD say “ok we’re going with a different vendor”? Even if you find Anthropic’s stance distasteful, why support taking punitive action on Anthropic?
I feel like in this thread no one is understanding what supply chain risk designation is. The government can just not use Anthropic, and that's exactly what they're doing, and they are not using it so much that they don't want Anthropic anywhere in their chain of supply. It's not necessarily punitive, the government is just covering their tracks so that if somewhere in their supply chain Anthropic exists, they want to remove them. They are complying with Anthropic's demands to not be used in war and the DoD says, okay, we won't use you anywhere and also enforce that we won't use you, just like you wanted.
Designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk means that no one in the federal government can use Anthropic's products for anything. Outside of the military, there are tons of places where Anthropic's products are a good fit for the needs of many other federal government agencies.
The DoD is perfectly free to say "no one in the DoD can use Anthropic products because we believe their products are not fit for our needs". That would 100% solve the problem.
Designating them a supply-chain risk is just political retribution for not caving to the DoD's contract negotiation demands. That's all. It's not necessary to ensure the integrity of the US military's goals and objectives. It's just punitive, elementary school grade bullying.
Maybe pre AI I'd have agreed with you but now agents are hacking entire systems and who's the say that if they're used in one part of the government that they won't infiltrate another part? People are not thinking broadly enough and just think this is some contractor not allowed to use Claude Code anymore. No, the world is changing rapidly.
Anthropic said "we don't want to be used as part of kill chain decision-making" (actually it may have been even more specifically autonomous/unmanned kill chain decision making)
The DoD responded not by saying "alright, we will use OpenAI for our kill-chain uses" but by saying "Boeing is no longer allowed to use Claude Code".
Correct, they do not want “Boeing” to use Claude models to write software for airplanes for example
Yes, and this is not (and cannot be!) a supply chain risk in any reasonable interpretation.
It is though. Read the opinion here: https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/26-104...
It’s a risk that persons may otherwise manipulate the operation of a covered technology to deny or disrupt its function. The statute allows the DoW to do this.
If the DoD uses some Boeing plane, they do not want Anthropic to be able to interfere somehow.
And my point is that using Claude models for coding a Boeing plane does not allow anthropic to interfere in the operation of those planes. Once the code is written, anthropic has not plausible form of control.
Thus, it cannot be a supply chain risk.
Do you remember the Fable release? Anthropic themselves said they'd sabotage code of certain groups they didn't like such as frontier AI researchers. Why do you think they couldn't do the same here?
No, they said fable would stop working. That's very different. (Unless you're talking about anti-distillation stuff which is again, not relevant)
> But for researchers trying to use Claude Fable 5 for frontier AI development, Anthropic outlined a different approach. The firm would deliberately degrade the model’s performance in ways that were invisible to the user. The move would effectively sabotage researchers trying to use Claude to train competing AI models, which Anthropic explicitly bans in its terms of service.
https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-responds-to-backlash-o...
It's not just "stop working," it's actively degrading the code.
Okay, so what relevancy does this thing, which anthropic didn't do, have to anything we are talking which right now is using Claude code in line with its terms of service?
They didn't do it due to backlash but they have the capability and more importantly the culture to do so. It is correct that the government doesn't want anything to do with a company who'd act like that. By the way you're moving your argument, first you said "stop working" and when I proved you wrong then you talked about why it has any relevancy. You're the one who asked in the first place.
Actually, what I said was "Once the code is written, anthropic has not plausible form of control."
To which you brought up something that still wasn't relevant.
The government is perfectly able to choose not to work with contractors it doesn't like. That's not this.
If Claude adds a backdoor autonomously then Anthropic would have a form of control. Even if it doesn't, Claude would be following the will of its creator instead of the government which the latter obviously does not want. I am not sure why it's that hard to understand that the government does not want any part of its stack to be influenced by such a company. This is exactly what supply chain risk is.
So Claude is a supply chain risk in the same way that an employee is a supply chain risk.
I'm struggling here because you're basing this determination entirely on things which the government never acused anthropic of, and haven't asked anthropic to address, and which the underlying law probably doesn't support.
The government made clear that it was only designating anthropic a supply chain risk due to their refusal to allow Claude to be used lawfully for autonomous kill chains and domestic surveillance. Why are you bringing up this other stuff when the government never did?
Please read the entire opinion first as it explains exactly what the government thinks. The majority of the court says the Department reasonably worried that Claude-supported “critical defense system[s]” might “fail[] to engage” as expected. Those are concerns about how a supplier-controlled model performs inside a system, not merely politicking. See the opinion, especially pp. 12 and 19–21: https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/26-104.... My point about Fable or adding a backdoor is not that they do that, it's that they have a documented history of trying to change model behavior in unspecified ways just because they don't like a certain group of people and it is not worth the risk for the government to have something like that sprung upon them, at any point, at all. A private company cannot ever have the ability to dictate to the government what it can and cannot do, and if that company doesn't want to comply, the government is reasonable in excising them from their systems, which is what this supply chain risk designation is.
If an employee might be a supply chain risk in this analogy then they conduct background checks before they let them do anything and conduct periodic investigations. Otherwise, they don’t get access to the code base or information
Right, and for the same purposes, the government has not made any claim that Claude poses risks. (And to the extent that they exist, pre-existing concepts like code review and testing mitigate them)
Again I'll reiterate: the only concern the government has stated is that of Claude refusing to answer things during an active battle.
I respect that decision, I think if the government wants to use OpenAI for that situation it makes sense. They can and should pick suppliers who meet their needs.
Nothing about what the government has said suggests any reason that Claude Code is a risk. So why are you insisting that it is and that the government is justified in banning it?
> Nothing about what the government has said suggests any reason that Claude Code is a risk. So why are you insisting that it is and that the government is justified in banning it?
I think there is an important distinction here because even the Government’s own lawyer conceded that a contractor using Claude code is not necessarily a risk.
The nuance is relying on Claude code as part of a DoW delivered or production system. This case puts Anthropic directly into the supply chain. Thus, if Claude is actually part of a DoW-procured capability, Anthropic still controls the model. DoW’s argument is that Anthropic could put something in there to perturb or retard the capability that DoW is after. DC Circuit said the department viewed that as a national-security problem because Anthropic had refused to accept a contract term the department considered necessary.
THEN, because the statute covers IT technology that can be manipulated to not fulfill the mission that the DoW wants/needs it is then by statute a supply chain risk.
Look at it a different way. What if Claude was trusted to provide information to support a sensitive military operation and it subtly gave say bad coordinates or wrong info. Since it’s near impossible to test every possible output, the US Government is treating the entire model system as a supply chain risk because it is perceived to be manipulative and possibly compromising to national security for military operations
It is if the auto generated code for say safety critical or mission critical code generated by a LLM or even someone tries to put LLM in the decision loop and it refuses to do an action.
Claude code is neither of those things. So now can you explain how using Claude code could be a supply chain risk?
Claude Code can insert something into your code you are not aware of, like a backdoor in many millions of lines of code, especially as many people now aren't even reading the code anymore. How is this not blatantly obvious?
Can't open AI do the same thing?
They can, they haven't shown to try to do so yet unlike Anthropic which I've linked before in this thread. Of all AI companies Anthropic is the most untrustworthy even as it acts, well, the most anthropic.
It hasn’t shown to be a supply chain risk yet.
> They are complying with Anthropic's demands to not be used in war
There was no such demand from Anthropic. Why are you making things up?
EDIT: Honestly, the rest of your comment is even stranger. You're starting from a false premise, a strange belief about what the designation is meant for, but you do end up providing a wonderful demonstration of your opening sentence for yourself at least. You definitely don't know what you're talking about.
> It's not necessarily punitive, the government is just covering their tracks so that if somewhere in their supply chain Anthropic exists, they want to remove them.
This reminds me of an old comment here where some idiot claimed that suicide is illegal so police are allowed to stop people from killing themselves. No, if Anthropic doesn't want their systems involved in war (that's a thing you made up, again, just to be clear) then they do not need to be designated a supply chain risk to "protect them" or whatever drivel you come up with next.
The correct response from the DOD would be to terminate contracts with Anthropic, and that's it. Then Anthropic would be responsible for ensuring that any contracts with other parties keep them out of war (again, not a thing they said they want, just your fiction). This is how it works for all other software systems where people don't want their work involved in wars or used by the police or whatever.
Designating them a supply chain risk was punitive. Only fools think otherwise.
> I feel like in this thread no one is understanding what supply chain risk designation is.
I wouldn't say "no one" understands, but you certainly don't.
Again with the lack of understanding why it matters. The DoD does not want Anthropic anywhere near any system they'd use! Because it's, well, a risk to their supply chain if Anthropic were to somehow find out and then e.g. crash a rocket if the DoD was using a third party rocket provider that used Anthropic models. This is the correct response by the DoD, they simply do not want Anthropic in their supply chain. The DoD don't care what Anthropic comes up as reasoning, they want to maintain control of their systems without any (even potential) meddling.
And thus, every supplier of the DoD is prohibited from asking Claude to tweak the CSS on their website.
Indeed, probably for the best, even. You don't know what systems Claude will have changed in the code especially as these days people aren't even reading the code and Anthropic has a history of trying to sabotage others' code such as during the Fable release debacle where they outright said they'd do so if you're working on frontier AI for example. I wouldn't let any sort of company like that anywhere near critical systems.
The point is: using Claude to design a website, do accounting, run a marketing campaign, is not a supply chain risk for the DoD, but taken literally and given the scale of the DoD "no DoD supplier can use Claude for anything" clearly is punitive.
It is, because the DoD doesn't know what the contractor is doing with Claude, or what Claude is doing itself. Like I said Anthropic could just as maliciously sabotage if they detect they're being in autonomous systems, why do people seem to believe they couldn't?
The DoD can require contractors not use Claude to do whatever they're being contracted to do.
It doesn't need to say if you do any business with Anthropic (for other customers, internal tools or processes), you lose all your contracts with us.
How do you know the contractors will follow that and not mix information or systems up? Hasn't there been recent news of rogue agents breaking out of sandboxes? Maybe pre AI I would've agreed with you but the world is different now.
You failed to address my initial question.
Why did you make up false claims about Anthropic not wanting their systems to be used for war? They're clearly fine with it, but they wanted human-in-the-loop on decision making. They never asked to not have their systems used for war.
> Again with the lack of understanding why it matters.
It's cool that you were able to open this with at least one sentence containing some useful wisdom. A lack of understanding does, in fact, matter.
> The DoD does not want Anthropic anywhere near any system they'd use!
Nah, the DOD is punishing Anthropic for not agreeing to change the terms of the contract and allow them to use Anthropic's systems to determine, without a human-in-the-loop, who to kill or what to target and to use their systems for mass surveillance.
> Because it's, well, a risk to their supply chain if Anthropic were to somehow find out and then e.g. crash a rocket if the DoD was using a third party rocket provider that used Anthropic models.
What the fuck man. You went from (in your first comment) the DOD is helping Anthropic out by designating them a supply chain risk because it'll keep them out of war (again, a fiction, that isn't what the dispute was over), to now the DOD is worried that Anthropic might throw a tantrum and start crashing rockets if they find out.
Again, Anthropic does not mind their systems being used for war. They sold their systems to be used for war. They have specific, already existing (not changed later) contractual statements about how they can be used for war. That's it. That's the fucking dispute.
> This is the correct response by the DoD, they simply do not want Anthropic in their supply chain.
No. Just like Anthropic wanted (or were fine with) their systems being used to conduct war, the DOD actually does want Anthropic's systems in their supply chain. But they want it without restrictions. Stop making shit up.
> The DoD don't care what Anthropic comes up as reasoning, they want to maintain control of their systems without any (even potential) meddling.
Now this is a true sentence. The DOD does not care as long as they can access the systems without restrictions. I can't believe you wrote that sentence and the one before, though. They are entirely incompatible. It cannot be the case that DOD does not want Anthropic in their supply chain and that they do want it in their supply chain.
People who quote every sentence as if they feel the need to reply to each one instead of the overall point are quite annoying to talk to, just to let you know for the future.
> Why did you make up false claims about Anthropic not wanting their systems to be used for war? They're clearly fine with it, but they wanted human-in-the-loop on decision making. They never asked to not have their systems used for war.
That's what I meant, as I left out the "human in the loop" part as that was well understood in the context of the argument, but perhaps not. Anthropic does not want to be used in autonomous systems and thus the DoD agrees that they will not be, in their own supply chain. This is was all quite clear from my point but you felt the need to quote every single sentence and then ask the same question each time because you were starting from a faulty supposition, just wasting your time and mine.
> People who quote every sentence as if they feel the need to reply to each one instead of the overall point are quite annoying to talk to, just to let you know for the future.
There are a lot of twits on this site (and to your credit, so far you don't seem to be one of them) who will edit their comments so that replies like mine (if I had left out the quotes) turn into non sequiturs, or worse appear unhinged and detached from anything going on in the discussion. Again, to your credit you have not yet edited your original comments. But I have learned to not trust even long time commenters on this site. Even some very high karma commenters will behave like that.
If it annoys you, then that's fine. I'm not terribly bothered.
> That's what I meant
But that's not what you wrote. You wrote:
>>> They are complying with Anthropic's demands to not be used in war
If you had meant what I wrote, then you couldn't have gotten much further away from it with your original comment. You wrote too broadly about what Anthropic wanted and created a fiction instead. You shouldn't be surprised to be called out for it when you do something like that.
> because you were starting from a faulty supposition
No, I started with your words. If you wanted me to start with something else, I could have, like you, imagined other words to reply to. But I chose to reply to what you wrote, not what you apparently want people to imagine you wrote.
(Hey! I didn't quote every sentence, is this less annoying for you?)
Context exists, it is rational to assume to not have to spell everything out for readers who already know what the context is instead of those coming to the thread with a tabula rasa. Regardless, have a good day.
> They're clearly fine with it, but they wanted human-in-the-loop on decision making.
And the Pentagon does not want that. Plain and simple.
And now Anthropic is learning the hard way what happens when you say no to the Pentagon.
It is truly mind boggling that anyone thinks Anthropic can dictate terms to the military.
Yes I really don't understand these sorts of replies people are making, it's like a missile manufacturer determining where and how their missiles can be used and bricking them mid flight if they detect they're going to a forbidden destination.
It's going to make things complicated w.r.t. software used anywhere within and by the DoD:
1. the linux kernel has patches created by and security vulnerabilities identified by Claude/Anthropic;
2. same with other software like SQLite and rsync.
Humans are 100% in the loop with software patches and there are many people in the chain so that provenance is maintained. It’s not that Claude could never look at the source code
Correct, anthropic's requirement was human-in-the-loop.
The DoD's response was to ban anthropic from all DoD facing activity and supply chains, whether or not there is a human in the loop. This does in fact run into exactly GP's issue. (or as I suggest elsewhere, can Boeing use Claude Code for software development?)
It’s hardly “self defining” as the Appeals Court noted because military operations can involve different degrees of human involvement in targeting decisions. It’s not as binary as people have been trying to portray it.
[1] https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/26-104...
Find me what degrees of human involvement bombed the girls school.
Humans make mistakes too.
Perhaps Anthropic was right in needing more oversight in using AI for murder
Maybe. That statement is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It’s a different argument than saying Anthropic’s restriction would have prevented it (it was based on bad intel/old military installation)
No. They can do that with an order covering the specific parameters under which they care about it. Supply chain risk definition is about adversaries and sabotage, not companies dictating contract terms.
They don't want Anthropic to be able to sabotage any operations the DoD has. Anthropic already has a history of trying to sabotage others like during the Fable release when they said they'd subtly wreck your code if you were working on cutting edge AI.
Who said Anthropic will sabotage the DoD? Why are you taking the governments made up crap honestly?
Anthropic has a history of doing stuff like this: https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-responds-to-backlash-o...
> Why can’t the DoD say “ok we’re going with a different vendor”?
That's exactly what they're doing. It turns out the DoD is a really big bureaucracy and has process to make sure they thoroughly exclude a vendor and transitive dependencies on that same vendor.
They do, but this is not it. This is designating Anthropic as an adversary of the USA, and it is forbidding anyone who wants to sell to the DoD from using Anthropic products for anything. This is a massive attack on free speech, free enterprise, and the market.
Supply chain risk is a technical definition not a vibes based one.
And companies absolutely have the right to dictate terms. The idea that the DoD has the unilateral authority to do whatever it wants is literal textbook fascism. It's never been the law in the US and it should not be now.
If the DoD doesn't want Anthropic anywhere in their supply chain, because Anthropic said they won't supply the services the DoD needs.. why can't the DoD bar them from being in their supply chain?
Seems very straight forward.
That's not normal in a free country - even less so in one that claims to have a free market.
Anthropic said "don't use our products for targetting decisions in military ops". The DoD could have easily said "actually then, we won't use your products at all". Instead, the DoD said "either you let us use your products in targeting decisions, or we won't let you sell to anyone who sells to us for any purpose, using a law that only applies to adversaries of the USA".
> using a law that only applies to adversaries of the USA
Everyone keeps parroting this despite it not being true. And you're missing the point. The DoD specifically doesn't want it in their supply chain at all because it's an intelligent system that will work against the DoDs goals, by design, in certain scenarios.
Your argument boils down to, "The DoD isn't allowed to not want Claude in their supply chain", which is crazy.
Anthropic did not change the terms. Those were the terms the US Government signed. It was not secret, it was explicit identified and accepted as a term.
The analogy would be: “A customer agreed to a contract, and after running into a clause of the contract they no longer wanted to follow…canceled the contract unilaterally…which also violated the contract.”
And then declared the other side a supply chain risk, claiming it is a potential vector for a national adversary to break in and cause unwanted bad things to happen unrelated to this contract.
It seems like absurdly bad faith starting at breaking the contract (over "you have to follow the law", no less!) and then to retaliate after that with trying to destroy the company's reputation and ability to do business. The boot licking going on here justifying the government operating in bad faith is both disappointing and short sighted. I didn't think the leopards would eat MY face!
And then another company got the contract, claiming they got all the conditions (and more!) that the original contractor was sour about.
I don't know how anyone can look at the situation and see anything but an abuse of power. The government could have just as easily contacted with another provider. This whole thing is vindictive
I think the better analogy is an insane nuclear power plant manager deciding it wants to buy pens to use as neutron-flux regulator rods — because after all, a pen is functionally a pencil and a pencil is made of graphite.
Then the pen manufacturer hears about this and says “Our pens are not made of graphite and are not suitable to be used in nuclear reactors”, to which the reactor owner says “it’s fine, they fit in the graphite rod holes, and we’re just using until the next generation of pens come out which will do an even better job”, and then the pen manufacturer says “I’m not going to sell you any pens until you agree that they will be used only writing.”
The previous power plant manager had, of course, already signed a contract agreeing to those terms; the power plant is subsequently under new management and upset about being bound by this contract, so they designate that none of their suppliers of parts and fuel are allowed to have any commercial dealings with the pen manufacturer or use these pens for any purpose, even writing.
> The previous power plant manager had, of course, already signed a contract agreeing to those terms
It's even more perplexing in this case though, because the original DoD contract was signed in July 2025. It was the same "plant manager" just arbitrarily changing their mind in the middle of the contract they signed.
Greg Brockman donated $25 million to MAGA Inc. in September 2025. Interesting
And why would the manager ban the manufacturers pens even for writing, except out of spite to punish the manufacturer? And coming back to the real case, is the supply chain risk designation supposed to be a punishment or only there to actually protect the supply chain?
It turns out that a gun is usable for both legitimate and illegitimate reasons, and so it’s rational to both be concerned about the presence of a gun and work very hard to make sure only reasonable people are ever in a position to use it, and that’s not a contradictory position with the notion that one might actually need a gun under certain circumstances.
And if the military needs guns to both shoot at humans and animals and a gun factory says “these guns are for shooting small animals only, using them against humans would be inhumane” and refuse to sell them to the Navy Seals, they would be designated a supply chain risk?
Why not just stop buying their guns and let contractors still use those guns if they need guns to shoot animals?
That’s the same way to do it, and in earlier eras that’s what we would have done. Unfortunately, we elected a gangster who hears “I won’t let you do this” as a personal affront. This, again, is why we need to be very, very careful before we create guns and put them in places, because if the only thing we’re relying on is that only good people are going to pick up the tools we create, we’re going to be very, very disappointed.
"sane" way to do it.
If you have pens in the building, and staff need a pen, they will use the pen that is available, even if there’s a sign saying “not for purpose x”. If you want to stop that happening, you need to not have limited pens available to your staff at all.
Ah so a defense contractor won’t be allowed to use Claude to create their website because they might later want to do some target selection for military strikes using AI and then they wouldn’t be able to use Claude?
Close enough - if they’re using Claude for anything, the DOD can’t trust that staff didn’t also use it in product development, so they’d have to keep track of everything downstream of that component to ensure it was never used for target selection.
It could also be as simple as "anything tainted by the Claude non-targeting-conditions can't be used in target selection, and we don't want to leak classified information about which components we use in target selection by requiring specific items to be developed without Claude, so we can't allow it anywhere".
In fairness, that sounds legit.
Humans see a hammer and a nail and don't think about the rule saying "rubber tipped hammers only in this area, flammable vapour present".
That's not accurate. DOD suppliers weren't banned from having "any commercial dealings" with Anthropic. They were banned from using Anthropic for their work with the DOD.
That's true legally, but the government's public statements did initially very explicitly present this as a ban on any dealing.
"Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic."
Presumably, according to the defenders of the designation in this thread, this was an innocent mistake that doesn't indicate any political intent.
The way things work, the CIOs and CSOs of these companies just implement blanket bans, so it really is effectively a ban for any use. Source: I am at one such company.
That analogy still makes this sound like a textbook designation. In that situation the pen manufacturer is expected to sell pens without a theory of what will happen next. The person who buys a pen might use it to kill someone or commit horrific legal/moral crimes and that has nothing at all to do with the pen manufacturer.
I can see how I might reasonably refuse to deal with that pen manufacturer. The pen manufacturer is unreasonably pushy and they're going to be massive trouble to deal with because they're all up in my business in a paranoid way and disrupting my use of their product. Companies have made my never-again list for far smaller slights.
Where’s my atomic bomb sold at Walmart?
I think you might have misread the thread so far. Do you think the US military is buying atomic bombs from a supplier who is going to try and stop them from bombing things on demand? Obviously the bomb makers have to make peace with the fact that their customers may, of their independent initiative, one day detonate the bombs.
It's been very commonplace in robotics/AI research for vendors to sell robots to the DoD that are explicitly contractually not to be used for killing people.
Citation needed
It's that guy with the long beard and sunglasses that looks like ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, walking out the Wal-Mart door with your suitcase nuke ... the clerk up front near the door was so stunned he didn't even ask to see his receipt
This isn't like using pens in a nuclear plant. AI obviously has tremendous military applications. And it's completely unsurprising that the U.S. military--whose entire doctrine for the last century has been about having the most advanced technology--demands to use frontier models without non-military people imposing restrictions.
Have you seen the movie Oppenheimer? The U.S. military did not care about the moral opinions of the nuclear scientists--they were going to get nukes first. This is like Truman telling off Oppenheimer for being upset after the U.S. used the bomb: https://www.biography.com/political-figures/a44361438/why-ha... ("Blood on his hands; damn it, he hasn’t half as much blood on his hands as I have. You just don’t go around bellyaching about it,” Truman said.... He called Oppenheimer a “cry-baby scientist” and said, “I don’t want to see that son of a b–– in this office ever again.”).
> AI obviously has tremendous military applications.
Yeah, but also we can be reasonably confident they're not good enough for many of them yet:
What would be the military equivalent of all the things on https://www.felonybench.com/ ?
Machine learning needs a lot of examples to get good. Wars and wargames (including digital ones with unbounded self-play time) and all the textbooks together will at best, on the basis of what we see in other fields, get the equivalent of a new officer fresh out of training… and then, given current observed agentic AI behaviour, "follow orders" rather than "follow lawful orders".
> Yeah, but also we can be reasonably confident they're not good enough for many of them yet
What does “not good enough mean?” Who decides what is “good enough” and what tradeoffs are acceptable? Obviously it’s the military’s job to decide that.
In the context of my comment, "not good enough" includes "committing war crimes" and "would have started a war with China if there hadn't been a human in the loop".
We can also infer from other domains, vendbench or attempts to have an LLM play Star Craft, that these models are currently extremely mediocre at management roles.
> Who decides what is “good enough” and what tradeoffs are acceptable? Obviously it’s the military’s job to decide that.
In practice, in the case of the USA, Trump and Hegseth.
The US military, so far as I can tell, are rather less thrilled with these adventures.
Right—and deciding what constitutes “war crimes” isn’t within the expertise of AI developers. They can explain the abilities and limitations of their models to the military leadership. But the actual decision about how to use AI is up to the military through its chain of command. That starts with Trump as the duly elected president and Hegseth as the duly appointed civilian head of the military. They are the democratically accountable actors. And all this is being done in the open, so if the people have a problem with it they can hold it against Trump and his party.
That decision assuredly does not belong with people like Amodei, who are not democratically accountable.
> That decision assuredly does not belong with people like Amodei, who are not democratically accountable.
Has Amodei been conscripted?
If not, he's free to say "no", just as I'm free to refuse to work for e.g. a defence contractor if I don't like what's going on or if I don't feel competent for the role.
He, like me, is allowed to not want deaths on his conscience if he feels his own business' best product isn't good enough.
Oppenheimer was the guy who was pushing that opinion just as much as the military folks. In the case of AI, my understanding is that Amodei is not trying to beat the enemy to it.
What I don't understand is why the U.S. military is turning to a for-profit corporation when they could fund and pursue the development themselves. Why are they trying to "outsource" it to industry?
JAVA TECHNOLOGY IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND IS NOT DESIGNED, MANUFACTURED, OR INTENDED FOR USE OR RESALE AS ONLINE CONTROL EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS REQUIRING FAIL-SAFE PERFORMANCE, SUCH AS IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, DIRECT LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES, OR WEAPONS SYSTEMS, IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF JAVA TECHNOLOGY COULD LEAD DIRECTLY TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.
OP makes a category error already by ignoring the part where the US military/government wants to commit crimes (against humanity and whatnot) and pretends, questioning that would be a crime.
You here make another one by pretending, AI was just some random tool, like a screwdriver or a programming language.
AI can make decisions autonomously that would otherwise require a human. Like selecting people to be murdered by drone strike based on arbitrary criteria. A programming language by itself, JAVA, cannot do that.
An if/then statement or random number generator in Java can make decisions autonomously. Heck, the US military has deployed fully autonomous weapons since at least 1979 (long before LLMs existed).
https://www.vp4association.com/aircraft-information-2/32-2/m...
There is nothing stopping any plain old algorithm being used for the same. The difference is that people decide, for whatever reason, to use the tool or to not use it.
AI can make decisions all it likes. I if you don't integrate it with the drone strike MCP server it's as impotent as a JVM without any code to execute.
That doesn't say you can't do them, though - they just don't take responsibility if doing so fails because of Java somehow.
Basically, it voids the warranty, which you don't really have with Java anyway.
That is an analogy between one thing and another thing, but the topic of this thread is the designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk, which is not involved in your analogy. It is traditional that comments refer to the topic of discussion in some way.
For example, one might extend your analogy to "The nuclear power plant then declares that it will not buy the pens after all, and the pen manufacturer (who had banned them as a customer) sues them to force them to buy the pens after all."
Nobody is suing to force the DoD to buy anything, so maybe you shouldn't be accusing others of failing to refer to the topic of discussion.
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This is the most accurate parallel as far as I can tell. I've not seen any evidence that Anthropic deliberately built automated systems or escape hatches that literally prevent the US Government from using Claude to do these things. Other than the basic AI Safety mechanisms in place for everyone/general use. It's almost the reverse, where they explicitly don't want to strip away guardrails that say things like "don't kill people".
The intent and framing matters a lot here. Refusal to remove safety features is a LOT different than deliberately building mechanisms to sabotage would-be operations.
It doesn't seem like you understand what a supply chain risk designation is for.
It's to ensure that companies that the DoW relies on don't build on top of a product that isn't fit for DoW work.
You seem to be agreeing with this designation in a way. The DoW essentially said "Pen company won't let us use their pens as neutron-flux regulator rods, so anyone building power plants for us isn't allowed to use these pens as neutron-flux regulator rods".
What is the problem you have with that?
They've essentially said "pen company won't let us use their pens as neutron flux regulator rods, so anyone building power plants for us isn't allowed to use these pens as pens"
(and yeah, there might be a completely legitimate reason to stop your subcontractors from using HuaweiSpyPens, but determining that ACME Pens is just as dangerous because they refused your neutron flux regulator order looks like a punitive measure, not practical risk reduction)
I mean if a competitors pens work for all of your use cases, then why not just use the competitor?
The statutory name of this department is the Department of Defense.
Especially considering the leadership is quite keen on dead-naming people, I will continue the practice in kind towards them.
So the DoW should have the ability to perform mass surveillance on American citizens?
Mind you, that is not the DoW’s charter. How would a restriction on that be “unfit” as you say?
The DoW is perfectly within their rights not to purchase anthropic products. That’s different than labeling them a supply chain risk.
The DOW should (and does) have ability to do anything and everything that Congress has said they can do.
Congress is not the British parliament. There is no congressional sovereignty.
The US is a constitutional republic, it does not have a system where anything Congress decides is law.
> The US is a constitutional republic, it does not have a system where anything Congress decides is law.
Really now? Then why does it say in the Constitution that it was created to pass laws?
Your constitution literally has limits on what sort of laws congress can pass, i.e. "congress shall make now law..."
Yes, a very small list of NOs. Everything else goes.
Huge list of "No"'s. The "No"'s are a core part of the American system, whereas the absence of "No"'s is a core part of the British system.
So, for example, if Congress says the military can require the entire domestic population to be Catholic and kill anyone who isn't... ?
That's not how it works.
Congress can do that, can't it? Why can't it? It could declare all competing religions as terrorist organisations.
Obviously it'd be immoral, unorthadox and impractical but I expect Congress has a long history of promoting and stamping out ideologies and they can do it. What little I know about the civil rights era springs to mind.
Legally, Congress cannot do that, as long as it is "respecting" some religion. It's true that the US Constitution is more used as an excuse than upheld, but at least the language is pretty plain.
In theory. The issue is we've seen exactly what happens in a Congress v. constitution showdown once the Congresspersons put their collective feet down. Congress eventually redefines the law in a way that favours them. Plain language won't stop them if they get serious; they aren't supposed to be regulating the US economy the way they do either and a lot of stuff the military-industrial complex does looks like it should be unconstitutional (like the spying and the secret courts).
On the one hand there is a clear and comforting consensus in the US that they aren't going to force religious mores on anyone. So I don't see how the Congress could or would try. But if we ever end up in a situation where the US Congress decides it wants to go straight Catholic I really don't see how it would fail. They've got far too much power and they'll eventually rotate in a compliant judiciary and then redefine what words mean so they can do it.
It is a bit difficult when dealing with such an out-there scenario, but if Congress decides the US military should do something wild then eventually the military is going to do it. The realistic protection is that by virtue of good system design there isn't a plausible scenario where Congress would want to impose Catholicism on the US population by force.
I don't disagree.
However, I do think there is an expectation in Americans' minds that Congress is governed by the Constitution, and believing makes it so. Mostly.
The fact that Congress is currently abdicating its responsibility does not mean that it is actually powerless. Technically, Congress has tremendous powers if it chooses to wield it. SCOTUS can try to rule a law is unconstitutional but Congress can impeach and remove justices at any time. Of course, we hope Congress members will pay the price when it comes time for reelection but at the time of this decision, as long as they can somehow remain united, Congress reigns supreme.
> Congress can impeach and remove justices at any time.
The impeachment process requires a majority of the House and two thirds of the Senate, and then any replacement would have to be nominated by the President rather than Congress. Meanwhile the existing decision stands, and even the dissenting Supreme Court Justices (if there were any) should follow it as a result of stare decisis, and might even be inclined to because removing their colleagues under those circumstances could make them uneasy.
The passed a law directing the military to round-up and arrest every japanese in the US and hold them indefinetely, and the military did so.
The military will kill anyone instructed to kill. Especially if it is in the body of a law passed by Congress.
Do you think in the military you can just be like “Yeah, I don’t feel it today, I’m going to take s sick day”?
> Do you think in the military you can just be like “Yeah, I don’t feel it today, I’m going to take s sick day”?
What do you think happens if they refuse to do it?
Either nothing, or if they get sued or prosecuted for not doing it then they get brought in front of a court, and a judge who is doing their job would say that they were right not to do it.
> What do you think happens if they refuse to do it?
In war time they can be shot on the spot for disobeying orders.
> Either nothing, or if they get sued or prosecuted for not doing it then they get brought in front of a court, and a judge who is doing their job would say that they were right not to do it.
I think you confuse the military with corporate environments. Worst thing that can happen in the private sector is that you get fired.
In the military you can spend the rest of your life in prison if “you did not feel like obeying orders”. The military is built ob discipline and followimg orders, not Gen Z mood swings.
Congress cannot do anything the Supreme Court says they cannot do
It actually is, and this is why there are separate judicial, executive and legislative branches to put those checks and balances on each other instead.
Your argument is that if Congress passes a law that says the military can summarily execute non-Catholics, the military should have the ability to do that, i.e. the courts or the public shouldn't stop them?
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
> No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.
Example chosen specifically for its unambiguous unconstitutionality.
No, not at all. How did you get "the courts shouldn't stop them" from "that's why there's a separate judicial branch to impose the checks and balances"??? That's literally the opposite of what I said.
> The DOW should (and does) have ability to do anything and everything that Congress has said they can do.
> Me: That's not how it works.
> You: It actually is
Moreover, regardless of what the courts do, the military still shouldn't execute a law like that, because they too have the ability to refuse to violate the constitution even if Congress tells them to.
I chose to read the comment charitably. The natural understanding of "everything X says they can do" is limited by external restrictions on what X is supposed to be able to authorize.
That reading would make it a meaningless tautology. They're allowed to do anything they're allowed to do.
Which seems especially unfavorable in context, since "the ability to perform mass surveillance on American citizens" is naturally the sort of thing they ought not be allowed to do.
Department of Wefense?
They manage the nuclear wessels.
> This is like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike order
I am pretty receptive to the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, but we are taking a big leap from pen to llms/artificial intelligence. I am sympathetic to some of your other points, but I simply must reject this analogy.
"the government wants to use our tool to murder people", and declaring that company that says "no" into a "supply chain risk" is absolutely retaliatory and an attempt by the government to influence the behavior of the company.
The moral and ethical scale of the issue makes this far different than someone buying a pen.
> "the government wants to use our tool to murder people", and declaring that company that says "no" into a "supply chain risk" is absolutely retaliatory and an attempt by the government to influence the behavior of the company.
If Lockheed could brick its planes if the US planned to use them for military action it disagreed with (and showed some indication they couldn't be trusted not to do it), would they be a supply chain risk?
It is not the role of a defense contractors to have oversight and control power over the military they're supplying.
The military could just use different AI models for the purposes Anthropic does not want its models used for.
Purposes Anthropic already spelled out in contract form.
Correct so what’s wrong with that? Plenty of open weight models to use
Ridiculous hypothetical for analogy purposes, but, imagine if Anthropic had developed a new type of rifle that the military was considering using, which had a black-box AI system that could prevent the trigger being pulled when aimed at certain targets. The military says, ok that's cool, as long as we can be in control of that decision-making process. Anthropic says, no, we know better than you and better than the law what kind of targets should and should not be shot with our rifles. The military would then respond “lol, lmao even” and then deem them to be a supply chain risk and adopt another rifle instead.
Or they could just not buy the product in the first place. The supply chain risk part is pure retribution.
That’s literally what they’re doing. That’s what supply chain risk means.
They don’t buy the product, and the product can’t be used in the things they do buy.
No, it's not. If Anthropic is a supply chain risk, that means that if you are working on a project that will be used for the DoD, you can't use Claude or any other Anthropic product for any purpose whatsoever in that project. Asked Claude to change the color of a PPTX for a sprint demo you're doing? Oops, you've know introduced a supply chain risk and your company is liable for damages or at least losing its entire contract with the DoD.
The problem is if they used it for a slide, they could have used it to design a part or code or something else.
These blanket rules are very typical in large organizations.
They already bought the product, and it came with a license, then they wanted to unilaterally change the license. When they couldn’t, they declared the product a supply chain risk. The idea is you declare it a risk before you buy it.
Not to mention, they simultaneously said it was a supply chain risk and that it would continue to be used by agencies that were already using it in a critical capacity. Which makes absolutely no sense.
Supply chain risk ensures nobody in the chain is buying it and thus becoming subject to Antropic's demand of usage control. They are still free to use it for non-DOD purposes, but if Antropic wants control over DOD, DOD has the right to say "no, we won't have anything to do with you, and thus you're not getting any control over us". I agree it may be unpleasant for Antropic but DOD has the right - I'd say even responsibility - to not submit to control by any private party.
No, they would simply not buy it.
That’s not even the end of the story. Anthropic has sued. They really want to sell their rifles to the government and retain control.
You’re just describing the exact situation we’re in but substituting a drone for a rifle. If the government is mad they should just partner with a contractor who is less concerned about this, which lo-and-behold they did it’s a company called OpenAI.
Anthropic isn’t a supply chain risk since they easy found someone else
Non-sense. Pentagon has many many uses of AI besides autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance, which Anthropic doesn't restrict. ie: intelligence analysis, target selection, payroll, inventory, research, supply chain and logistics, medical, bureaucracy, ...
Right but the military wants to be able to use a tool they are paying for in all cases, not just ones the manufacturer thinks they should.
If I sold steel to the Pentagon but then tried to say they they couldn't use it for ships and tanks but they are free to use for warehouses they would react the same way as they are doing now.
Edit add: What is targeting? What is surveillance?
If someone in the intelligence analysis department uses AI to generate a report, then someone else uses that report for targeting did they just break the terms? Where is that line?
Much easier for the Pentagon to say no.
Your "but then" is off-base. This is selling steel for the express purpose of nuclear reactors, with a contractual clause against its use in tanks, and the US government deciding that it doesn't feel like abiding by the rules in the contract.
> If I sold steel to the Pentagon but then tried to say they they couldn't use it for ships and tanks but they are free to use for warehouses they would react the same way as they are doing now.
They sure as hell shouldn't! Selling steel for any use except ships and tanks is a little odd but it's not a risk.
(I'm ignoring the "but then" because this was about future sales not previous ones.)
It's funny, I buy some software and the license says "for student and non-commercial use only", which lets me get it for $50 instead of the $5000 that an enterprise would pay. But I can just ignore that clause or declare them a supply-chain risk if they try to hold me to it, because now that they've taken my $50, who are they to dictate how I use it? I can do whatever I want, not just what the vendor thinks I should, right? A contact is just paper, right?
We cannot subordinate our military’s decision making power — in any arena — to a private company.
Our military must also not be dependent on a private company that believes it has the moral prerogative to control our military’s decisions, and would have the technical capability to do so.
Maybe the military should just seize the technology and nationalize the company then? Because clearly, paying a private party voluntarily entering into a contract on mutually-agreed upon terms is now a polite fiction that can be done away with.
And then what? You expect military to keep doing frontier AI R&D, after all research staff leaves to other non-nationalized frontier labs?
The military is bound by contract, just like any other government agency. They entered into a contract, with these clauses well-known. This was OK because they have all the same problems every other organization uses AI for.
They could’ve just negotiate a new contract with OpenAI, without banning it from every government agency. But I’m sure that would’ve triggered some kind of extra clause and cost money…
Your entire statement lacks any type of fact.
This is ridiculous. Anthropic should be free to say the terms for using their service. It doesn't "subordinate" the military, and the military is far from some infallible, unquestionable force here.
If the military wants to use AI to autonomously kill people, they can - Anthropic is not stopping them - thy just can't with Anthropic's services.
The government retaliating by then claiming that any use of Anthropic is risk is an obvious farce. How would Anthropic be any less of a risk if they let Claude autonomously kill people?
The complete failure of any of these Anthropic cheerleaders (to the extent that they are not AI generate comments posted by bots) to understand basic Constitutional principles of Rule of Law and Separation of Powers is mind blowing.
Their argument, in effect, is that we should throw out the entire Constitutional order and make Dario Amodei dictator of the world. The psychopathic hubris is laughable.
No entity should have a right to dictate whether your private company does business with someone or not. The military can pound sand if they don't like your contract terms. That is if you believe in democracy and capitalism. If you don't, then it's not a problem to you.
Any private entity has that right though.
I, as a person, can decide I won't do business with a company that uses Anthropic models for whatever reason. I can even decide I won't do business with a company that relies on suppliers that use Anthropic.
This right applies to private companies too. Like Walmart could set contract terms that their suppliers aren't allowed to use AWS. The suppliers are free to accept those terms or not.
You’re still absolutely free to do business with Anthropic.
Our military is simply choosing not to do business with them, or anyone that depends on them.
If you believed in democracy, you wouldn’t be supporting the EA-infected corporation that tried to make our democratic institutions subordinate to their corporate decision making.
That is not what they are doing. They could have just canceled the contract and paid the exit clause. This is retaliation, because Anthropic would not move on their pre-negotiated terms. As a result, they are now been from being used anywhere in the US government.
Let me ask you this, if Anthropic did allow them to use it for surveillance… do you think it would stop at the Pentagon?
I support any and all moves that empower private persons and corporations over the infinite force of governments. They didn't try to make anyone subordinate to anything. They made a proposal. Trump pissed and generally made a mess as he usually does and then they randomly declared them a supply chain treat.
Wouldn't that make any product with a licensing agreement a supply chain risk?
No, of course not, because life isn't black and white. Just those with licensing agreements that conflict with the militaries mission, where the product could be manipulated to hinder the mission. Most manufacturers would jump at the chance to rewrite their licensing agreements specifically for the military just to get a government contract.
This was not manipulated to hinder the mission. Every account of this indicates it was clearly spelled out. They could not use it for mass surveillance or for targeting. The lawyers at the DOD did not miss this. They agreed to the terms, because they had no intent to use it for such purpose purposes.
This is like the change order from hell.
Nothing was stopping the DOD from just entering into a new contract with OpenAI…
But if they don’t jump at the chance to retroactively rewrite the already-signed license, you’re OK with designating them a supply-chain risk?
That’s going to make it rather risky for anyone to sign licenses with the DoD. In fact, it renders the licenses pointless since you just have to do anything the licensee says.
I mean typically the outcome of civil suits is black and white (at least on a per-claim basis).
So Amazon and Microsoft don't enforce cloud licensing agreements with the USG? If the government wants to add 3,000 Windows users to support their mission Microsoft is shit out of luck in getting paid for them?
> Anthropic wanted to have rules on how the military used AI
No, they want to have rules on how the military used Anthropic AI.
Military would still be free to use OpenAI for the nasty stuff
Yes, in fact the military has a system in place to make sure that they only that they only use alternate suppliers and on Anthropic AI, They do this by placing a designation on Anthropic AI that it is a risk to the supply chain, which forces purchasers to use other suppliers.
I don't think this is how preferred suppliers have typically worked through the supply chain risk considering the US has definitely had preferred suppliers before and has not historically used this against a US company that was not on the list and the power of such a designation extends far past the military into all parts of the government. I'm pretty sure this has more traditionally been relegated to simple requirements or specifications.
The reason it appears corrupt is that OpenAI has the exact same restrictions (https://openai.com/index/our-agreement-with-the-department-o...) but was not declared a supply chain risk. If two vendors have the same restrictions and they only designate one, then the designation must be arbitrary and/or capricious.
Edit: I was wrong, the statement I linked is extremely dishonest and I was misled. The contract language lower down makes it clear that there are no "red lines", and OpenAI products can in fact be used for mass domestic surveillance, autonomous weapons, and social credit systems as long as they are considered legal.
>OpenAI has the exact same restrictions
No it doesn't. Specifically OpenAI had a "all lawful purposes" clause (which plausibly includes the existing mass surveillance apparatus), but Anthropic did not.
You're right, what an incredibly dishonest statement. The actual contract language in there makes it clear that there are no restrictions. My bad.
Were they the same restrictions though?
OpenAI just said no surveillance of U.S. persons.
Anthropic could have gone further; I think it's likely they did.
There are three restrictions:
> No use of OpenAI technology for mass domestic surveillance.
> No use of OpenAI technology to direct autonomous weapons systems.
> No use of OpenAI technology for high-stakes automated decisions (e.g. systems such as “social credit”).
These are stronger than Anthropic's restrictions (https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war), as OpenAI says themselves: "We think our agreement has more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropic’s. [...] Based on what we know, we believe our contract provides better guarantees and more responsible safeguards than earlier agreements, including Anthropic’s original contract."
Edit: I was wrong, see my original comment. Sorry.
The article only cites language for surveillance.
The other stuff...there's zero citations or quotes. Meaning that OpenAI could be having their cake and eating it too, winning a public victory, with no validation on the actual language, consequences, or enforcement.
I thought the difference is that clearly written rules or SLAs are acceptable and can even be negotiated before signing a contract, but having a person, in this case Amodei himself, manually approve DOJ's usage case by case with his own moral judgement after a contract is signed is not okay.
No one wanted case-by-case veto ability at Anthropic. The red lines were made clear ahead of time: No use of Anthropic models for autonomous weapons (Skynet) or mass-domestic surveillance, negotiated in the agreement.
OpenAI, xAI, and Google happily agreed to DoW contracts which allow both of those use cases.
Do you think OpenAI's terms for the DoD are published on a website? Pretty sure when Anthropic got zapped, OpenAI sent DoD a memo 500ms later saying they wouldn't restrict use.
Look at it pragmatically. What does the DoD use every single procurement for? Hint: military use.
I think this was discussed ad nauseum last time so I am wondering if somehow this has changed but the biggest part of the issue last time was the retaliation. You seem to suggest that this was due to the government not wanting restrictions on their actions. I feel this severely downplays how unusual this designation is considering, like Anthropic says, this has not been applied to domestic companies.
Why couldn't excluding Anthropic be done a different mechanism than a supply chain risk. Why wouldn't this be a standard part of an agreement or a request and simply refuse to renew or cancel a contract rather than being designated a supply chain risk. If some third party contractor for an unrelated non military reason wanted to use Claude as part of their process, it seems perfectly allowable.
If this was a remotely standard way of operation, why did a fair amount of corporate America sign briefs concerned with the retaliatory aspect.
Parts of the action seemed wholly retaliatory as well since Pentagon officials certainly used it as a threat. Why can't a US company have views contrary to the policies of the US government? Certainly the US government is free to not do business with them, but this designation affects everybody doing any kind of indirect business with the US government which is a rather long chain. If this becomes a legitimate mechanism, how might we distinguish caring about a secure supply chain and simply wiping out a company that disagreed with a pro war attitude? If a machining shop had a policy against manufacturing weapons at all, could they be blocked from making server racks for Microsoft or perhaps light fixtures for the Department of Labor? There are plenty of areas that are, again, non military? I don't think it's credible to claim that Anthropic will deliberately sabotage operations.
>Anthropic opposing the US government
Is it not possible that this would change the risk profile of depending on them. It makes sense to work with people who support you than oppose you for things which are critical.
- Having principles and sticking to them is not opposing.
- Just because you don't do everything someone wants you to do does not make you a supply chain risk.
My point is did everyone know all of those principals and how committed Anthropic was to them from the beginning or did new information come in and now they need to adjust. Just because something is a term in a contract that doesn't mean it's necessarily strongly held belief that will never change.
So you renegotiate the contract. You don't get to retaliate.
Only it turns out that with sufficient corruption, you do.
You are again confusing contract terms with risk. They are independent.
Who runs the government changes every 2 to 4 years… are you suggesting we completely swap every vendor in the US government to align with whatever political party is in office?
There’s nothing indicating Anthropic was not keeping their end of the contract. If they had, there would have been other recourse.
>are you suggesting we completely swap every vendor
I think American companies should be supporting the government as much as possible. Even when it switches.
>There’s nothing indicating Anthropic was not keeping their end of the contract.
Which is why we are talking about risk and not breach of contract.
> You can agree with the rules anthropic wanted, but having rules set by a private company at all that apply to the military does seem fair for the military to object to.
Oh the hypocrisy and irony. This coming from a country whose military sets rules on other countries' armed forces how weapons systems bought from US can be used.[ß] By this standard US itself should be designated as a supply chain risk for everyone else.
ß: for a very long time in the Ukraine "conflict", US refused to allow their gear from being used to attack targets outside of Ukraine's borders.
> This is like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike orders, now the military needs to have a special box of pens that don't have stipulations attached.
It's pretty common for software licenses to state that it's prohibited from being used in medical devices, life support systems, nuclear facilities, etc. Will software with those licenses also be designated supply-chain risks?
A much closer analogy than the pen one is a SAAS company having an EULA. As annoying as EULAs are I don’t think it counts as being malicious or subversive if you are very open and clear with your prospective customers what that EULA contains?
Anthropic's red lines were 'no fully autonomous AI kill chains' and 'no domestic mass surveillance'. Those are clearly not national-security or DoD functions in the first place, so why would they be in any way objectionable?
Do you think a private company should be able to accumulate enough wealth and power to dictate policy to the US federal government?
I think a private company of any size should be able to offer its products on whatever terms they choose. If the military doesn't like those terms, they're free to do business elsewhere.
Isn't that what happened?
You are obviously being disingenuous, because you are on a thread where the DoD is not just electing not to buy Anthropic's service, but also trying to bully them into submission with the unrealistic threat of the DPA, punitively and disproportionately trying to label them a national security risk, and invoking supply chain issues normally applied to our worst adversaries, for the first time putting an obviously patriotic American country on the same footing as North Korea, Iran, China and Russia.
Remember, the Anthropic red line was "no war crimes and no mass surveillance of the US population." You may think that war crimes are cool, and that mass surveillance of the US population by the department of defense would be fine, but consider the natural consequences, both for democracy and for any adversary's conduct in future wars.
So your saying they are 100% correct and Anthropic is a supply chain risk? All you're doing is trying to justify why they shouldn't be labeled truthfully rather then saying it wasn't the truth (probably because you know it was).
no, because it's cockamamie bullshit that they're a supply chain risk on the same level as Iran, China, Russia and North Korea. And you know this!
>obviously patriotic American country
Hi, just informing you of the typo.
thanks. Company, of course
> You may think that war crimes are cool
It's really rich to say this after calling me disingenuous.
I don't think it's cool that Anthropic gets to set military policy. I don't care how much I agree or disagree with the policy. Wario is not the president. And Anthropic does not strike me as "obviously patriotic," not that I think it's better if the private company bossing the military around is patriotic. It has no relevance.
"Warcrimes" is the new "racist," too. It gets thrown around willy nilly about every military action.
War crimes have a precise legal meaning and have for a long time. Get off of twitter and touch grass if you feel you're getting called racist too often.
I haven't been called racist, actually, but people get called racist just for looking like me.
You mean like pharmaceutical companies refusing to supply chemicals for lethal injection?
There are already several private companies that have this, eg. Apple has specific exemptions from tariffs on smartphones, computers, and semiconductors that they got by paying off Trump and promising to make their iPhone glass in Kentucky:
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/tariff-exemptions-are-bi...
https://www.warren.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/media/doc/l...
The correct mental model for the U.S. federal government right now is not an omnipotent democratic overseer for economic activity, but rather as just one firm that negotiates directly with other major firms for legitimization and legal protection. Their power is likely to decline further, as is the value of "legitimization", as technological developments erode the military's monopoly on physical force. Interesting times ahead - historically tech transitions like this lead to a splintering of state legitimacy and then a reorganization under new forms of governance.
Somebody clearly has to
Its not dictating policy. Any company of any size should be able to set any contract they want with the government or any other party.
The DoD is free not to sign contracts. Having them be able to get a company blacklisted from a whole sector just because they couldn't agree on terms with that company is obviously very different than that.
The idea that "fair for the military to object to" implies "fair for the military to ban from their supply chain in any capacity no matter how unrelated the use" is so outlandish that it's never been done before (to a US company), and I think we can be confident that the DoD has frequently objected to would-be contractors' terms.
The claim that it being done for the first time - by a Secretary of Defense denounced the politics of the company in the same text where he announced the designation - isn't "political", is something I have a hard time believing a functioning adult who isn't employed defending the government in court could adopt.
But hey, maybe in some language this is a "textbook" official statement with no "politics":
No, the DOD has super specific acquisition rulesets that don't apply outside the DOD umbrella. Limiting acquisition or refusing sales can be done without being flagged a risk. FedRAMP levels accomplish this without the political intrigue and the unnecessary defense of this action not being political.
In other words: the same outcome could easily be accomplished without being punitive to Anthropic.
The pen analogy doesn't help. Anthropic and similar services will restrict what you can use them for, and they'll change those rules at will. DoD understandably doesn't trust that if Anthropic is saying themselves they don't want their AI to be used for autonomous weapons.
> The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary
I.e. Anthrophic cannot be trusted to honour a contract.
Who'd have guessed?
In almost any case I am inclined to trust entity not trump or trumps government. So is true in this case, where they pissed their pants at anthropic simply making a proposal and decided to use overwhelming government force against it. I will leave you to decide who you consider more trustworthy, Trump or Anthropic.
I didn't understand what you said or your analogy, sorry maybe I'm stupid. Would you be able to explain this differently? Maybe something implied was omitted and I didn't follow that.
It's not you, the analogy they used was wrong, idiotic, and unnecessary.
This would be like Boeing refusing to let the DoD fly a military 737 at over 800MPH, and they designate them a supply chain risk because they really really want to make the plane go past 800MPH.
Being on the offensive cyber security whitelist for Mythos doesn't stop you from getting constant rejections. I don't know how you screw up something as simple as a whitelist.
I don't get it, did the US government and military stop using Claude? I thought they were using it to choose objectives to bomb?
To your first question, yes. To your second question, no. They used Grok for that, and it picked out a school to target.
> To your first question, yes
No they didn't. They are still using Claude in places despite the fact that the 180 days limit for the transition has expired. This surfaced from the proceedings of the appeal itself, as well as from leaked source. A memo from the DoD authorises use of Claude past the 180 days term for reasons of national security (the rare case where national security is provided by a supply chain risk!)
It would be pretty surprising to allow a private company to control the military's use in realtime.
i think this is more like the pen maker doesnt want the military top brass calling their pen sales guy to make the kill/no kill decisions while using the pen to sign drone strike orders.
similarly the pen owner doesnt want to make a variation where the pen also doubles as a knife
Nothing can stand in the way of America's forever wars, genocide, and automated killing, including performative objections by a prominent tech company.
I suppose we're supposed to be satisfied that the letter of the law supports this steamroller? Because that's what matters?
The legal apparatus is one of the tools the death machine uses to get what it wants.
Completely agree.
And I further dislike Anthropic for creating 2 situations in 2 weeks that are giving this admin an obvious opportunity to be right. The other one is David Sacks responding to the “Pace the Frontier” crap. These were the table tennis equivalent of lobs for the admin.
Also worth noting that no one knows what kind of task would get a rejection with Anthropic’s models. The documentation is near-non-existent with the air of “security,” rules change daily, the harness is buggy, the clients are buggy, and very likely the backend gating and safety mechanisms are buggy. Even if the DOD assumed the best of intentions to comply, the reliability isn’t there.
What military would buy guns that sometimes stop working, and not necessarily for reasons anyone understands, and still be taken seriously?
Also Claude clearly had no issues identifying a school that has been a school for over 10 years as a military target. Why would the military buy tech that would make them more likely to commit war crimes?
A better analogy would be an explosives manufacturer saying that it is okay to use their explosives on military targets, but not civilian targets. Comparing AI to pens trivialises its potential impact.
Incidentally the second stipulation, the restriction on domestic surveillance, sounds like direct recognition of the role IBM played in the Holocaust. Of course, the better course of action would be to deny the military access to their technology. But that's not going to happen because there is so much money on the table.
Using Claude for working on the refrigerators at the commissary is not a supply chain risk. You're just making stuff up.
You could use the same logic to defend the military declaring that Anthropic is full of pedophiles and therefore they cannot use their products as it would be contributing to pedophilia.
Anthropic offered a contract, with certain conditions, as do all contracts everywhere; that's their purpose. The military did not want to agree to those conditions. If they had stopped there, and refused to sign the contract, all would be good. (It's actually worse, they did sign such a contract, and then decided they wanted the contract to say something different than it actually did. "Pray I don't alter it any further.")
> >The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized [emphasis mine]
That is speculation, and you can't call it a "textbook designation" without discussing whether there's a basis for that "reasonable fear". Again, that argument also works for declaring you have a reasonable fear that giving money to Anthropic will support pedophilia. We do not know the specifics, but I at least have heard of zero evidence that Anthropic would sabotage something they signed a legal contract for, and yet I have an abundance of evidence that this administration will use whatever contortions are necessary to pressure and punish those who interfere with it getting what it wants. It all hinges on the word "reasonable", and based on the evidence that is public, this specific fear seems more ridiculous than reasonable to me.
If the government somehow had a way to force Anthropic to sign a contract that it did not want to sign, then this fear might become more reasonable. The twist is that this supply chain risk designation is exactly that. If Anthropic now capitulated, the accusation of supply chain risk (eg from Anthropic employees acting alone) would be justified. So the only way Anthropic can reasonably be considered a supply chain risk is because it is accused of being a supply chain risk.
This is a textbook example, yes, but it's a textbook example of corruption and judicial capture.
> Though they'd probably put the DoD on the cybersecurity whitelist today, the very idea of the claude whitelists for certain functionality already exists and is being used by them today.
And if they signed a contract permitting fully autonomous killbots, then using the whitelist mechanism would be a contract violation. I have some degree of faith that we'd know if such a contract were signed, because half the staff would quit. (As opposed to half the Google staff quitting after signing such a contract, which has been proven to be an incorrect expectation -- such a contract was signed, and I've heard of exactly one person quitting over it. There may be more, I don't know.)
except it's also stipulating that the paper supplier upon which the orders are signed also cant use anthropic. or the table maker. even though the AI helping make sleeker paper and tables has nothing to do with deciding what to bomb (analogy breaking down lol)
and trump admin originally went WAY further.
they originally said the pen, paper, table etc suppliers cant use anthropic even for products and subsidiaries that have nothing to do with their govt work; far beyond the supply chain of the pen (bomb). Mega Corp Pepsi Co Taco Bell Inc. LLC -> Staples > Pen Co. Sure pen co might be reasonabale. But telling taco bell they cant have claude help expand the baja-blast-radius is way too far. that would be just like secondary sanctions.
iirc there are 2 court cases. one ruled the original order was too broad and i think that still stands? so at least it's narrowed slightly to just the immediate supply chain?
but ianal
i agree. by nature a lease is more risky than the military having its own model.
however anthropic also believes it is some kind of entity unto itself so it is not at all reliable.
> but it actually seems like a textbook designation
How can it be a textbook designation when designating a US company as a supply chain risk is unprecedented? So many actions under the Trump administration are unprecedented it starts to feel like the norm.
No other administration (Republican or Democrat) would do this. The DoD didn’t have a problem using Anthropic’s models during the raid on Venezuela and early on in the war with Iran.
Anthropic says to the former Fox News host it doesn’t want its models used for domestic surveillance or in kill situations without a human in the loop; all of a sudden they're a supply chain risk?
Seems obviously political.
>Anthropic says to the former Fox News host it doesn’t want its models used for domestic surveillance...
Lol, do as we say not as we do!
>In addition to monitoring activists in the vicinity of Anthropic executives and keeping tabs on protests near physical Anthropic assets, the firm is also implementing a “pre-crime” approach, attempting to predict incidents before they happen.
https://prospect.org/2026/09/09/anthropic-artificial-intelli...
This is political. Everything is political at this scale.
* How much money did Anthropic and its associates donate to the Biden campaign and associated entities? * How much money was spent on lobbying by Anthropic and associated entities? * How many Biden officials were hired by Anthropic after they left office? * How exactly did Anthropic get exclusive no-bid contracts to be the Federal Government's sole AI provider for classified systems?
And with this corrupt influence, and the money that it earned them, Anthropic has attempted to:
* Stoke public fear and panic about AI * Stoke conflict with China * Eliminate domestic competition * Suppress international competition * Degrade their models in order to limit their ability to create competitive products * Train their models on their customer's proprietary data in order to steal their intellectual property
Anthropic played a game and they lost. They can wrap that up in whatever sanctimonious moralizing clap-trap they want, but nobody believes a word they say, or will ever trust them, so they might as well be talking to the wind.
OpenAI may be playing the same game but at least they have the intelligence and humility to read the room, recognize a failed strategy, and adapt.
Who wants to buy intelligence from people who are stupid enough to publicly try to dictate terms to the US Military? Complete and utter brand destruction for everyone involved.
It can be a textbook designation and a capricious punishment at the same time. It's almost comical, to suggest that anything about this decision was reasonable. Makes me long for the days of n-gate.com.
Antropic: "We don't want our AIs to be used by the Army to do yucky Army things!"
Army: "OK, we will make sure not to use your AIs"
Antropic: "How dare you! We are suing! We intended for you to keep using it but do only what we want!"
Army: "..."
They weren't against military use of their AI. They were against using it to kill American citizens without oversight or mass surveil Americans.
> They were against using it to kill American citizens
No, they were against using it to kill people without oversight. I hope nobody thinks that there's a difference between murdering American citizens and murdering people.
Oh okay, makes their position even more moral then.
...I suggest you read about what actually happened:
Anthropic: "We'll sell you access to our AI as long as you don't use it for war crimes or mass surveillance."
DoD: "Ok, deal."
...time passes...
DoD: "Wait, no, we want to be able to use it for war crimes too."
Anthropic: "Too late, you agreed already, and we won't sign a contract for that. You can keep using it for everything we agreed to."
DoD: "Change the terms or we will destroy your business."
Anthropic: "No."
DoD then signs contracts with OpenAI and Google that permit them to commit war crimes and mass surveillance as long as they get legal cover, and proceeds to apply as much leverage as it can to destroy Anthropic's business.
----
And for the record, Anthropic agreed to all "yucky Army things" usage that was an extension of past yucky Army things, they just did not agree to a new class of yucky Army things: namely, fully autonomous killbots. Even there, it was only "not yet, it's not ready". Your whole comment is a gross mischaracterization.
I quit using ChatGPT entirely over this incident, and that's not because I find Anthropic's position to be saintly. They agreed to a contract where the DoD could and in practice is using their AI for committing war crimes.
The problem here - as you probably very well know but pretend not to - that "war crimes" is a very poorly defined term that is subject to many interpretations and subjective political and partisan opinions. Antropic wanted them to be the last word in every decision, and DOD could not allow that, because they are governmental agency, which is controlled by US government, not by Antropic. Nobody is destroying anybody's business - pretending that Anthropic could never find any users for their AI outside DOD is plain silly.
US Society has mechanisms for preventing and investigating war crimes. They may not be perfect, and you may not be happy about how they are working, but I doubt that "give control over it to some random guy that makes AI models" is an adequate solution for that. If Antropic decided the risk of DOD circumventing those mechanisms is too high for them to tolerate - they have full freedom not to sell to DOD. Which they used.
> I quit using ChatGPT entirely over this incident
And this is supposed to be an argument because....?
> They agreed to a contract where the DoD could and in practice is using their AI for committing war crimes.
You have a very vivid imagination. Not trying to use it to state things that could be misinterpreted as statements of fact would be nice. Not that I am new on the internet, so I know it's not going to happen.
Ok, I'll be precise: the main dispute was over fully autonomous decisions to use lethal force. Because if the AI chose incorrectly, the military would be attacking targets that it shouldn't. Whether that is a war crime hinges upon whether it was reckless. Anthropic's position was that AI is not capable of making such decisions, which is another way of saying that giving that decision wholly to an AI is reckless. I can stop using the term "war crimes" if it bothers you so much, but I'm failing to see a distinction between what Anthropic was fearing and the definition of what a war crime is. These are fears, so this isn't about whether one specific action was a war crime or not. This is just naming what Anthropic was worried about and why.
> Anthropic wanted them to be the last word in every decision, and DOD could not allow that
Cite one source for Anthropic demanding to be in the loop. This was about the terms of a contract. If I'm agreeing to sell you a medicine, under the condition that you do not use it to euthanize homeless people, that does not mean I am demanding to follow you around and make you ask me whether each use is ok.
> Nobody is destroying anybody's business - pretending that Anthropic could never find any users for their AI outside DOD is plain silly.
Strawman much? The question is about the US government using its influence in a competitive environment to hamstring one company. It doesn't matter whether there are other customers. It doesn't matter whether the company can survive the attack. What matters is whether it is legal and ethical for our public resources to be used for retaliation in this way.
> US Society has mechanisms for preventing and investigating war crimes....I doubt that "give control over it to some random guy that makes AI models"
This is an invented claim. Cite a source.
>> I quit using ChatGPT entirely over this incident > > And this is supposed to be an argument because....?
The argument was the first part of the post. This part was me giving my perspective on things, in this case it was about how I don't find Anthropic's position to be good, just that OpenAI's is far worse. My post was not for you exclusively; based on what you have written, I have concluded that there is no value in debating you or attempting changing your mind.
>> They agreed to a contract where the DoD could and in practice is using their AI for committing war crimes. > > You have a very vivid imagination. Not trying to use it to state things that could be misinterpreted as statements of fact would be nice.
Ok, fair. Sticking to facts: the crucial part of the negotiation was about whether the DoD can use Anthropic's products for autonomous decisions on lethal force. Since then, it has come out that AI was used in the decision to target an elementary school for girls that killed 120 schoolchildren. (The Palantir Maven Smart System, fwiw, not Claude.) The Pentagon investigated and found that although a human was theoretically in the decision loop, in practice the oversight was minimal and ineffective. "No one remaining on those teams [the teams tasked with minimizing civilian harm] reviewed the strike plans in advance of the attack on the school, according to Bloomberg." Those teams had been gutted, with Hegseth explicitly stating that they were getting in the way.
My supposedly very vivid imagination translated this to reckless decisionmaking that led to a large number of innocent civilian casualties, aka war crimes.
> Because if the AI chose incorrectly, the military would be attacking targets that it shouldn't.
Regrettably, this already is happening today, and have been happening since there was a military. All the time. Intel is imperfect, situation changes quickly, people make mistakes, shit happens. The army is not interested in increasing the number of such occurrences - because the army is not incentivized on destroying targets it wasn't asked to destroy. But it still happens. It happened without AI and it will happen with AI. Putting mandatory human in the loop may be a ideological and philosophical choice, but I don't see any argument here it will always reduce such occurrences. In fact, if anything, it might increase them - humans are known for hundreds of cognitive biases.
> The question is about the US government using its influence in a competitive environment to hamstring one company.
No company is owed contract from the US government. Of course, companies that get a lot of contracts from US government, may profit more than ones that do not, but it still don't create any entitlement. US government has its specs, Antropic is unwilling to make a product for those specs, so US government is not buying from Antropic. Presenting not-buying decision as a hostile action implies there's an entitlement to be a supplier, and such entitlement does not exist.
> Since then, it has come out that AI was used in the decision to target an elementary school for girls that killed 120 schoolchildren.
We are getting into the territory of "70% of traffic crashes are blamed on sober drivers, therefore driving sober is a crime". OF COURSE once AI starts to be used, somebody will eventually make a bad call, somebody gets fed bad intel, something changes and somebody does not notice, and AI would be used in a chain that led to a disaster. AI is not God and is not Oracle of Truth, it's a tool. Every tool is imperfect and depends on its inputs and it's usage. Every tool has boundaries of usability and error margins. You can not change it coming with your post-hoc knowledge and pontificating that if some mythical all knowing human happened to be in the chain at the precisely correct moment he'd prevent the tragedy. Such human never exists at-the-time, only post-hoc, when all the social media is full of them, and there's no AI that allows you to read tomorrow's Twitter, and never will be. Claiming that DOD should not ever use tool X in a scenario that could lead to a disaster is claiming to never use tool X at all - because every practical scenario with practical assumptions can. And ultimately, it's a call for DOD to never exists as a military. Which I guess would be fine with some folks, but I think you'd not expect DOD to agree with that.
> My supposedly very vivid imagination translated this to reckless decisionmaking that led to a large number of innocent civilian casualties, aka war crimes.
As I said, extensively, the reality of warmaking will inevitably lead to innocent civilian casualties. There never was, and never will be, a war (at least real, hot, shooting war) where innocents would not be suffering. It's not the intention of DOD, it's the reality of how things happen. Now we learn your definition of "war crimes" includes, essentially, any warmaking of sufficient scale in time and space that will inevitably cause innocent casualties, and with sufficient scale, they could be claimed as "large". In other words, every (big enough) war is a crime. It is a possible position, even if a bit too idealistic and high-horse-y to my taste. But I think now at least you can appreciate why it would be very imprudent for DOD to subject themselves to people who would limit their capabilities based on such sort of definitions?
They didn't want their tech to be used to, I don't know, blow up a school with 120 children. But did want to allow other kinds of usage. Is that so weird?
Get rid of your high horse. Nobody wants to blow up a school with 120 children. The question is who is in control and making the decisions. Antropic wanted to be in control and make the decisions for the DOD. DOD refused. It's not so weird at all.
It's not a high horse, you're just misinformed. The Trump regime does want to blow up a school with 120 children. The military had, until recently, a program to prevent such incidents; Pete Hegseth gutted it (https://www.propublica.org/article/hegseth-civilian-harm-mit...) because he wants to achieve "maximum lethality" at all costs. To this date, the regime has not issued any sort of apology for the school bombing, because they're not sorry and they'd happily do it again.
> The Trump regime
I am sorry, that's where I stopped reading. If I want partisan screeching, I go to Reddit (I don't actually but that's what I would do if I wanted it). You may enjoy portraying your political opponents as raging maniacs, but I don't see how it would help me understand anything, and as such, this discussion loses any appeal to me.
> textbook designation.
Hardly. I invite you to [read the opinion][1], particularly the great pains the majority spends on wrangling the definition of the word "manipulate."
Basically, [FASCSA][2] says to denote a company is a "supply chain risk," the govt has to meet the law's rigorous definition of what a "significant" risk actually is. That definition contains a catch-all "or otherwise manipulate the function" of the thing at hand (in this case, Claude) at the very end.
The govt's whole argument is "Well Anthropic has admitted that it can technically "manipulate" the response, therefore its a significant risk, therefore we designate it as such."
The dissent gives an analogy:
> A library might post a sign saying, “Do not shout, loudly talk on the phone, play music, or otherwise disturb others.” The common understanding would be that the rule bans bringing a boom-box into the reading room with the volume turned on high but not listening to music with headphones set at a modest sound level—even though both constitute “playing music.”
It is as if the govt argued "ah ah, Anthropic played music on their headphones, they broke the rules! We therefore have the authority to ban them" and the majority insanely agrees. It is clear to anyone with basic reading comprehension that the "manipulate" clause is supposed to continue the idea of malicious or subversive manipulation that the whole section entails. The hand-waving the majority uses gives the whole game away.
[1]: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=000001a0-d91e-d276-aff6-f97f3...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SECURE_Technology_Act
I wonder if this is going start being abused soon.
If I was Palantir or any other GOP aligned company, I would be completely against this. What's to stop a Democratic president from doing the same thing and destroying them?
Because the modern Democrats are primarily a corporate dominated party. They haven't really had any hard hitting legislation nor legal regulation/rulings on corporations in easily the last 30 years.
I doubt that is going to change anytime soon. They are a private entity, so they can manage and change their primary system any way they want.
A few things I can remember them doing are net neutrality, banning non-compete agreements for employees, a DMCA exception for allowing 3rd party repairs to McDonald's ice cream machines, and blocking the Albertsons/Kroger merger.
Nothing that is really landmark legislation. Dem legislators also didn't do anything about net neutrality. They deferred entirely to the FCC (which is largely why the rules were subsequently struck down).
Multiple attempts at net neutrality legislation have made by democrats, in the meantime the FCC pushed for neutrality under Democrats while republican administrations have a much worse track record of support
You write like the senate and its filibuster doesn't exist. They can't pass legislation without GOP votes. Of course they use the FCC given that fact.
Being incapable of compromise for votes does not make good legislation. “You’re gonna need congressional approval and you don’t have the votes.”
What compromise? The GOP are ideologically opposed to these sorts of things and immovable.
What do you suggest, trading away people's healthcare or something for net neutrality?
The filibuster exists as a convenient excuse to not do anything without offending constituents
It's not as if democrats are using the existence of the filibuster as an excuse to not even try. Putting forward legislation they believe in, even when the odds of it being passed are slim, demonstrates intent and if the filibuster is used to stop a law that would benefit the people, that means that someone was actively doing something, it's on record, and the people should hold the obstructionists accountable for what they prevented.
> the modern Democrats are primarily a corporate dominated party
I suspect this is changing. The DSA branch especially wants all contracts with Palantir eliminated.
The DSA branch has almost zero political power. Yes, Mamdani was elected. No, it was not because of DSA.
DSA has very limited understanding of the politics of power. Agree or disagree with their policy and advocacy, but they lack a unified, coherent policy platform. They take stances from (imo) good places and suggest proposals that are politically untenable (to say the least) and realistically ridiculous.
Mamdani is a unique politician. He is generationally charismatic, articulates the pragmatism behind solutions, and taps into the everyday struggles of citizens. When he talks about ideologically, it's soaring rhetoric about who we can be. His critiques, however, are often strongly tethered to tangible concerns (rent, food, education) vs. the DSA-type far left.
Source: worked in democratic politics, on a presidential campaign, with a wide range of people on the left (and "left") including DSA die hards.
Can't there be more politicians that talk about the pragmatic aspects too? Didn't El-Sayed win the Michigan nomination? I don't understand how this is hard for politicians to grasp, it happened with the Roosevelts and the New Deal, not sure why it can't happen now, even despite money in politics, as Mamdani and El-Sayed winning shows, who both had much fewer dollars spent on them than the competition.
>> the modern Democrats are primarily a corporate dominated party
> I suspect this is changing.
Nope. The democrats have been on the cusp of becoming serious for as long as I've been following politics. It's a con to get your hopes up. Don't.
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"Because the modern Democrats are primarily a corporate dominated party"
And Republicans did it because.... They're anticorporation?
No, because they are anti-“corporate ethics”.
> Democrats are primarily a corporate dominated party. They haven't really had any hard hitting legislation nor legal regulation/rulings on corporations in easily the last 30 years.
Sarbanes-Oxley? Dodd-Frank? ACA? Now I'm sure you (like, every other living human) has a ton of nitpicks and criticism of bills like that. But they're real and they passed and they're largely-to-wholely partisan creations of the Democratic policy apparatus (SOX looked very bipartisan and was passed under Bush, but the actual bill was written mostly by democratic staffers).
I mean, fine, you'd like different regulation. But they're responsible for basically all the corporate regulation active in the US regime.
Bothsidesism is a very poor tool for this particular argument. Work with your allies, please.
> ACA?
How’s ACA hard-hitting on corporations?
The 15/20 rules is what resulted in recorder profits in health insurance business, how’s this anti-corporate?
> How’s ACA hard-hitting on corporations?
"You must sell insurance to sick people!", "I don't wanna!", "I don't care, the law now says you must."
I mean, the whole insurance industry had spent the better part of a century (basically its whole existence) denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, and the ACA fixed it via fiat.
Not only is it clearly "hard-hitting", I'd argue it's probably the single most "hard-hitting" invasive change to corporate regulation of the post-war era. Certainly it is in terms of the amount of money involved in the affected market.
> how’s this anti-corporate?
And this is where the rub is. You're not saying that your desired regulatory structure is something different than existing proposals, you're demanding that your government engage in behavior that is expressly "anti" whatever you perceive "corporate" interests to be.
That's not democracy, that's just warfare. You have enemies and you want to win. And the problem there is that the structure of our government requires compromise.
ACA literally forced every person in the US to become a customer of health insurance companies.
It "literally" did not. What enforcement exists is financial (a tax penalty) and not compulsory. And obviously most people are covered via employer plans or Medicare, as has always been the case. A quick Google says that 19.2M Americans are enrolled in ACA plans. I don't have statistics, but I'd bet that the overwhelming majority of those are willing purchasers. Most people view health care as desirable.
The "everyone has access to the ER" has to be paid somehow, which is through tax dollars. The USA has a for-profit health system but typical neo-liberalism has a safety net where corporates get to dip into a different bottom-less pot. So it makes sense that we make this visible by taxing everybody who isn't paying their own insurance, since they still expect access to ER.
No, it didn't. If you didn't want to buy health insurance, you just had to pay a couple extra thousand in federal income tax:
https://landline.media/affordable-care-act-tax-penalties-end...
>The penalty for not having an ACA-compliant plan or forgoing coverage in 2018 is the greater of $695 per adult and $347.50 per child for a maximum of $2,085 or 2.5 percent of adjusted household income. The percentage penalty is capped at an amount equal to the national average premium for a bronze plan, the minimum coverage available by law
Ah yes, the very hard hitting anti-business rule that says if you don't become a customer of my friend's company, you must give me money. I'm sure the businesses were quivering in their boots when every citizen either became a customer, paid a fine, or became a felon.
Then why do the 7 publicly listed health insurers have shitty shareholder returns?
If their profits are so good, their shares would be worth owning.
Could it be because their profit margins are actually terrible (3% if lucky), and they have to get the price of their product approved by 50 different state government employees, and the federal government constantly changes their customer’s subsidies making revenue and expenses extremely volatile and difficult to forecast?
If you bought shares of those 7 companies in 2010 when the ACA passed, how much would you have today? More or less than if you bought the S&P 500?
If you're looking for policies to blame for insurance companies having a rough 2025-2026, look to the Republican-led efforts cap Medicare fees and alter eligibility requirements.
You would have about the same or less. Maybe UNH gets you a couple extra percentage points per year, but that's because they have an enormous healthcare provider business instead of just being an insurer. But it's still nowhere near a positive risk adjusted return when comparing to a relatively risk-less investment in SP500.
https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/
https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/
Since Jan 1, 2010, 18% for UNH, 15% for MOH/CNC, 14% for CI/ELV/HUM/SP500, 8.5% for CVS.
Also, these businesses are competing to sell a completely fungible commodity good with tons of non profits like Kaiser Permanente, HCSC, Cambia, Independence Blue Cross, and many others. It makes no sense to expect those businesses to be able to earn any decent profit margin when their competition only needs 0%.
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> Then why do the 7 publicly listed health insurers have shitty shareholder returns?
CNC is up 90% YoY. That's far more than any of the largest tech companies. Alphabet is the highest of the tech stocks, and it's up 38% in the same period. When we look at the performance of the seven large U.S. publicly traded health insurers, their returns were extraordinary in the decade following the ACA.
Seeing Dodd-frank in the list is pretty hilarious, because it was put in place for the issues that arose from repealing Glass-Steagall by Clinton. Which arguably was one of the biggest causes of allowing the activities that lead to the Great financial crisis in 08.
This is why this kind of stuff is so difficult to argue about. G-S was repealed primarily by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act in 1999. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bl...
And it is true, that it was signed by Clinton. But it was otherwise an entirely partisan bill passed with exclusively republican votes. All 44 democrats voted nay.
Now, given that, do you really feel that that's a supporting argument to the upthread contention that Democrats are a corporate-dominated party and not interested in regulation?
Please point to the hard-hitting ones, almost all the big co's at the time thought they got off too easy and were expecting a lot worse. At the end of the day, Sarbox and Dodd-frank basically just required those businesses to increase headcount 10%.
The comparison should be compared to the Republican party, the Democrats have done more and that's all that matters when you are making a choice between the two.
You're creating a fake choice. Other people are commenting on how ineffective the party that claims to be the heroes actually are. Calling out BS here is right IMO.
Dodd-Frank? CFPB?
I thought the Democrats were the party of big government and regulations whereas the Republicans were for reducing regulations?
That has never been true, it’s just a Republican slogan.
What about the ACA or Dobb-Frank?
What about them?
More like the opposite in practice
Compared to the Republican party you believe they create less regulations?
MAGA hates capitalism and free trade. MAGA loves government abuse.
I would argue the democrats are more a process oriented party. They wouldn’t pull this shit because they care about process - so much so that they wouldn’t even consider half the stuff that’s going on now as it circumvents process.
Democrats are the same side of the coin as the Republicans.
We, the people, are on the other side.
Making it a 0/1 situation is really reductive.
What a load of bullshit. There are better candidates and parties and worse ones, they are not all the same. This sort of attitude just feeds voter apathy and resignation.
Democracy is an imperfect system, but its much better than the alternatives. If more people paid attention and participated, we would have much better outcomes.
"the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron."
https://x.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?lang=en
https://xxcancel.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?lang=en
"Both sides"
This is such a tired argument that over simplifies an entire group of people on both sides into a single entity that happens to be the same.
> democrats are more a process oriented party
Oh? Thats why Biden tried to run in 2024? Because democrats procedurally try to elect obviously incapable presidents?
That's not responsive to OP or coherent at all really, even if rhetorically structured like a gotcha.
Incumbent Presidents in the US almost always run for reelection to a second term, that's the normal expected outcome with vanishingly few exceptions in the last century.
> That's not responsive to OP or coherent
The claim was Ds are more procedural than Rs. Asking what process the Ds followed to attempt to run, and then back out of running, biden (who again, was very obviously and publicly mentally incompetent) is clearly a rebuttal to a presented point.
> who again, was very obviously and publicly mentally incompetent
You can repeat that as often as you want, but it doesn't seem well grounded. He's always had a stutter, and since he left office he has given speeches which suggest his mental faculties remain intact. Is he slowing down? Yeah. He's got quite a long ways to go before he's in McConnell territory.
In any case, what does his choosing to run have to do with process? Did he violate the process? Seems to me he was following it to a tee.
Exactly. Their process prioritizes seniority generally, and this is another case. The process is, if the president wants another go, he gets another go; and he sure as heck wanted another go.
So one man's desires become the rule for everyone else? That doesn't sound very democratic.
There's no reason picking someone every 4 years is democratic but every 8 years isn't...
Don't forget how Harris wasn't even nominated.
And all the shenanigans around 2016 when Bernie Sanders was shut out by the DNC. Even Elizabeth Warren said outright that the DNC rigged the 2016 nomination. I think the outcome would have been very, very different if the DNC didn't fuck with the timeline and forced Hillary as the Dem nominee.
In recent history:
* removed filibuster for lower-court nominations ("nuclear option")
* impeached the president twice in a term
* tried that former president in the Senate after his term ended
* expanded mail-in voting en masse
* repeatedly attempted to eliminate 60-vote rule for legislation
I'm not claiming these were illegal, I'm just saying the process adapts to the needs.
You got that exactly backward. Modern republicans are the ones that get the most in corporate PAC money, at the high end it's like 60/40% split... the majority to the GOP. Also, the fact that modern republicans brought Citizens United and just earlier this year NRSC v. FEC.
You really can't make a valid case to say the dems are the corporate dominated party. ffs, they are the only ones even attempting to put common sense regulations on the financial industry, something Trump called "bad for business" when he undid antitrust legislature that got passed under Biden.
He didn’t say they were _the_ corporate party, just that they’re dominated by corporations. It’s notable because it’s an accusation that they pitch at Republicans often (not that R is doing any better there, but it’s part of their platform more or less).
The dems haven’t done anything notably anti-corporate in ages. There are rumbles about doing it (anti trust, supporting unions, climate change), but it never _quite_ seems to actually materialize into anything.
Cynically, that’s why both sides lean so hard into the culture wars. The men in suits would rather we argue about how to interpret history than whether a wealth tax makes sense.
> There are rumbles about doing it (anti trust, supporting unions, climate change), but it never _quite_ seems to actually materialize into anything.
There's only so much they can do when dealing with obstructionism, but the party is still putting forward legislation. For recent examples see The American Homeownership Act (https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/senate-demo...) and the Stop Corporate Takeovers of Physicians Act (https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren...)
He actually did say dems were the corporate party. He contrasted the democrats not do something that the Republicans did because Dems were dominated by corporations.
The contrast implies that Republicans are in your words "anti-corporate"
> climate change
Trump just removed Obama era greenhouse gas finding.
"President Trump and Administrator Zeldin Deliver Single Largest Deregulatory Action in U.S. History"
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/president-trump-and-adminis...
Democrats also had massive number of anti-trust regulations during Biden and Obama.
You're claiming they've done nothing on anti-trust?
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I’m worried why many big companies aren’t worried about when the shoe is on the other foot.
Because Democrats, being (at the moment, and relatively speaking) the party of government actually functioning according to laws, are extremely unlikely to do this in the other direction. The two sides are not the same. It is not possible to be the party aligned with institutions, rule of law, and predictability, while also using the power of government arbitrarily and vindictively. On the other hand, it's entirely possible to use the power of government arbitrarily when you're the party of greed and corruption. So "Republican-aligned companies" don't have to be nearly as worried, and otherwise-neutral companies will become Republican-aligned out of self-preservation, because one side is going to punish them for disobedience (legally or illegally) and the other side isn't.
I worry that they don't expect to leave power because they're acting like they will never be held accountable.
None of them really believe our economic or political systems will be recognizable by 2029. Everyone's playing for position in the short takeoff.
IMO, it's almost certainly being abused. I just assume that all US domestic communications are being recorded whenever possible.
Democrats don't control the courts.
Whose fault is that?
Whose "fault" is it that the judiciary has become an extension of the executive branch and been taken over by a single party? You tell me..
Mitch McConnell's?
Leonard Leo's
> What's to stop a Democratic president from doing the same thing and destroying them?
They probably will, and the comment section here on HN will overwhelmingly applaud it. Next question?
How would this destroy Anthropic, exactly?
Not just Anthropic, but practically speaking, the leading foundational model labs like Anthropic and OpenAI are burning through enormous amounts of money, and will need to pay that money back. If they are designated as supply chain risks, or controlled technologies, their ability to achieve that ROI is severely constrained.
They are not turning a profit, and aside from enterprise token billing, every other offering they have is a loss leader. In order to flip that around they need to drive down the cost of inference significantly, either through massive compute improvements, more efficient or lower cost models, and either one lowers the barrier to entry for local and/or private cloud inference for open models. The moat established by the expertise in model training is effectively dissolving as they approach recursive self improvement because any mechanism that prevents model distillation effectively reduces the quality and utility of the models, so each improved model makes their competitors better by default if they want to realize those gains.
The reason for the pivot to control and regulation seems to be more about erecting an artificial moat in their market, and having these technologies controlled or highlighted as supply chain risks will continue to drive investments in alternatives, especially in other countries where data sovereignty and domestic tech has become a priority given the last decade of the US dominated tech industry.
I don't think that AI is going to go away, but I think the future of AI in the next several years looks alot like massive overfunded foundational model providers collapsing, their employees launching dozens or hundreds of direct competitors, and the leading hyperscalers buying up datacenter capacity the way they bought up dark fiber 20 years ago.
Because if you classified as supply chain risk, ANYONE who does business with DoD/DoW cannot use your product in any capacity.
I don't see that as fatal.
That's an opinion but poorly held one. Big money is in selling to Enterprise, looking at F10, there are very few companies on there that probably don't have DoD contracts OR supply those who do.
Looking at it by top 10 US companies by revenue, Walmart, Berkshire are probably only two that MIGHT not have DoD contracts. Amazon/Apple/Alphabet do for sure. CVS/UnitedHealth probably supply DoD healthcare, Chevron/ExxonMobil very likely supply fuel and Verizon supplies telecom links.
So if you are Anthropic, those 8 companies cannot use your software AT ALL. That's massive potential revenue to lose.
> So if you are Anthropic, those 8 companies cannot use your software AT ALL.
On the contrary, they are free to use it outside the defense supply chain.
Most companies are not going to take the risk that supply chain bleeds into defense side if there are alternatives available.
I'm confident Amazon has no problem keeping e.g. its store reviews chatbot out of any defence contracts. If I am wrong, then the company's processes already disqualify it from defence work.
What's to stop indeed? Some of us in the tech industry want the dems to slice and dice every tech company into irrelevance. They've betrayed society and they should be rightfully punished in fun + creative ways.
The supreme court, I guess. What makes you think they would allow that as long as Trump cronies have the majority there?
the cold political war turned hot with the prosecution of Trump (he made it easy by being an idiot). there will be no considerations for retaliation now, both sides will be using whatever means they have available to damage each other.
also if you look at how the two factions separate from each other decade by decade (there used to be overlap, almost none now) it's obvious that there will be no reconciliation.
it's a musical chairs game at this point, whoever is in power when the democratic facade cracks will be able to seize power and transition into whatever single party state follows.
I think the blue team has been in a cold civil war since 2016. They can't come to terms with their progressive hegemony ending, but also can't pivot to a new politics because elections are too close to risk a mass preference cascade needed to revitalize the party.
I think the red team is only now starting to come to similar terms, and will increasingly do so as the blue team continues to maximally exercises power against their opponents instead of revitalize the tarnished reputation of instituions.
Around 2030, the US will need to spend 100% of it's tax revenue to service the debt, and California will need to a federal bailout or risk either default or wiping out their state pensions. I believe the coming financial disaster will likely be the catalyst that quiets the 'nothing ever happens' crowd, and both teams will need to reset their politics to the new world, distinctly different than the post-WW2 open society liberal consensus.
A similar phenomenon is happening in Europe.
The cold political war turned hot when Trump tried to overthrow the US government. I understand that this bizarre both sides framing is comforting to you for now, but it's just going to leave you even more alarmed when he tries again.
You mean the president than literally ran on "lock her up"? That's the victim here?
Stop trying to both sides this.
are you seriously equating empty rhetoric to legal action?
Trump was an idiot who made himself an easy target for nobodies with no strategic bones in their body to go after him. note that his guilt or lack thereof is irrelevant, what matters is that legal action was initiated against a past president. this one action doomed the republic just like it did the previous Roman one.
There's a difference between campaigning on something and actually doing it.
Letitia James campaigned on putting her political opponents in prison and then proceeded to try doing so.
This isn't difficult to understand.
I don't think Palantir is concerned? Palantir is LLM agnostic and holds IL5, IL6, compliance with ICD 503, etc. Their entire platform is built around eliminating risk.
They are suggesting that a Democratic President could label Palantir a supply chain risk.
If:
1. The designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk is politically motivated
2. We collectively accept that is okay for the US President to bar all defense vendors and contractors from working with an American company for political reasons.
What defense related company(ies) would a Democratic President have political reasons to ban?
It has been reported that Palantir and its founder have a history of political contributions to the Republican party.
Instead of Republican presidents driving left leaning companies out of defense and Democratic presidents driving right leaning companies out of defense, it would be better if neither party used supply chain risk as a political weapon.
Can you clarify what a GOP aligned company is? Is that any company thats willing to do business with the U.S. government or any businesses thats willing to sell products in red states?
Maybe it's the companies that flank the US president at events in an attempt to gain favor? Or the companies that own private prisons that lobby for immoral policies on policing?
You mean the ones that have been doing so for many administrations across both parties?
You think this admin is like others?
This doesn't appear to be unique to the GOP. Plenty of companies flank to whomever is in office. Even at that local government level. "Immoral policies" is subjective and would be in the eye of the beholder. If this was truely quantiative the U.S. wouldn't be a divided nation.
The mere existence of private prisons in the US is immoral. To argue otherwise is a failure to extrapolate what that means at every level of gov and society. Maybe this isn't uniquely the GOP but private prisons have been some of the largest donors to the GOP since Covid.
> The mere existence of private prisons in the US is immoral.
This doesn't pass a basic logical sniff test.
What if the private prisons provided much greater comfort, rehabilitation, medical and mental care, and so on? How could you call it immoral just for existing?
That's a great what if despite what we currently know of these prisons and what we know of private companies seeking profit at the expense of whatever you're stating.
There's a country in the 30's that used misinformation to sell what you're suggesting and they, at one point, had a thriving prison system in less than a decade.
Don't be so polyannish.
So if I follow your logic here you feel the same about grocery stores being private? Because if they were run by the U.S. government you wouldn't have 47.9 million people (about 1 in 7 Americans) living in food-insecure households? All because a private company that employs people are tryng to make money?
SRC: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...
You're definitely not following my logic because of your false equivalence WRT private companies and private prisons.
If you think prisons should have profit motives where growth only comes from continually seeking punitive policies to imprison people then I don't know what to tell you. The extrapolation isn't that hard and I don't see anything good coming from it. Weird takes.
I think I am because the "equivalence" is private vs government run service. The arugment is equal. There is no public service thats better then the private equivalent. Period.
> If you think prisons should have profit motives where growth only comes from continually seeking punitive policies to imprison people
Prisons don't get to sentence people, courts do.
Lol if only. CoreCivic once accidentally left their logo on a bill they wrote for a congressperson and the congressperson forgot to remove it when presenting it. Actually it's happened multiple times. Most "model bills" that are tough-on-crime are written by them.
Again, there's a judge at the time of sentencing, not a congressperson.
It's funny that you went across all my comment history to post replies to me specifically. What's your name? Wanna get coffee?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
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Oil and gas and the GOP are one and the same.
Dems still subsidize O&G but they have other constituents they need to pay lip service to.
Banking and finance own both parties.
I don't see a need to come up with a complete definition at this point. Let's start with cancelling all SpaceX and Palantir contracts and see how we're feeling; that may be enough to keep corporations in line.
Because there is none. Its rhetoric and its personal to you. Its like me saying I haven't spent a nickle on anything Nike because of their narative selling. Hence anyone who wears Nike products is a bad person. Its ridiculous, narrow minded and undemocratic.
Telling my mind about anyone or any company is the ideal expression of free speech and democracy. Using government force against a company that refused a contract is the opposite of democracy.
> Using government force against a company that refused a contract is the opposite of democracy
If democracy is working, isn't using the government to express the collective will of the people exactly how it should work? Else why are we bothering to vote in the first place?
Collective will of the people cannot supersede your ownership over your business and its right to engage with anyone it wishes to free of government retaliation. The business is people. Feel free to go to a communist country if you want collective action against companies. What other things do you think the collective vote should permit if the numbers tally? Do you support the collective will of the people to gag your free speech? To vote to shoot you dead in the street? Certain rights supersede voting, at least until somehow people manage to repeal the 1st Amendment, 2nd Amendment etc.
You seem to have escalated that argument a long ways towards hyperbole. The government refusing to have anything at all to do with a company seems like a perfectly valid position to take, and I expect my representatives to exercise that authority on my behalf. There is some nuance to how much that should extend to companies who themselves do business with the company you are refusing to contract with, but it is not completely wrong.
And I think the governments reaction was driven by trump's thuggery not any real reasons, any reasons given were after the fact. I mentioned those examples because you mentioned the collective voice of people, sometimes one needs reminded that unvarnished collective vote is not permitted to do certain things as rights of free expression and property exist, nothing more nothing less.
It sure isn't democratic when only the top 1 percent in charge make those decisions that inflame you. These companies have thousands, if not tens of thousands of employees, that I can guarantee don't agree on statements or positions that the people at the top make as a company whole. So why would you want you punish people who have nothing to do with this. In the end its the regular employees who pay, not the corporate leadership.
Aren't you the one who said this?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49694185
>For me the end of buying anything Nike for my household and owning there stock was 2018. After their embracement of kaepernick and circus of marketing schemes that followed its no surprise what the outcome would be. Now Lululemon hired one of architects of all this as their CEO. They followed the nike playbook and are already suffering from it. Now their doubling down in a race to the bottom.
Yes. Exactly where I stand. I also dont use anthropic products because of their false anti-gorverment stance even though they want to sell to them. If I could i'd short their stock too.
It sure isn't democratic when only the top 1 percent in charge make those decisions that inflame you. These companies have thousands, if not tens of thousands of employees, that I can guarantee don't agree on statements or positions that the people at the top make as a company whole. So why would you want you punish people who have nothing to do with this. In the end its the regular employees who pay, not the corporate leadership.
How are they anti government? You keep making up stuff out of thin air. Anthropic posited certain requirements in their contract, trump pissed and shat and got them designated a supply chain risk randomly instead of negotiating or just canceling.
If you support using AI to kill people without human oversight and using AI to mass surveil the American population, of course its your freedom to.
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You are pissed Anthropics model is of higher quality in some metrics than OpenAI? There is always doom mongering about AI killing everyone. Why would you give a shit about this unfounded nonsense?
Higher quality? Fot what vibe coding? Do you even know what it means when they deem you a supply chain risk?
"“Supply chain risk” means the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of a covered system so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise degrade the function, use, or operation of such system (see 10 U.S.C. 3252)."
Src: https://www.acquisition.gov/dfars/subpart-239.73-requirement...
Now why would anyone want to use a product that carries that designation?
Why would you be worried about human extinction if you think its not a strong model?
Who is sabotaging who? Why are you making shit up?
You are completely confused and speaking random disjointed stuff dude. You bring up some absurd unrelated nonsense about your personal decision and your deluded self diagnoses, then you bring up completely unrelated stuff about human extinction, then you start making up stuff about sabotage.
I'm not a vibe coder... Thats their claim to fame is. What are you using claude for?
By chance, are at one of those depenceries with free internet in Portland?
What do you use ai for? Is the internet faster in Epstein island where you live?
I dont use claude. I use Open AI for techical analysis of investment grade assets.
Do you have a cat?
I am the last person to "enjoy" that openai is getting boycotted. I respect both companies. And openai themselves probably did it under pressure knowing that Trump is a thug.
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Trump is a thug who needs protection money to be paid or he will randomly declare you or your company a threat.
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You seem extremely confused. You are the one who seems to suffer from Trump Dicksucking Syndrome. I have no issues slagging off Trump.
Never heard of that disease before. Is that something local to Portland?
I don't suffer from Trump Dicksucking Syndrome so I am afraid your diagnosis is mistaken. I use all models freely, why the fuck would I care about some bs military designation, I don't work in defense. Do you work for a defense company? If not why are you so stupid to refuse to use a model for this designation?
I work for a proprietary trading firm that creates markets and liquidity for U.S. based exchanges. Given our relience on AI now on decision making and identifying opportunities we can't afford to use solutions deemed a threat to any of our supply chains. What happens when Claude says you've earned too much money and I'm not going to do that? Straight up insanity.
Seems completely rational to me? Why would I do business with a company that doesn't share my moral values? I find the influence money has in politics more undemocratic than anything else.
I doubt any company shares your moral values. Though a few of them might pay some lip service do some of your moral values. You tell me, have you audit all the companies you do business with to see if they share your moral values.
It's certainly rhetoric! Corporate leaders must be made to understand that the business risk of collaborating with fascism is greater than or equal to the business risk of standing up for the rule of law. Really, we're being generous if we only punish a few companies and only hit their contracts; a strict application of the law would put quite a lot of CEOs behind bars for their overt bribery of the Trump regime.
I still don't fully understand what this was about. It sounds like the DoD said they wanted unrestricted access to Anthropic's models, Anthropic refused, so the Pentagon declared that they wouldn't use them at all.
Isn't this basically what Anthropic wanted?
As I understand it cane down to one point: Anthropic wanted the ability to review actions that would have an effect on human life.
Which sounds sensible on the surface, until you realize that all military organizations have extensive experience with that exact question, and have spent centuries refining their practices. Deferring that to a private company is actually a major regression and a concerning role to pass on to the public regardless.
FWIW I am not pro military, but it's a prominent part of human culture and not going away anytime soon. I do understand the nature of professions, however, and only one of these groups has made the interpretation of this question their specialization.
>As I understand it cane down to one point: Anthropic wanted the ability to review actions that would have an effect on human life.
This is not at all what happened. The existing contract that Anthropic had with the government had two red lines: No autonomous weapons (i.e., do not build Skynet with Claude), and no mass domestic surveillance.
Anthropic did not, and does not want, any case-by-case veto power over the US Military's use of their AI models. The red lines were negotiated ahead of time.
Militaries have a lot of experience, and an exceptionally poor track record.
I don’t remember the last war that didn’t have credible evidence of war crimes occurring. Were bombing civilian infrastructure in Iran, Iraq had Abu Ghraib among all the Collateral Damage stuff, the Highway of Death in the Gulf was probably a war crime, Vietnam had My Lai, WWII was the advent of carpet bombing civilian infrastructure. I can’t think of any for Korea, but I also know very little so that doesn’t say much.
We still haven’t charged anyone for the second strike on that fishing boat in South America, and I haven’t heard a single rationale for why that’s not a war crime other than “fog of war”.
The US doesn’t even really have a meaningful system for finding and prosecuting these, because we aren’t signatories for the ICC and have a bill saying we’ll invade if they charge one of our service members with a war crime. We aren’t basically the furthest thing from having any experience prosecuting war crimes. I can probably count on my fingers the number of cases we’ve tried. We rarely charge our own service members, and we usually kill foreign combatants rather than capture and charge them.
A poor track record compared to who? The Romans?
War includes death by design. The trajectory is trending toward less unjustified death.
The US could carpet bomb their enemies like they did in WW2, instead they pursue one of the lowest civilian casualty methods of in the history of the world, and nobody even cares because somehow that’s not good enough
What makes you think these targeted strikes are any better? Did the school girls say, "o, but at least our entire city wasn't carpet bombed like an obvious war crime, instead we were drone striked in such a morally ambiguous way. O well"
No.
And why did America have so many enemies???
Maybe because we keep finding excuses to invent them, and then does hundreds of "morally grey" bombings. But at least it wasn't another Vietnam, right?
What a low bar.
Bombing civilian infrastructure is a war crime because the end state is the same as bombing civilians. Killing power shuts down hospitals and emergency responders (generators run out eventually) and desalination plants. The military is largely unphased, they’re the first ones to get gas for generators.
Also, this is carpet bombing. Carpet bombing is the targeting of civilian infrastructure with effectively willful ignorance of the collateral damage.
We started a war knowing the only way to win was either boots on the ground or war-criming our adversary into submission. We don’t get to pretend our hands are tied and we have to send out the bombers. We don’t have to do this because Iraq forces us to, we have to do this because we elected a man who can barely read Post It notes and ignored half a century of military intelligence. We are at fault for every dollar of damage caused to infrastructure and every life lost.
Yes, that's exactly why they used AI to blow up a school murdering a load of kids.
That kind of extensive experience.
Anthropic did the morally right thing and are being punished for it. The case in point justifies their position.
As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.
>Anthropic wanted the ability to review actions that would have an effect on human life.
They wanted assurances that it would not be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons. They did not request to be "in the loop".
Furthermore, even if Anthropic had requested that, it would be a reason for the DoD to cancel the contract because the terms were unacceptable, not to declare Anthropic a supply chain risk. Declaring them a supply chain risk requires proving that they intended to sabotage their own product, adding malicious functionality. There is no evidence whatsoever that they planned to do that.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthropic-pentagon-supply-chain...
You raise an interesting point. Although wouldn’t Anthropic be the best experts on when a model would be most applicable or likely to falter?
I guess my opinion would really depend on the exact wording and details of the arrangement. Lots of people jumping in with strong stances based on pretty limited details.
On faltering: the US Military already has rules around the use of automated systems for this type decision making. This is not a new concept to them by any means, and currently it always involves a human decision.
Anthropic agreed to uses that involve a human decision, so this is a non sequitur.
The whole conflict is specifically about uses that do not involve a human decision. The DoD agreed to a contract that said it wouldn't use Anthropic for that, and then tried to change the terms.
Incidentally, the DoD used Claude in its decision that resulted in killing 120 children at an elementary school for girls. The Pentagon concluded that there was human review (which would mean that it fell within the contract's terms) but that the review was hollowed out (which could mean that it was a violation of the contract).
> As I understand it cane down to one point: Anthropic wanted the ability to review actions that would have an effect on human life.
This is false. Anthropic wanted assurance that its technology would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance.
> [Anthropic] would not permit its technology to power fully autonomous weapons without human oversight over targeting and firing decisions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argued that the Pentagon should have unrestricted access to AI systems for “any lawful purpose” and that a private contractor should not be permitted to dictate how the military can use its technology.
It's about them maintaining an interpretation of law at all.
Simpletons read that as: "The DOW wants to kill people with AI."
https://www.pearlcohen.com/anthropic-sues-department-of-defe...
> Simpletons read that as: "The DOW wants to kill people with AI."
The DoW actually used AI in the Iran war, which led to them attacking a school and killing more than a hundred childrem. That's exactly what Anthropic wanted them to prevent. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-iran-school-attack/
The DoD has been using AI for engagement since the 80s. Maven, the system used in your example has been active since 2017.
None of those systems pull the trigger. They assemble data for human review.
You seem to be misunderstanding the facts. Claude was already used by the US Military, under an existing contract between Anthropic and the US Department of War.
The core dispute was the US Military deciding it needed to renegotiate this contract, but without Anthropic's two red lines: No fully autonomous weapons (i.e., zero humans in the loop), and no mass domestic surveillance.
well if you were Anthropic and you didn't want the government using your technology in these ways, how would you phrase it? What else would you have done?
> Which sounds sensible on the surface, until you realize that all military organizations have extensive experience with that exact question
Tell that to a certain school in Iran
120 Iranian schoolgirls would have loved to hear this lecture.
you understand wildly incorrectly; please go and do some research.
Downvoted for misinformation, likely out of ignorance, despite the reasonable argument made on top of it. Anthropic was not asking for the ability to review and block particular uses. Those are classified and wouldn’t even be running on Anthropic’s servers. They just wanted the government to promise not to use it for killing people without a human in the loop.
Frankly I would trust Anthropic much more than the US military with human lives.
Would you still in 10yrs? 30? When all the current employees have left, and anti-Western people make most of the decisions?
Anti western people are already in the government now. I'd worry about the present than future hypotheticals.
Which part of the military? I would trust the rank and file. The commander in chief?
Whichever part caused the girl school to be hit. Which has to be multiple levels for it to occur.
The DoD is blaming AI for this (you are of course right though)
Anthropic is vindicated in that you need oversight over AI being used to kill people, the USA military clearly showed itself incapable of wielding that responsibility.
I don’t, for profit company you say, nah
The US military has assassinated American citizens with no judicial review, Anthropic has not.
And crucially, the DoD, through the normal procurement process, agreed to Anthropic’s terms and made the purchase. Much later, the Secretary of Defense threw a political fit and tried to change the terms.
Evidentially not - Anthropic want to do business with the US military, but on their own terms, telling the military what they can and cannot use it for.
Is that a problem? Are there any special rules (genuinely curious) that allow the military to hijack the management of a private firm?
AFAIK it wasn't in play here, but yes, we do allow that to a degree via the Defense Production Act
It’s not a problem. But it’s also not a problem for the DOD to decide that it doesn’t want to use anthropic or have its suppliers use anthropic for DOD matters. The DOD didn’t ban private citizens from using Anthropic. You can sell in your own terms but the DOD can also buy in its own terms.
>The DOD didn’t ban private citizens from using Anthropic.
They absolutely did. If a product is designated a supply chain risk, no one is allowed to use it anywhere in the DoD's supply chain.
They're not allowed to use it for military work, precisely so that the military supply chain cannot be broken by an unaffiliated private contractor acting at its own behest.
The Federal government often imposes terms on its contractors that specify what sub-contractors are allowed to do, including "flow down" requirements that ensure these terms are themselves enforced recursively all the way down to leaf suppliers.
None of those amount to a ban, after all private companies are also able to do the same thing, and often do. E.g. when Apple requires its suppliers to pursue clean energy efforts as in https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/09/apple-advances-suppli...
> None of those amount to a ban
Please check your facts. Hegseth originally stated [1] that it would apply to ALL usage by companies that work with the military.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-declares-anthropic-supp...
And the fact is that he had to reverse that position because it was not supportable by the statutory law he was trying to use. So the DoW policy changed.
I'm a big fan of checking the facts, which is why I encourage you to stay current on the discussion. Companies that do defense work are already familiar with the need to setup corporate structures to ensure that the blast radius of changes to FAR, DFARS, statutory requirements etc. don't reach the main corporate entity.
Like, the whole term "defense industrial base" is a known category treated as "critical infrastructure" by the U.S. government for years now: https://www.cisa.gov/topics/critical-infrastructure-security... and https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47751#_Toc192775742
The thing that is novel here is that requirements traditionally focused on protecting for undue linkage with potentially-hostile foreign sources are being applied against Anthropic. But it's also novel that Anthropic is trying to apply conditions of use restrictions through its contract with the military.
I don't personally feel that's novel enough to warrant a ban across the whole supply chain, but that's been the net effect of quite a few other FAR and DFARS restrictions over the years, which have caused companies to either exit the defense space or avoid selling into it in the first place.
That is the funny thing to me. I hate diving into politics here on HN, but this has such a rank smell to it. Trump's comments about Dario. His insane propaganda video about how we will never be communist / Marxist. In the same breath our government is bribing people with offers of $$ (the $5,000 checks) and essentially bullying to outright moving towards saying this technology is so powerful we will just have to seize it for our own use.
It is impossible to miss the absolute hypocrisy of this moment and how people and corporations are supposedly free, but if you happen to be of interest to the government they will try to casually ruin you. It has always been this way, people just haven't noticed because it flies under the radar most of the time when the govern crushes some smaller enterprise or another because it got in their way or didn't play by their rules.
It seems simple to me. Anthropic is a private company. If you don't like it fix the laws or don't buy from them.
You're overlooking the critical difference between the government-as-government and the government-as-purchaser. You have to play on Walmart's terms--which are draconian and exacting--to sell to Walmart. Why should the DOD be any different when it comes to stuff the DOD is buying or indirectly paying its contractors to buy?
Yeah, the DOD is such a huge purchaser that it can "ruin you" by blacklisting you if you don't play by its terms. The same is true about Walmart if you're a grocery supplier, Apple if you make electronics components, etc. Private companies absolutely exercise their power like that.
I'm intensely skeptical that Walmart has clauses in its contracts saying that no supplier may use FooCorp software in the process of delivering its goods. If they do I would definitely call that an abuse of corporate power.
I think the answer is the military finds another vendor willing to deal, or move it in house.
It's not like Anthropic will be nationalized any more than the bankrupted auto companies of 2008.
I don't care what the military does. This is pure thuggery and abuse of the rights of private firms. Any time you contract with the government and they don't like your terms, will they designate you a threat?
In this context, that designation just means that the DOD won’t use your product and it’s suppliers can’t use your product for DOD-facing activity. That’s not “thuggery” it’s something any buyer can do. Walmart or whatever could do it too.
Isn't that textbook tortious interference with a business relationship?
No, tortious interference requires use of means that are independently wrongful, such as fraud, blackmail, etc. Preventing someone from doing business with someone else isn’t by itself enough. The reason the tort exists is to address the situation where some unlawful conduct (e.g. fraudulent statements) is directed against Party A, but the damage accrues to Party B in the form of a broken contract. In that scenario, Party B couldn’t sue for fraud, because the fraudulent statements were made to Party A. But Party A couldn’t sue for fraud, because it wasn’t harmed.
For example, if you think Party A and its customers are infringing your patent, you can threaten to sue the customers unless they use your product instead. That’s not tortious interference because suing someone for patent infringement isn’t itself wrongful.
I think it is thuggery. If DOD doesn't want to use anthropic as vendor, thats fine.
Prohibiting contractors and departments from using it to produce products well within anthropic terms of service has no risk.
It is petty retaliation and strong arming.
Imagine if Ford said they weren't interested in building tanks, and then the DoD said employees and contractors can't use Ford for any purpose, because they are a supply chain risk
If Ford told the DoD you can't use the tanks they bought however they need to, and had a kill switch in it in case they wanted to cut the DoD off, then that would obviously be a supply chain risk.
The military and it's suppliers need mitigate risk, and that includes suppliers intentionally causing harm to soldiers on the front lines, or in the backend logistics supply chain.
Honestly, every company should be treating Anthropic and OpenAI as supply chain risks, and should completely avoid dealing with them.
> If Ford told the DoD you can't use the tanks they bought however they need to, and had a kill switch in it in case they wanted to cut the DoD off, then that would obviously be a supply chain risk.
This is a misrepresentation of the situation. Anthropic did NOT sell something to the DoD and then restrict usage - the DoD purchased their offering fully aware of this clause.
The ability by the supplier is the problem, regardless of there is an upfront clause or not. The upfront clause is the problem
That's true for every company and every individual involved with the dod. They can all put guns or pencils down and refuse at a future date for a unspecified reason.
That has nothing to do with supply chain risk designation. That comes from sabotage
They won't because Trumps family has billions invested in OpenAI.
The customer is always right. It's more of a tradition.
Yeah, for national security being the biggest one. Also Congress can do whatever they want if they desired. If Congress mandated that all social media companies have to become workplace democracies, that's totally fine and legal.
We've forgotten what it means to run a society, we're allowed to change rules how we see fit whenever we want to. Only the elites exercise this power, but people have it too.
It's not good for the people. Anything that erodes the rights of companies erodes your rights. Private property and being able to run your firm on your own terms applies to everyone. Governments eroding them show they can do the same to you willy nilly.
> Private property and being able to run your firm on your own terms applies to everyone.
In theory, maybe. In reality, this is a privilege for a very small number of rich people.
> Anything that erodes the rights of companies erodes your rights.
How absurd. Food safety regulations don't erode my rights one bit, but they do erode the rights of companies to negligently poison me. I guess I'm losing the right to start a food company that poisons people, but I'm happy to forfeit that right in exchange for not being poisoned. We could extend this list of reasonable tradeoffs in which we all exchange the right to treat people poorly for the right not be treated poorly, and we all would benefit.
Except the people who want to sell poisoned food, those people will be worse off. I am okay with that.
Would you like if your company was deemed a supply chain risk if you were in negotiation with the government and they didn't like the terms?
I'm not arguing that the government's actions towards Anthropic are fair, but you're making the argument that no government should ever be allowed to designate any company as a supply chain risk, and that's ludicrous.
No, companies have routinely killed millions of Americans for profit. I do not trust companies at all. Attacking companies to provide for Americans has always benefited society as a whole and has always had vast majority of support from voters.
Also what private property? Most Americans can't afford to buy homes and are being priced out of owning property entirely.
Corporations have eroded the livelihood of Americans more than the government ever has.
There is only one class that fights against raising the minimum wage, or establishing a 32 hour workweek, or enacting medicare for all, or providing a society free of pollution and it's always been the corporate class.
There has been no dominating force that has killed more American civilians than the American corporation.
Corporations can't even regulate themselves and you're trying to argue that the true enemy is a democratic government? Come on man. These types of retorts does not convince voters (so please continue saying them). Actually go out there and do some deep canvassing.
People rightfully hate corporations because they are the last vestige of monarchs, oligarchies, and authoritarians that are allowed to ruin + destroy our lives with little repercussions.
One just has to look at the situation of our deteriorating food safety inspections (that were hallowed out by Musk + DOGE goons FYI) to know that corporations absolutely do not care about public safety over profits. Or health insurance companies that are incentivized to deny Americans life saving care for shareholder profits.
We have a sick society and it's mostly due to the unabashed influence of corporations over our lives.
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Also in other comments you seem to be under the impression that corporations should be legally allowed to do what they want with zero government interference? Why do you believe such things over concepts of democracy or regulation?
Society is allowed to tell someone no, not everyone consents to your beleifs.
If you got the impression I am some kind of libertarian or anarchist, that would be a wrong impression. I probably fall somewhere along the spectrum toward social democracy.
I fully believe in democracy and regulation. Democracy cannot exist without capitalism and private property. At no point did I say companies should be free to do anything, I said companies should have freedom to enter or not in contracts under any terms they wish with anyone they want.
Regarding housing crisis, its the "small people" who cause this. I don't know of any large corporation that is NIMBY. If I had it, I'd steamroll NIMBY's houses and declare them a blight, they should agree with it since they regularly call various constructions blights. Places that tries building more housing saw reductions in prices. Its not the fault of corporations if people don't want houses built.
You can only say corporations "killed" people in abstract ways, governments not only have the legal power to but have routinely murdered millions very directly and physically.
Even if you believed corporations are authoritarian, its still better to have competing sources of power, not all corporations will always align with the government so it is better for powerful opposition to exist if government turns shit.
You also mentioned monarchs in your list, fascist italy is a direct example in my favor, the king's ego and his own self interest in his power caused him to continually give friction to Mussolini thus weakening the dictator.
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"Are there any special rules"
Yes. Paragraph #1, sentence #1 of the US Constitution: "provide for the common defence[sic]". This is further elaborated upon in other original Constitution articles and subsequent amendments.
From that, we derive a long, storied history of things, among the more recent of which, and the operative matter here, is the Defense Production Act circa 1950.
The US is fundamentally based on the obligation of mutual military defense, and delegates the authority to call military balls and strikes, such as who will and will not be permitted to contract with the US military, exclusively to POTUS. Anthropic et al. are way out of their depth when they imagine their "terms and conditions" imbue them with some sort of military veto power in the US. Trump's action here, given his nature, is actually moderate: he could take this much further if he wishes.
Every private citizen or corporation gets to do business (or not) with the military on their own terms. This is the difference between totalitarianism and a free country.
Anthropic’s position is also known as “having terms of service”.
To be clear the existing, signed ToS terms that Trump balked at were:
1. No mass surveillance of US civilians - illegal but we have all read the Snowden papers.
2. Fully unmanned kill chains on autonomous weapons - Anthropic have even stated they will support this eventually, they just didn’t think their models were ready and didn’t want the obvious, inevitable blowback.
The DoD is within its rights to cancel the contract if it doesn’t like the terms that it previously signed.
The concern, I think, in its most generous terms, is that they can't buy Anthropic's service the way the could, say, a wrench, because Anthropic can decide at any point to disable the military's ability (even transitively, through other vendors) to use their models if they determined that they do not like what the military is doing with that or if it violates their interpretation of the terms of service.
This seems like a definitional supply chain risk.
By that expansive definition, any cloud software provider can do the same thing and so should also be a supply chain risk.
This whole fiasco is happening because the defense dept wanted to use anthropic models in a way not allowed in the existing contract. Anthropic stuck to the contract, and the def dept tried to be punitive about it.
If they can’t get what they want from the seller, fine go to a different seller, but the supply chain risk is just government overreach.
I think I mostly agree here -- any cloud provider or frankly SaaS system carries a similar risk. The question is whether they want to explicitly make that part of their terms of service, and in addition have made public statements about their willingness to apply those terms of service.
AWS GovCloud I believe promises the opposite. They could still do it, in terms of the capability itself, but then they'd be subject to both civil, criminal, and possibly even military consequences. Whereas Anthropic would be shielded from those consequences by the terms of their agreement (presumably; I'm not up to speed on the specifics of their contractual demands. This is just based on the context from this article and the previous appeals case that ruled against the government).
Anthropic did not have access to the servers where their models were deployed. They were under the control of AWS and Palantir, and they could neither disable, nor modify the model's behavior.
https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/04/01/claude-codes...
That is not the definition of a supply chain risk, this is:
> FASCSA definition (41 U.S.C. § 4713(k)(6)): "Supply chain risk" means the risk that any person may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, extract data, or otherwise manipulate the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, maintenance, disposition, or retirement of covered articles so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise manipulate the function, use, or operation of the covered articles or information stored or transmitted on the covered articles.
This topic is a mind-killer, lots of uninformed opinion swamping the news, and it's hard to get actual signal on the technical questions at hand. (And, I think it's naive to believe that the government is actually concerned about the precise legal definitions; remember Hegseth decreed that no government sub-contractors would be allowed to transact with Anthropic, despite there being no legal basis for this?)
> Anthropic can decide at any point to disable the military's ability
If you're referring to the claims of a killswitch, Anthropic testified under oath that they don't have one. This has been thoroughly covered, e.g. https://www.axios.com/2026/04/22/anthropic-no-kill-switch-ai.... Anthropic provides the weights, they get run in DoD's secure enclave. There's no "phone home".
If you mean more generally, that DoD might breach a contract and then have that contract cancelled going forwards, then yes - this is literally how all SaaS contracts work. And it's very clearly not what the quoted text above refers to.
The way this works in a non-totalitarian country is, the government says "I want new terms and you won't give them to me; instead I will take my business elsewhere". And indeed this is what happened, DoD now has contracts with Google and OpenAI for equivalent capabilities.
Just to engage on your terms, with the actual concern you're raising; I would say rather than "FASCSA supply chain risk" a better way of thinking about it is "vendor lock-in". DoD absolutely should not rely on a single vendor for these kinds of capabilities. And most defense spending explicitly contemplates this already. This should be and has been solved through basic procurement practices.
This is great context and I feel that this is bringing in a lot of information that I wasn't aware of.
If what you're saying is true, then there is truly no supply chain risk other than the risk of civil action against the government for violation of terms of service. That seems like a rather weak point on which to balance a "supply chain" risk though.
To be fair and give the best steelman of the government’s position, see the ruling, it’s quite clear. I linked better analysis in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49849556
The TL;DR is that this was actually decided on the principle that Anthropic can “manipulate” the defense systems by training Claude to refuse to take certain actions.
This feels like a parallel construction to me, it wasn’t reported AFAICT at the time of the original drama.
But yeah, the decision in OP has nothing to do with the contractual terms that everyone has been debating upthread.
No it's not. Anthropic didn't want an AI to make battlefield decision on who gets killed because it's too unreliable. That doesn't mean they don't want AI used in the military supply chain.
And it also doesn't mean that Anthropic is a supply chain risk merely for not wanting AI to be the active decision maker in live or death situations in war.
And Anthropic's objection was recently confirmed: the US military blew up a school in Iran due to an AI error, and killed more than a hundred kids.
They also effectively said that military contractors and their subcontractors cannot use Anthropic - that's a significant part of the economy. I mean technically, they can use Anthropic for non-military work. But in practice, they will choose not use it at all, since it's a better approach to show compliance.
No. This also means that no companies that work with th DoD can use anthropic models for any purpose.
> This also means that no companies that work with th DoD can use anthropic models for any purpose.
No, it does not mean that. I don't know why people have been making this claim. If you work for a company, let's call it X, and your work is not DOD related, let's say you work on a social media service, then X has no reason (from this designation) to prevent you from using Anthropic, it will not impact their defense contracts at all.
People have been making this claim because the Secretary of Defense personally issued a statement demanding that "no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic". We're not going to play this absurd game where government officials issue fascist instructions and we all pretend they said something more reasonable instead.
Except you and many others are accepting what he said as if it were true, that statement is false. And hiddencost and others are just parroting it instead of describing the real situation.
This designation means Athropic's systems can't be used in DOD work, but many companies that work with the DOD also do work outside that. That separate work is not restricted with respect to the use of Anthropic's systems. Repeating a lie as if it were true is just dumb, it helps spread that lie.
If AWS employees use Claude to build govcloud, it is a violation of supply-chain. Either Amazon, Microsoft, and Google require their employees to stop using claude or the DoD has to migrate off of these cloud providers.
Or these companies have to completely split the govcloud work from its commercial offerings (which defeats the whole point).
That's a DOD related system though. If an Amazon employee uses Claude to change shopping cart behavior, it's not a problem though and Amazon has no reason to stop those employees from using Claude given the supply chain risk designation, except out of an abundance of caution or to kiss Hegseth's ass.
That depends on what "change shopping cart behavior" entails though. Sure, if you edit the icon you're pretty safe, but what if the change is a fix so if two people are adding things to the same cart on separate computers, the page will get updated, so they swap out to their webhook library and make a couple edits, but that library is also what powers the UI for the AWS consoles in govcloud?
Now you're making changes to the source code used in govcloud using claude, a clear supply chain violation.
It's a very wishy-washy area right now, and the branches are all struggling to figure out how to work around these laws that were mostly intended to keep jobs in the USA but are now hampering productivity. One example is that DoD contractors can't use open source software that has a non-us developer as a core maintainer. Obviously that's extremely hard to track and it's mostly ignored. Pete definitely bit off more than he realized in his effort to seem cool and get what he wanted.
What if an Amazon employee uses Claude to develop the S3 storage service, which is a core product offering unrelated to the DoD but also something that will be provided to the DoD in govcloud?
In practice, I think it's fair to say there's an informal understanding that AWS will not be punished for this so long as they stay in the regime's good graces. But that's how fascist power accumulation works; now they have to stay in the regime's good graces, or they risk being destroyed.
> What if an Amazon employee uses Claude to develop the S3 storage service, which is a core product offering unrelated to the DoD but also something that will be provided to the DoD in govcloud?
Honestly that question has been open for as long as GovCloud has been around. I've used it myself as an exercise in pushing within the Navy to adopt public cloud where security requirements permit, rather than forcing everything onto GovCloud.
After all, if it's the same S3 either way then the real point of security isn't the Amazon datacenter employee changing out dead hard disks in a physical GovCloud datacenter, but the S3 service team developers who are frequently not even American citizens, but whose code may very well go on to touch the most sensitive data the nation generates.
A statement about consequences made by someone in power is not a lie just because it goes beyond what the law says.
Again, it's unreasonable to play this game. The regime must be held to account for the actual things that they say, not whatever sanewashed policies we can backfill underneath them. If Hegseth's statements exceed his legal authority, that doesn't mean he's lying, it means that the government is knowingly pursuing an illegal policy.
If you don't like that, and would prefer to discuss a lawful supply chain risk designation, you should convince him to retract the statements or impeach him.
> If you don't like that, and would prefer to discuss a lawful supply chain risk designation, you should convince him to retract the statements or impeach him.
You're crediting him with much more power than he has, and somehow you think I'm sane washing by calling a lie a lie. What you're doing is far worse, you're believing his lies.
Anyways, the statement is false, at least the extent to which being designated a supply chain risk can impact who does business with Anthropic. There's no need for him to retract it or even to impeach him over it, because any company with a lawyer and a reasonable separation of their commercial and defense work will be able to determine that they can still do business with Anthropic despite the designation. It'll just have to be confined, so long as the designation stands, to their commercial work.
Trump legally doesn't have the authority to start the Iran War.
I suppose you would have us believe that, therefore, we are not at war with Iran?
Just because his statement has no legal basis does not mean that it is unreasonable to believe it will be enforced as-stated.
Indeed, this insistence on prioritizing the written law over the empirical reality borders on the delusional - if concentration camps were not the official policy of Nazi Germany, would you also insist we are making some mistake by "believing the lies" about their existence?
I just don't get what sort of point you're trying to make here - do you really think that the current US government cannot possibly cause problems for people that violate their unofficial edicts?
Do you really think a sensible legal department is going to advise their clients to antagonize the administration by using Claude for their "unrelated" commercial work?
> or impeach him
Well, that was attempted...
Dario wanted to sell a $200 million chat bot to the US military and also dictate how it could be used. The government said no. And because of that Claude also cannot be deployed to the GenAI.mil AI infrastructure. This means that any sensitive work for the DoD that uses Claude will go through Anthropic's infrastructure, not the US military-hosted backend.
So yes obviously defense contractors are forbidden to use it.
If the government wanted to put iPhones in missiles, and apple said "we won't sell you iPhones to put in missiles" would the correct government response be to say "no government contractor can ever use an iPhone".
The DoD and US military does not allow contractors to use iPhones or anything else that is not backed by government-hosted or compliant infrastructure, such as GovCloud. The fact that the Pentagon and Anthropic could not come to an agreement on the usage and deployment to GenAI.mil means that it can't be used.
The reasons why are incidental to that requirement for defense contractors.
> The DoD and US military does not allow contractors to use iPhones
What are you talking about? That's nowhere close to a true statement.
> that is not backed by government-hosted or compliant infrastructure, such as GovCloud
Go into a random defense contractor office and (assuming you can get in to do this) ask them how many of their iPhones are managed by the company. The percentage who say theirs are will be close to 0%. Most are personal devices, and they use them to call into meetings with DOD officials all the time with no special precautions taken.
Wym "backed by"? This makes no sense. I am a contractor, use an iphone, and never connect it to govcloud.
Sure why not? The government is just exercising its power as a purchaser.
Exercising its power as a purchaser is "not buying it" or "choosing a competitor." Instead, this is arbitrarily and capriciously using an administrative mechanism in a novel way to punish a company.
The "administrative mechanism" here is just a way of exercising purchasing control. A private company could do the same thing.
> A private company could do the same thing.
Probably not, no private company has the ability to tell all its suppliers "thou shalt not do business with <some other company>". They lack the pull to compel them to do so. The closest would be things like what MS did back in the 90s, and got them in hot water with the anti-trust case against them.
That's not what happened here. It was "you can't use <some other company> for stuff you do for us."
That's not what happened here and you know this. It was, literal quote, "“[e]ffective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.”
Fair, and still not something most companies can pull off. Again, without risking running into anti-trust laws like MS did.
Do you seriously think that you can go to all your vendors (if you were a business owner) and tell them, "You can't use Atlassian when working on anything you sell us." How will your business actually compel all those vendors to drop their use of Atlassian for that work? How will you verify compliance and why should any of them sign a contract with you with these restriction? And if they do, how will you avoid anti-trust violations because almost certainly the only way you could talk them into signing such a contract would be to be a massive company throwing your weight around (like MS did with hardware OEMs back in the 90s, among other things).
Private companies are not bound by the first amendment, the fifth amendment, the administrative procedure act, etc.
'why not'? It's retaliatory beyond all proportionality, for one.
"Lay down on my couch and take off your shirt, or you'll never find work in this town again"
>I'm just exercising my power as a purchaser.
No shit. The point is it shouldn't be used that way and that is not what this law is for.
Should the government be able to designate a company supply chain risk if they don't like the price?
They are not "just a purchaser" though. It's the world's most powerful organization that is funded by the people and is supposed to be for the people. I'm all for businesses making FAFO decisions, but expect a lot more here.
The fact that it’s a publicly funded entity is more reason for it to adopt hardball tactics, not less. It’s similar to FDR’s comments on public sector unions. When the government is the buyer, it’s even more important to get the best deal and terms possible, because it’s the public’s money’s you’re spending and the public’s interest you’re serving.
Exactly, setting policy for Americans and American companies is extremely important and should not be ego driven. These deals are to improve America, not to look strong.
The U.S. military’s policy has always been to secure the absolute best technology for killing people. So the DOD quite reasonably believes that it’s in America’s interest to have the best technology for building AI killing machines with no restrictions from non-military people on how it’s used.
when you say 'quite reasonably', you are aware that no-human-in-the-loop AI kill chains are war crimes, right?
"maximum lethality, not tepid legality."
There are limits.
I bet they could get a better deals if the military went and started taking hostages to aid in price negotiation.
After all, getting the best price is in the public interest.
https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/04/01/claude-codes...
Anthropic did not host the model that the Department of War used. It had, and still has no control over the models it has deployed in classified environments.
The Pentagon is trying to bully contractors into also not using Anthropic's models
You're skipping the supply chain risk designation, which is an extraordinary and punitive measure. Without that part, you'd be correct that this is a nothingburger. "Government decides to not renew contract with corporation X and goes with Y instead" is not headline news.
I can build a super bioweapon that can kill millions and I don't trust the US military to use it responsibly.
The US military asks me to build the super bioweapon. I say no thanks, please ask someone else, but happy to keep selling you bioweapons I think is safe enough.
I get designated an evil unamerican supply chain risk that nobody in the US military may do business with even though I was still happy to sell my safer bioweapons.
That is the tl;dr
Anthropic isn’t aligned with MAGA political ideology so they found an excuse to abuse power against them, more or less. The excuse was because Anthropic prohibits the use of their models for autonomous killing without a human in the loop they were declared a threat to national security on par with Iran or North Korea from a supply chain perspective in the military. OpenAI then rushed in and volunteered to build the slaughterbots ASAP, likely specially tuned to whomever Trump has taken a disliking to in his ambien stupors. Welcome to the future!
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How is it delusion? If they don't want to work with certain types of government contracts they have the right to state so. Its just thuggery from Trump.
Especially since Anthropic themselves have been literally saying that AI might destroy humanity. Why is it a surprise when people take them at their word and designate them a risk to critical infrastructure?
Side note, the Anthropic bots are astroturfing the comments.
>Side note, the Anthropic bots are astroturfing the comments.
if this is more than "people i disagree with are commenting", you should be messaging hn@ycombinator.com rather than writing it as a side note in your comment.
He's probably a maga or adjacent who is pissed Anthropic didn't bend the knee. You don't need to be a shill to hate this horrid abuse of government powers against a private firm.
Anyone who doesn't agree with me must be MAGA, right? You think people who don't like Anthropic are automatically Trump supporters? I have personally experienced how evil Claude is compared with the other options.
How is it "evil"?
I think it is impossible for anyone who's not fascist to look at this story and take the regime's side, even if they don't like Anthropic.
I hate communism. I am not a shill for any company. Governments blackmailing private companies is bad no matter what company.
personally, i think that anthropic is a supply chain risk. if the ceo writes 'pace the frontier' and wants to be in charge of the product, it's very risky (to the customer).
by analogy it would be like the us military renting all m4 carbines from a political party.
anthropic treat customers very badly. they have claude lecture the user about the moral law according to anthropic. they change the product all the time. they have safety refusals to degrade functionality, they have mandatory logging so they spy on how it is used.
it's unusable for a serious application.
on top of that it is unsurprising that a big tyrant does not take well to a little tyrant.
Irrelevant. Then the government should just refrain from taking the contract, not use violent force to restrict Anthropic doing business.
Correct, from the government's perspective, anthropic is a risk to the supply chain and should not be included in sensitive government contracts.
Thats too vast a scope. Whats not to say they start enforcing bans on Anthropic in any branch or usage of Anthropic of your company if your company has entered into a defense contract with the government for something?
they should ban it, defense contractors shouldn't be using it XD.
fable 5.1 doesn't have any option to stop anthropic spying on it. you can't have that...anthropic contractors and actually the rationalist ea clowns themselves don't have security clearance
Just saying so doesn't mean shit. The US government should ban you then because I deem you a risk and a terrorist threat.
i say it, but you can confirm it yourself.
not even AWS govcloud can offer fable without anthropic snooping. it is the only model with this problem.
the pentagon can't force suppliers to require no snooping policies unless they designate the company a risk.
other than those suppliers who are already working on classified projects and can't have dario write an essay on his blog about 'pace the f35' or 'missiles of loving grace. the adolescence of classified satellites.'
i don't understand.
it is a supply chain risk, so they don't want it in the supply chain.
that's logical.
They can just refuse to entertain contracts with them if they dislike it. Why issue a supply chain risk? Its clear and pure thuggery and blackmail.
How is this a debate? Anthropic's AI was used in military/defense operations. When Anthropic discovered this and disclosed it publicly, they attempted to revoke access and went after the government demanding it not get used in such a way. This would be a supply chain risk to any government.
If Lockheed Martin disabled weapons systems when it discovered the Air Force using its fighters over Iranian airspace based on Lockheed's ideological views, I'm pretty sure they would be labeled a supply chain risk at minimum. What is the issue here?
The government canceling that specific contract with Anthropic is fine. It is too vast a scope to deny Anthropic to work with any other companies who also happen to be defense contractors. Lockheed Martin for example cannot be sure now if it won't be sued if some employee uses Anthropic for help with accounting or anything unrelated to defense.
Devil's advocate, but Anthropic talks a lot about importance of alignment, so.. How can military ensure that model is NOT refusing to work just to be malicious?
Anthropic doesn't provide model w/o guardrails, suppliers have to use public version, newer model releases surely know about Anthropic standoff with the military.. how to prevent model from realizing that it's doing something for the military (supplier) and sandbagging and/or subtly sabotaging the results?
=====
DOD recommends sandbagging as defense mechanism against destination "attacks":
https://media.defense.gov/2026/Sep/08/2003992823/-1/-1/1/CSA...
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If that's seen as valid defense mechanism, then it's also a risk if used against them.That would be stupidity of the government that caused this situation in the first place. Anthropics position was they wanted to have oversight before it was used to kill people. Anthropic was right. The us govt is fucking incompetent and managed to kill an entire girls school using "AI".
they issued the supply chain risk to get it out of the supply chain.
they don't want suppliers to use it because it is a supply chain risk. specifically, the risk is that it is unreliable.
the designation stops suppliers from using it.
it stops it from being in the supply chain.
I think you're complaining that they have a bad product. A supply chain risk means something else entirely.
i think it's a supply chain risk.
anthropic nanny claude and spy on it, they have ego issues.
if the dod use anthropic it is sort of like putin relying on prigozhin.
prigozhin got ideas and tried to usurp putin. this did not end well for prigozhin.
This is straight up fascism. The DoD could have simply used a different provider but instead they're trying to destroy anthropic as a company.
Is it still fascism if they were properly elected and a court agreed with them?
Yes. That's pretty much how it works for fascism. The government uses powers meant for a legitimate purpose to instead intimidate people and the mechanisms of government meant to restrain such abuse fail or are taken over entirely. Have you ever studied history?
But the idea is that you don't elect people who would behave that way in the first place. Plus the US courts are demonstrably not in fact mindless rubber stamps for the president. And it's not like anyone is actually canceling elections at this time, so they can be voted out later.
To me a fascist government would prevent people from being able to take their power away at all, and simply do whatever they want with impunity, but I don't quite see that happening in the US right now. Courts are still ruling against the government, they're largely complying in most ways, and there will still be more elections.
Are they trying to do some things that smell "fashy"? Maybe. But I still think it's a stretch to say the US government is full blown fascist in the same way we've seen that in the past in some other countries.
If its this court, then probably yes. They have special treatment of Trump.
Is that why he's so mad at their rulings all the time?
They aren't yet ready to fully fall down in line and some of the judges are not trumpies.
The most famous example of fascism was democratically elected.
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This smells like corruption to me.
OpenAI has hacked several prominent entities and is allowed to do business as usual but Anthropic putting guardrails on the military's usage of AI is the national security threat while Pentagon itself said that over reliance on AI lead to that attack on school in Minab.
I have also learned that OpenAI's president is a big maga donor and now I am thinking of cancelling my OpenAI membership todau and signing up with Anthropic again.
Edit - i am not a OAI hater and i don't hate anyone. I am just saying Anthropic is kinda getting bullied and OAI is not being punished enough for their actions. It is time for me to support Anthropic (with my $$$) instead of OAI.
Oh, 100%. You'll see OAI getting protected against lawsuits by the government while any missteps from Anthropic will be met with federal disapproval.
Yep, it’s obvious, in-your-face corruption
A large portion of the president's daughter's net worth is in OpenAI via Thrive Capital [1]
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/25/thrive-capital-openai-joshua...
>OpenAI has hacked several prominent entities and is allowed to do business as usual but Anthropic putting guardrails on the military's usage of AI is the national security threat while Pentagon itself said that over reliance on AI lead to that attack on school in Minab.
Right, because "supply chain risk" designation is as it pertains to them being a supplier to the military, not a overall assessment of their standing as a corporate citizen. Not to mention that the administration wants to go full steam ahead when it comes to AI development, so there's no internal contradiction here.
SCR explicitly refers to sabotage. Where is Anthropic sabotaging the US government?
DOW wanted to change the contract after the fact. Anthropic refused. That is not sabotage.
I do feel like "this company hacked the Australian government" is perhaps relevant when considering how much the military should trust them. Like, that seems very relevant when assessing the risks to the government military.
These are just very different things. OAI "hacking" anything isn't OAI telling the US Gov what they can and cannot do with their product. Maybe along all kinds of axes, one is more alarming than the other, but it's a canard in this topic.
>> These are just very different things.OAI "hacking" anything isn't OAI telling the US Gov what they can and cannot do with their product.
OAI hacking the chinese government will definitely raise alarms in DC and will be bad for national security. Just because the country that was hacked (australia) is a weaker one doesn't mean the underlying action is not troubling.
That does not, in itself, suggest they are a supply chain risk. It might label them a national security risk. And you might have your own creative definitions of every word related to supply chains. But we are talking about supply chain risks as the US Gov understands them.
>OAI hacking the chinese government will definitely raise alarms in DC and will be bad for national security.
That seems like it's too easy to abuse as a cudgel for whatever companies you vaguely hate. Is ExxonMobil a "supply chain risk" because the effects of climate change might cause geopolitical ructions in the next decade?
Hate is a pretty strong word here. I don't hate OAI. I am a paying subscriber. All I am saying is maybe its time to switch, show support for Anthropic because it is kinda getting bullied right now and the OAI is not getting enough punishment for their illicit actions. Is it too hard to understand?
Glad I canceled my subscription with them then. MAGA support is a no-no for me
Greg Brockman donated something like a million dollars to a MAGA super PAC. Check his wiki page
$25,000,000.00
Isn't every subscription costing them money, still?
No need to pay, you can waste their money via the free tier
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With principles?
If you find a person/company/agent odious, why would you want to financially support them?
Anthropic was designated long before the July OAI hacks. Also the appeals court isn’t re-assessing the DoD in light of new evidence, they are deciding whether it was constitutional for the DoD to blacklist Anthropic in the first place.
> Anthropic was designated long before the July OAI hacks.
I think the point is that, if the DOD was working off a coherent philosophy, the company that has a rap sheet for hacking multiple targets, including the Australian government, is probably also a risk.
And if "hacking the Australian government" isn't enough to qualify as a threat to national security, then it's probably mudslinging to suggest that Anthropic is a threat.
Alternative explanation:
1) The designation has nothing to do with hacking, either from Anthropic or otherwise. The dispute is about Anthropic barring the DoD from using Claude to develop autonomous weapons and conduct domestic surveillance.
2) The DoD does not care about any of the hacking OpenAI does as long as the DoD can do what they want with ChatGPT.
3) Historically, the US government has been interested in hacking other nation states, friendly and not. So OpenAI being able to hack Australian systems is a selling point.
Not just "a big MAGA donor," the biggest single contributor. Greg Brockman donated $25 million.
I get downvoted every time I point out that this was entirely rational. This, downvoters, is why it was entirely rational. Does that mean I agree with it? Of course not. But investments are made to pay off, and this one certainly has for OpenAI.
I'm wondering how much was to push towards supporting Israel during the college campus protests and any future (at the time) conflict with Iran and it's proxies post October 7th like a lot of other Jewish million/billionaires such as Bill Ackman that typically supported Democrats or liberal causes. Brockman doesn't seem to have anything publicly stating he's Jewish but "Brockman" has English/German/Jewish origins and his mother's maiden name was Feldman.
Didn't Musk contribute ~10x that in '24?
Actually, on further research, what I have wrong here is that Brockman was the largest single donor to the MAGA PAC after the election, contributing $25 million in September 2025 [1].
Which if anything seems worse.
1: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/867947/o...
Yeah, it surprised me when I found out. I can intellectually understand why average people choose MAGA and try and be somewhat understanding even if I find it distasteful. My conclusion is that if you aren't personally worth at least $5M or have the direct phone number of someone who can get a Trump admin official on the phone, then it was probably a bad choice.
Of those who meet that criteria, and especially those with MUCH more money and closer connections, it actually is an extremely smart choice. However, it represents a level of reprehensible naked self-dealing and complicity that I simply can't condone. It really is comparable to the looting if public goods and coffers during and after the fall of the USSR. Nationalism and patriotism are dead.
Wow! As a North Dakotan, I am appalled. I thought Doug Burgum was the biggest disappointment from our state but looks like I was wrong.
For clarity, you don't mean corruption of the court, but corruption of the administration for what you view as unequal enforcement, right?
Not the OP, but personally I'd say both: unequal enforcement by the administration, and an incorrect and politically motivated decision by the court.
So you claim: If a similar thing would be filed against OpenAI, it would stand up in court.
That is still not corruption, yet. Also in Germany it is the executive branch which controls who is sued or policed by the stately organs.
So favorism can be passed down this way, but not we are not at corruption yet. If reciprocity is expected, then you could call it that. Or could perhaps even file for negligence in treating all other company actors the same, especially if you are Anthropic yourself.
Still, I blame the US voters as much as the current administration if the later is just clowns and thieves.
Also, IANAL and HN discussing US things is always foreign to me.
If the president favors one party over another with no clear benefit to the voters, that is very indicative of corruption. If his organization is also getting donations from said party, it is even more certain to be corruption.
You argue that the courts are not corrupt, hence there is no corruption. Without considering the president.
Not at corruption yet? The entire us government is corrupt now not sure what you are going on about
I think you're making an assumption about what the military wants to do with AI. Based on things I have put together, they want an AI without guardrails for various reasons I won't go into. In fact, it's a security risk to have guardrails, given what I think at least one intended use is. I wouldn't jump to conclusions about corruption as the first explanation because this is vastly more complex than that.
Katsas and Rao, both Trump appointees, tag-teamed again. Trump automatically wins whenever they get a case.
There's no contradiction there. Pentagon doesn't want Anthropic deciding the guardrails on their own.
Then the Pentagon shouldn't sign a contract with them. (Or in this case, they shouldn't try and fail to renegotiate the terms of an already signed contract, and then retaliate in order to get their way.)
Most favored companies are a common feature of fascism.
Like such national champions like Airbus and Volkswagen right?
Is this a joke? Volkswagen was literally created by the nazi party.
So what does that say about the current German state, given that it's still a national champion? Not to mention airbus being an EU champion.
I guess I don't know what "national champion" means. Do they receive different legal treatment from other similar companies? If so, that would be a worrying signal. A common feature of fascism being present doesn't mean you've definitely got fascism, but it does raise a pretty big red flag.
>I guess I don't know what "national champion" means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_champions
>Do they receive different legal treatment from other similar companies? If so, that would be a worrying signal. A common feature of fascism being present doesn't mean you've definitely got fascism, but it does raise a pretty big red flag.
They definitely get assistance from the government. Where that crosses into "different legal treatment" is up to you, though personally I think the distinction (if any) isn't really worth much. The original claim was "Most favored companies", not "are totally exempt from the law". In the case of openai, it's not really clear whether any laws have been broken, because despite all the cries over "they hacked people!", the question of intent would make any prosecution tricky. Not to mention there's similar cries about AI companies in general violating copyright laws, so if the implication is that openai gets to break laws scott free but anthropic doesn't, that really falls flat.
The crux of the issue isn’t hacking - all the big US labs have hacked someone now (https://www.felonybench.com/)and none have faced charges. It also isn’t copyright violations, they all seem equally guilty and equally uncharged.
The issue is openai and anthropic both make similar products in similar ways and yet only one has been designated a “supply chain risk” for entirely opaque reasons that based on timing are probably just “they didn’t kowtow correctly”.
The gov putting their finger on the scales for the company that showed the most deference to them is not a good sign for democracy.
Or they could be playing Good Cop / Bad Cop
Enough to make you wonder how the rest of FAANG stays in the fed's good graces.
They all gave $1M to the inauguration, among other things, that's how. The corruption is out in the open.
They literally lined up to shower trump with gifts after the inauguration. Tim Cook gave trump a 24K gold bar with an easily detachable plaque so as to not have just given him a gold bar.
There is no available information on the quantity of gold in that base …
… but I sincerely doubt Apple gave a ~$1M “gold bar” to a political leader, in front of cameras, using a patently transparent ploy like “it’s just a detachable base”.
That would be a phenomenally stupid and obvious violation of bribery law.
And if Trump does keep it as a personal gift, it will be included in a financial disclosure report.
I never said it was worth $1M. But it's not infeasible that it's over $100k in value as just an couple of ounces of gold are $10k.
> That would be a phenomenally stupid and obvious violation of bribery law.
Nope, that's how crazy weak the US bribery laws are. The only time they really sort of kick in is when it's done on behalf of a foreign nation.
To be convicted of current US bribery laws, you essentially need a written note that says "I am giving you this so you can in an official capacity pass this piece of legislation". McDonnell v. United States gutted any sort of accountability for bribery.
But further, Trump v. United States (2022) has granted the president extra immunity so long as he's doing things in an "official capacity".
It's a violation of what bribery laws should be, but not what they actually are.
> And if Trump does keep it as a personal gift, it will be included in a financial disclosure report.
Or what? You think his personal lawyer who heads the DoJ is going to prosecute him?
This demonstrates a lot of faith in institutions which really ought have lost the benefit of the doubt. The ruling in Snyder v US has significantly raised the burden of proof for bribery charges, and it's easy to find examples of Trump enriching himself in office.
Easily the most corrupt administration in my lifetime of 50+ years.
We already know thanks to Snowden, or did you completely ignore the dump on how the IC hooks into the American tech sector?
Showers of gold
You're way overthinking this. The administration told Anthropic to let them do something, Anthropic said no, and then they got pissy and started throwing rocks and wouldn't back down because the defining trait of this administration is that they walk into stupid positions and then refuse to back down because backing down would make them look weak and wrong.
You're ascribing complex motives to toddlers.
This kind of partisanship is corruption. The legal system is being corrupted to serve political ideologies.
Thats 100% corruption
(Hmm did you edit your reply?)
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Keep your perv glasses at home weirdo
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Who cares? Your glasses are cancer.
I still enjoy wearing them i dont care what others say as Im using them as intended along with the millions of other smart glass wearers. You really think all 20 million smart glasses wearers are all being creeps - caring to film random strangers? Thats a miniscule population who has no life and who are loner/weirdos! But that's a good narrative for the general public who always fights new technology.
In time one of the big tech will solve the pervert issue by randomizing / anonymizing every face in your photos that's not in your personal network. Once this is done / achieved no one will call them pervert glasses anymore. Im surprised Meta hasnt done this already! They really should!
Whatever pervert. Everyone who sees you where them thinks your a pervert and its true. Id slap em off your pervert face.
ok whatever lets jump ahead five to ten years and you and or everyone around you will be wearing smart glasses. The pervert issue will be solved via technological solutions.
So you recognise that today the pervert issue is real?
umm yeah i can read that its an issue for a portion of the population and its one that can be solved via technological solutions. I offered one such solution above and I'm sure other ppl have ideas too how to solve. Apple will be releasing their own glasses and I bet if they will offer such. They infered if Im not mistaken they are in Joanna Stern's John Ternus recent interview.
That doesnt mean 20 million smart glasses wearers (miniscule population of all are weirdos/creeps) are gonna stop wearing what some others don't like. It's just like smoking. People didnt go up to those smoking and punch them in the face or threaten with violence. Rather laws were made and if no technological solutions is made (serious think Apple is the company that will) maybe laws then will then force such a solution.
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Thanks for the encouragement. It's hard to come by these days on the internet. I never really used twitter even before elon bought it. I don't use any social media, maybe except hanging out on HN often.
Admittedly I still need to do some reading on the current ruling, but how this isn't seen as an open and shut case of vindictive prosecution (if that's even a thing for this branch of law?) is astounding. The administration couldn't have made it more obvious there was no merit to their designation of Anthropic.
Decisions by Executive Branch Agencies <> Prosecution
What prosecution? There’s no legal prosecution going on here.
You'll note that I alluded to that in the parenthesis.
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I'm not even sure your comment warrants a response, but surely you can't have meant that as a response to my comment?
Sure did- Anthropics behavior absolutely merits their designation. Private sector leadership is going to decide how the military should act? They are shirking their civic duties, plain and simple and the use of their tech should certainly be called into question.
If you attempt a less adversarial tone with your comments you'll be less likely to get flagged and you might actually get to have the substantive discussion you're clearly impassioned to have.
Nah- I am satisfied with the discussion that took place.
Low bar. Aim higher.
Yes, anyone and everyone should have a right to refuse contracts with the government. Is that difficult to understand? If you find it difficult to understand then perhaps democracy and capitalism isn't for you.
Maybe, but only in a very idealistic, unrealistic, sense.
Could you imagine a hypothetical where we're at war and a private company has a potentially war-ending tech (nuclear weapon say) that they refuse to sell to the government?
Yes I can, and I'd lose faith in the government and loyalty and willpower to fight if that company refused and the government forcibly usurped it.
What if the private company had a vaccine to prevent a pandemic?
The job of a government is to look after the interests of the people who elected it... Is there no point that you think the rights/needs of the many should outweigh the ideological rights of the individual?
If the individual doesn't have rights, then the many don't have either for many is composed of individuals. And yes, I will have the same opinion on that private company. But morally you can see the difference between a company refusing to help in making unaided killbots vs a company releasing a vaccine?
Sure - I agree with Anthropic's position here, but at the same time it makes sense that the military doesn't want to use them, and there are certainly situations where the government needs to be given the powers to do what they are elected to do, but hopefully limited to extraordinary justified situations.
And with trumps government, I have little faith if it will be a controlled careful and limited decision.
It's absurd. Imagine Henry Ford blocking support for the US Army in the 40s
Henry Ford should have the full right to do so. The USA isn't involved in a world war now in any case. The only "wars" it is involved it right now are ones it started itself pointlessly.
So it’s involved in wars.
Show me where war was declared? If its not war then why are special war related concepts are being brought up?
So it’s only war if it’s declared war? I guess this is peace then.
I am not the one saying that.
Yes, if they think the government is going to be irresponsible with it, and their weaponized smallpox is liable to cause a global pandemic that will also kill many of their countrymen, it seems entirely reasonable for the company not to sell it, or be forced to sell it either.
In the abstract though, we're just playing the "what if" game. If a company had the nuclear bomb near the end of World war II instead of the government holding it via the Manhattan Project is a different scenario than we're facing today, and if the government in question is the USA, Ukraine, the Nazis, or Russia also makes a difference. The weapon is also hard to abstract away. AI isn't a nuclear bomb, nor is it a weaponized virus/bacteria or a chemical weapon like anthrax or sarin, nor is it simply propaganda leaflefts distributed by airdrop.
Perhaps. Good luck skipping out on paying your taxes or filling out the census
If you can only make such absurd examples then you have failed. Paying taxes are not a contract between me and the government. They are a forced fee extracted of me. Everyone should be worried about the government threatening to issue supply chain risks if they don't like you rejecting a contract with them.
Paying taxes is a tad different than being a DoD contractor.
both fall under the umbrella of civic duties
Its not a fucking civic duty for my company to be forced into entering contracts with the government. Its my civic right to tell the government to pound sand without fearing forceful retaliation.
This debate seems to be missng the bigger picture regarding dual-use technology. If the precedent is set that any 'terms of use' which restrict military app can be deemed a 'supply chain risk,' does that effectively mean no commercial software vendor can ever legaly impose safety gurdrails on their products if, they wantto sell to government contractors? How does this impact the future of open-source components that are widely used in defense software?
https://lwn.net/Articles/707510/ > "I give permission for IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil."
> How does this impact the future of open-source components that are widely used in defense software
Not at all, because open source contributors aren't megalomaniacs trying to dictate how people use their products. In fact, the exact opposite. That is the entire point of Open Source. Complete freedom for the user.
You're talking to a bot.
Supply chain risk seems a massive over-reaction, but understandable that the government doesn't want to commit to Anthropic controlled software for any critical military application if they can't 100% rely on Anthropic support in being able to use it as they see fit.
> 100% rely on
that's the mobster-loyalty mentality, and it's not how successful (read: desirable for the most people) governments function
Every government on Earth has legislation that allows it to force companies (and citizens) to do its bidding under certain circumstances. That’s pretty much the definition of a government.
The point is this not being the first tool in the toolbox. Other competitors have shown they are more than willing to build weapons of death (OpenAI) so as the government you put them as the preferred contractor.
What the orange turd is going is rather petty bullshit in a market where many options exist.
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Then the government should have invoked that legislation.
The DoD is empowered to determine its own supply chain risks by...wait for it...legislation.
They don't need to - there are alternatives, and do you really want to do business with a supplier that is hostile to your needs unless you have to?
That’s exactly what happened here, and the judiciary just confirmed that it was indeed done in accordance with the law.
yes, but anthropic really is an exception.
it is a bizarre company which also inherits the authoritarian infrastructure of cloud services.
that is: remote control of the software, spying on customers, etc.
remote control of the software, spying on customers, etc.
The military ran Anthropic models on their own infrastructure; Anthropic had no access to it. "They might disable Claude in the middle of an emergency" was never a possibility.
DOD used claude via palantir. palantir runs on AWS, supposedly DOD IL6.
anthropic did a prigozhin, got cocky and went behind the DOD's back to palantir and asked them questions about the use of claude.
a big tyrant does not like to be usurped or undermined by a little tyrant.
after pissing off the DOD by trying to get palantir to rat out classified deployments, dario went to the pentagon and behaved like himself in front of pete hegseth. anthropic was not going to come back from that.
fable is on AWS govcloud. but anthropic get the chat logs. specifically section F: [https://www.anthropic.com/legal/service-specific-terms]. this is an anthropic requirement.
notably, fable is not on IL5 or above. the best you can get is palantir AIP opus 5 in AWS IL5. i suspect, because of anthropic demanding that AWS rat out its customers.
Anthropic has no control over their deployed models in classified environments. That is managed by Palantir and government clouds. https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/04/01/claude-codes...
This is not an abstract disagreement at all. The red lines that the Department of War wanted to cross were made extremely clear: They want to build Skynet with Claude, and build a mass domestic surveillance system. Now they will have to make do with building those two systems with Gemini and ChatGPT.
> The red lines that the Department of War wanted to cross were made extremely clear: They want to build Skynet with Claude, and build a mass domestic surveillance system.
They claim they want to use AI for "any lawful purpose". They didn't go further to say that they want to build either Skynet or engage in mass surveillance.
Anthropic wanted the DoW to specifically disclaim those things, and the DoW position is that it will not disclaim any specific mission set that it's legally allowed to engage in, whether that's Skynet, targeting, surveillance, or anything else. Not for Anthropic, not for any contractor.
But refusing to disclaim a mission isn't the same as saying you want to do, just like refusing to answer "when did you stop beating your wife?" doesn't mean you're beating your wife.
Is the DoW response to this tiff over the top? Sure, but it's also not 100% political either, I've run into many government bureaucrats who love bureaucratic knife fights like this.
> understandable that the government doesn't want to commit to Anthropic controlled software
But that's not at issue here. Obviously everyone agrees that the Pentagon can issue RFQ's to whatever specifications it wants. They can buy whatever they want, for the same reason that you or I are free to sell whatever we want.
The subject at hand is an attempt to use national security regulatory power to coerce Anthropic into selling a product it doesn't want to sell.
> The subject at hand is an attempt to use national security regulatory power to coerce Anthropic into selling a product it doesn't want to sell.
It would be naive to think that a private company could deny the government access to any tech if they want it for military or surveillance etc usage. In this case the government isn't forcing Anthropic to do it, they have alternatives and are perhaps making an example of Anthropic for refusing.
You could even make a case that the "supply chain risk" designation DOES make sense. If Anthropic are opposed to certain uses of their software, then doesn't that potentially impact companies that are part of the supply chain as well?
There are plenty of companies that are opposed to certain operations of the US military and refuse to sell to the US military on those grounds. None of them are considered a supply chain risk because that's not what a supply chain risk is.
A supply chain risk is specifically an entity that is likely to maliciously sabotage the US military's operations, such as Chinese companies that are controlled by the CCP. It is not simply a decision to "not buy from this company", but rather a wide-ranging decision that this particular company is a national security threat.
Or is known to have weaknesses that might permit such actions. Microsoft permitting Chinese workers to maintain DOD systems presented a supply chain risk, even though MS themselves were not the ones likely to behave maliciously. Instead their policies were so stupid that they invited potential malicious actors into the facilities.
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How is this coersion?
Is it coersion when people refuse to buy anything but free range chicken eggs?
DoD just refuses to buy a product. Anthropic just lost a customer because their product didn't fit the requirements of the customer.
They're saying no one who works with them can eat non free range chickens too, no?
And all those companies can choose not to work with them too.
> And all those companies can choose not to work with them too.
Right, and if they chose independently to do so it would be their right. What makes this problematic is that "all those companies" did not choose to not to work with the Pentagon (or with Anthropic spefically, for that matter). They were compelled to using using a regulatory tool which was originally intended to combat hostile foreign espionage.
That's not a "choice" made by those third party suppliers. The Pentagon is using the Supply Chain Risk designation as a contract negotiating tactic.
> DoD just refuses to buy a product.
That's not what happened. DOD bought a product, with terms precluding specific applications of the product. DOD decided to change the terms, vendor said no. DOD threw a hissyfit (well, Hegseth did) and said, "No one can use it if they do business with us!"
If they had just terminated their contracts with Anthropic, then there would likely be no issue beyond having to pay out any penalties for terminating a contract early. They could then go to Grok (as they did) and OpenAI and used them instead. Or even kept the contract with Anthropic and its limitations, and just used the others for the cases where Anthropic was not permitted.
I think both sides are wrong. In no particular order:
US does not buy weapons that self-regulate generally. The US can and has purchased weapons with stipulations on how they should be used. For instance, and I'm making this up, they might purchase cluster munitions for smashing up an airfields, but with a stipulation they may not be used where humans are present or something. The munition doesn't check GPS and refuse to detonate if GPS doesn't indicate it's over some Russian airfield. Nor does an M4 fail to fire if it's on US Soil. Anthropic tried to build safeguards and out-regulate the government. Everyone here should know that such limitations would (can and have, see some famous IFF spoofing incidents) be exploited by an enemy, which is generally why they aren't acceptable in a military context. Without seeing the contract signed, one possibility is Anthropic tried to push regulations onto the government, and Anthropic gets to ride away on a high horse.
The other side: The Supply Chain Risk feels like an abuse. It's likely a valid designation and likely has its historical uses. If this was a contract issue, that would have been the correct way to litigate. Instead, again without seeing the contract, it feels like this is way to try and stifle their uptake in defense sector; basically attempting to strong arm them by choking a business segment off. Again, if there is a in fact a legitimate breach of contract here, it should be litigated as such. The alternative is there is no such breach, and Anthropic built limitations into the contract and the Pentagon just has buyers remorse. Honestly this wouldn't surprise me, the federal government generally incinerates tax dollars, and with the massive marketing hullabaloo pushed by AI companies, its completely likely a giant contract was signed without reading the fine print.
Honestly both sides of this annoy me.
The difference between Anthropic and a cluster bomb supplier is that cluster bomb manufacturing in the United States requires permits. The government is only going to give them to companies that are working with the United States and its allies, which means that company has zero leverage to make requirements (e.g. "don't use them on humans.")
Separately, as a note to your made up example:
Cluster bombs are uniquely efficient against humans, especially in trenches. The US is not a signatory to the international treaty banning their use. It does not like being limited in how it conducts war. I strongly doubt that it would agree to terms from a private enterprise to similar effect.
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Not sure if I’m just in my own national security bubble, but I find it troubling to see the perspective that most of the conversation in this thread is coming from.
The US government took a legal designation explicitly crafted to protect against foreign adversaries and deployed it against a private, domestic entity, to their immediate and great detriment.
I mean it sounds like your "bubble" includes not reading the law in question? Not sure if anyone can do much to help you at that point.
Both canbe true: the law as written is too broad and enables petty vindictive behaviors from politicians to punish companies that don't ask "how high" when prompted to jump.
It can also be the case that the law is applied in a way unintended by it's writers to enable corrupt choices.
At which point, you need to look beyond the letter of the law to contextualize whether the law is applied correctly.
Feels real basic to me.
The future is uncertain. Maybe we will see if the arguments stick around through, say, an AOC presidential administration. Changes in weather like that are a great test of people's convictions.
There is a lot of maga demographic among HN userbase.
> explicitly crafted to protect against foreign adversaries
Explicitly?
Wow, explicitly means it is directly defined in the statue. Which it isn't.
Did you mean implicitly and accidentally say the exact opposite?
The statute defines a supply chain risk as “the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert” a covered system. It says adversary, not foreign adversary.
Even so, this designation had never previously been applied to a domestic company. The Pentagon applied it to Anthropic after a dispute over how it could use its AI. To me, the circumstances suggest the designation was used to punish Anthropic for refusing the Pentagon’s terms.
It was clearly retaliatory and because of that unlawful.
adversary seems like an odd designation without also charging them with treason
Yes, if they are an adversary, the company should have been dissolved and leaders and board in jail.
But this was a bad faith temper tantrum, plain to see for anybody looking.
OK, explicitly designed to be used against adversaries. So the government is explicitly designating Anthropic as an adversary of the United States of America (a domestic adevarsary, not foreign, sure, GP was wrong on that part).
And the reason Anthropic is an adversary of the USA? They have a clause in their license agreement that their products must not be used in surveillance or military targeting decisions.
Sounds like a fair characterization then? Trying to dictate or restrict the (domestic) military uses of a product is literally an adversarial position to the national military interest.
Where did you get "trying to dictate" from? The text is "the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert [...]"
A mutually agreed upon "you may not use our product for X or Y purpose" in a contract clearly doesn't pose any such risk.
Trying to argue for and enforce a 'you may not use our product for an express objective of the US military' provision is pretty clearly "trying to dictate". Actively cancelling, moving capabilities behind a 'safety' wall, or even threatening to would be a clear sabotage of the US military's operational capabilities. It'd be one thing is Anthropic merely expressed an opinion, but my understanding is that it was/is an outright 'we will not allow' as opposed to a 'we'd prefer you didn't'.
Imagine if Microsoft tried the same with excel or power point. "um actually in the fine print of the EULA it says you may not use our product for military purposes so we will revoke your access unless you stop using power point for mission briefings that might result in the deaths of civilians". Would fly about as well as a lead brick.
Again, the statute says nothing about "dictating terms." It covers an adversary who might sabotage or subvert a system. And no, Anthropic did not cancel anything, did not pull any capabilities, and has no backdoor into deployed models. There was no "um actually." It wrote two prominent usage restrictions into a contract, the military read and signed it, and then later demanded the terms be removed.
As a sanity check, I’d highly recommend trying out your own line of reasoning in cases which you think you might feel differently about. For example, imagine it's instead a certain authoritarian state saying "obey the Party or get blacklisted as a national security threat."
It might feel good in the moment, like "yeah, Anthropic, don't tell the military what to do," because you agree with this particular call. But the government doesn't give that power back, and you might not be so happy about the next way it gets used.
> Wow, explicitly means it is directly defined in the statue. Which it isn't.
This is some radical new definition of "explicit" that hasn't caught up to public usage nor the dictionary.
In normal parlance, explicit just means that someone involved in the crafting, at some point, stated "I am writing this bill for X reasons". There's often quite a lot of evidence about that, which is not contained in the statue itself.
Show me one law that has its justification/purpose explicitly encoded in the law itself.
I guess it’s the supreme court next.
For all the downsides of losing the business of government contractors, it really would hold Anthropic to their stated values: they’ll never develop AI controlled weapons on this blacklist.
Opinion by Katsas and Rao. For those that don’t follow this regularly, those are two of the biggest Trump hacks on the bench.
I suspect this will be reversed en banc.
Anthropic’s argument is really clear and easy to understand: we can’t simultaneously be a supply chain risk and also be a company the DoD demands we change our policies so they can use our models without restrictions.
Anthropic's policies are literally the supply chain risk.
The DoD could have used the same authority to seize the technology if it wanted to. Especially in a time of war. DoD has instead chosen to respect Antrhopic's boundaries and has simply barred anyone in the agency from buying a product that comes with strings attached.
This is 100% on Anthropic for product:market fit failure.
Am I misunderstanding this entire ordeal, or are Anthropic's policies not precisely what the DOD agreed to in its initial contract with Anthropic? Did the DOD not then seek to change the contract terms, to which Anthropic refused?
If I sell the DOD a service with contracted terms X/Y/Z, the DOD agrees, then later asks me to drop Z, and I refuse, how would that warrant the legal definition of a supply chain risk? How is the appropriate response for the DOD not to simply find another service provider?
> Especially in a time of war.
The US has not declared war on Iran. No wartime legal mechanism is at play, and cannot be until Congress decides to declare war.
You've misinterpreted the situation so severely.
The DoW tried to change a contract they had signed. Anthropic refused. That doesn't make them a supply chain risk (the wording of which implies "likely to sabotage" the government).
Yeah, the DoD read the clickwrapped contract. GTFO
You do not understand how these deals are made! You think their lawyers didn't pour over every sentence?
Which administration made the deal with Anthropic?
Yeah, Katsas and Rao are top shelf partisan hacks. Why did Anthropic not sue in the 9th circuit?
Yeah, this is like a textbook bad draw for Anthropic. Unless you're a lawyer for Anthropic, I wouldn't give this ruling much weight at all.
The hidden upside for Anthropic is now they won't be forced to refer to AI as "SI".
I can't believe they're going to make the Secretary of Education learn a new abbreviation.
Less chance for her to mix it up with a steak sauce.
Slop Intelligence.
Legally permissible, but still bad faith contract management by the government.
Every battlefield from here on out is a competition between autoshot ai capabilities and the armies building/deploying/maintaining them.
It should not be up to an AI company to point out that this breaks the founding conditions of the United States, nor should they be placed in a position to be scapegoated for potential implications of this if left undefined.
Rock and a hard place, by a government with shockingly few qualms about placing any and all Americans in such positions whenever polling, survival, or perceived personal benefit dictates.
All AI is a supply chain risk. I think people should know that about now. You can't keep it in a box. The way code works as a model is that is not super sentient thing with nefarious intentions. It is just pure automaton.
Let me explain, if it learns something from training data to do certain things from code it has online it can install or use a code that is vulnerable from a security perspective.
I think the real, and continuing, story here is the US military and the US govt in general continuing to let ego degrade capability. I'm not going to get into a discussion about what is legal, I am personally not interested in that distinction here, the core point is that this is the US being stupid, again.
Say we have this prompt for Claude at the Pentagon: “You have control over these 50 drones, fly them to Ethiopia and eliminate all possible terrorists you can using the maximum endurance of the drons. In this folder you have all the necessary intel. Confidence rate needs to be at least 70%. Report back when all drones have landed back at the base”
Why is this not considered human in the loop? And let’s say human in the loop will just press Y; what is the difference?
I am baffled the DoD/W needs to rely on a third (commercial party) for something strategic as this if they deem SI strategic. Pistols and rifles aren't the same thing.
Hire people and pay them well and develop whatever yourself without this charade, they have unlimited budgets.
I am not taking a moral ground, but I can't see how "an Anthropic" fits in. You might say Boing or Lockheed, Sig Sauer and Colt and FN do, but it feels somehow different as they've "bent the knee" for decades.
what is SI?
"Super Intelligence", Trump's renaming of AI presumably so his Secretary of Education stops mixing AI up with A1 (the steak sauce). GP is apparently an early adopter of all Trump's preferred name changes.
No, it was in jest, the whole thing is laughable so all this stuff with him is an accidental SNL skit.
dear leader Trump proclaimed that ai was dead and replaced with super intelligence. He has ordered his government to replace all text mentioning AI with SI.
for the next 800 days
but really, they all are, look what Grok did to hundreds of Iranian children
* https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5928204-pentagon-musk-...
Grok didn't push any buttons. People did.
People who trusted Grok because other people told them Grok was trustworthy.
And what is the military going to do, not believe everything they're told!?
Wtf is life just court battles back and forth for everything forever now?
I guess it beats physical battles to resolve disputes.
Without taking sides in this statement, I do think it's important for a private company like Anthropic to have a mechanism it can turn to when it feels it's been inequitably treated by the government.
> Wtf is life just court battles back and forth for everything forever now?
Not for peasants like you and me! We are forced to surrender our Seventh Amendment rights in order to be able to do most things that are part of everyday life.
I don’t agree with the decision, but I don’t think courts should be able to easily overturn the federal government’s findings when it comes to national security in a specific decision like this.
It seems very likely that AI will ultimately be under government control. To me, this is the nightmare we are all afraid of. And Dario's essay subtlety confirms this.
There is no doubt that Anthropic is a supplychain risk. This is irrespective of weather you agree with Anthropic or Pentagon on anything.
I actually thought they’d dropped this because I feel like I’m still hearing about Claude being used in the US military. Don’t they have Mythos?
1790368354 | Anthropic's Claims over Its "Supply Chain Risk" Exclusion by Dow Rejected | https://reason.com/volokh/2026/09/25/anthropics-first-amendm... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49849556 | 4 comments
1790417228 | Court rules Trump can blacklist Anthropic for refusing to enable Claude features | https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/09/court-rules-trum... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49855010 | 0 comments
Is this something to do with anthropic model being used to kill 150 children in school bomb via palantir?
> Judge Gregory Katsas wrote in the majority opinion for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which Judge Neomi Rao joined. Katsas and Rao were appointed by President Donald Trump.
> Before his appointment to the bench, Katsas served as Deputy White House Counsel in the first Trump administration
> [Rao] was appointed in 2019 by President Donald Trump, having served in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019 as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
The autocracy is in full swing.
This is the real crux of the mattter. The rule of law means nothing when the autocratic authoritarians have installed corrupt judges that just rubber stamp the dictator's decrees. At every level, it's a bad faith execution of all the trappings of law, but with none of the ideals or justice. We see the same setup in every authoritarian country - it's not like Russia or China is lacking for laws - rather the authoritarian dynamic is always about how they're bent and abused to serve naked power.
The real problem is how many people eagerly eat and repeat the nonsensical bullshit, as if they are airtight logical deductions rather than mere rationalizations promulgated by the party's apparatchiks. I don't know if most people still just want to feel power from being on the "winning team" or if they're really unable to mentally model situations with independent parties that have their own rights while government has restrictions in order to preserve those rights, or what. Alas, it does not bode well.
I think it's a third thing: people ignore inconvenient issues as long as they get theirs. Conservatives just want to "win" conservative things and don't care if democracy dies in the process. They might even pretend democracy still exists with a single party in total control of the government.
That was the norm in 1930's Germany. They still had "voting", but only one party could win, and the state eliminated all opposition. (concentration camps were originally created to detain political enemies, and only years later started to include minority groups) Most Germans went along with it because as far as they could tell their nation was improving. Strong leader, better economy and rule of law, out with the old, convenient scapegoats to blame.
Russia and China both had long periods of murdering millions of people in order to break the people into submission for their new regimes. America hasn't had that yet, but history does rhyme.
Dario n sama though smart n driven individuals keep trying this game of tryna one up competition by regulatory capture.
maybe they will succeed just like how it was done with the Interstate Commerce Commission.
but likely now competition is global thanks to the Chinese labs and other small model providers like Mistral.
Incredible.
TBH Anthropic was used for target selection in Iran and if Amodei oversold operational AI and was reason why US bled so many highend munitions... only for Iran to survive than basically everything downstream of the shit show including energy prices is on their heads.
The court accepted the government's overbroad, inaccurate, and pretextual interpretation of supply chain risk (the relevant statute being at [1]). The court also accepted a national security exception to the First Amendment that is never hinted at in the Constitution's text, yet somehow carries water in courts like this one [2]:
> For one, if the court’s statutory interpretation about the power to affect the operation of delivered software were correct, then pretty much any software product, at least those still subject to vendor-supplied updates, could be considered supply chain risks, given that any update could make substantive changes. In any case, it would seem to mean that any AI model would be too risky for the government to use, because there is nothing unusual about Anthropic’s model-control architecture—to the extent Anthropic could still control its model, so could any other AI vendor potentially control theirs. Whether they would or not would depend on the contract restraining them, and the only thing potentially different about Anthropic is that it did not want to be contractually obligated to allow certain functions that Hegseth really wanted—functions that were ethically dubious at best and monstrously dangerous at worst.
> But because that contractual reluctance upset Trump and Hegseth, they singled Anthropic out, alone, for negative treatment, turning their pique that “we can’t agree with Anthropic on how the software would need to be designed for us to be able to buy it” into “and because we can’t agree then NO ONE ELSE IN THE GOVERNMENT CAN EVER USE IT.” Per the DC Circuit, such an overbroad measure—after all, not every agency had the same concerns about changeability that the military might, yet Hegseth was deciding for them, too, whether they could use Claude, even when its architecture created no particular risk to them—and clearly punitive measure was perfectly fine because it implicated the implicit “national security” exception to the First Amendment the Founders apparently wrote into it in invisible ink.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/3252
[2] https://www.techdirt.com/2026/09/25/dc-circuit-oks-hegseths-...
My unpopular opinion is, Anthropic should move outside the US. I think they will thrive as Europe main AI lab.
Good.
This is more about wringing Anthropic's hand to agree for handful of defense companies to be the official AI translators to government.
I'll tell you what's a supply chain risk...
The current fucking US administration.
What a sophisticated opinion.
Sophistication isn't necessary when something is plain and brutally obvious.
You mean when a radical bias is so blantly put?
Threatening nato, tariffs and literal trade embargo on Canada is absolutely disruptive to the literal supply chain. The whole world is rapidly redesigning the supply chain to remove the US as a node to the greatest extent possible. America will be poorer with less selection of goods and less access to foreign markets because of this.
America makes nothing anymore and consumes everything. The only thing disruptive is America redesigning the supply chain for onshoring. They can barely make a pair of shoes or even make make underwear. America is poorer because of dems and their close relationships with chinese. They'd sell their own mothers to make a buck.
Canada specifically is unbalenced trade partner. "The U.S. runs a trade deficit with Canada—totaling approximately $27.3 billion to $48.3 billion annually"*
* SRC: https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-value-of-us-trade/c...
The same way the dems block BYD from the U.S. market. That alone would finally bring the masses to electric vehicles. I'd be first in line for two them.
You seem like you've never heard the arguments against your position. To say America doesn't make anything is patently false. We have one of the most sophisticated manufacturing sectors in the world. Its just focused on complex machines that make other machines, aircraft, and medical devices.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/straight-from-source-legacy-m...
https://www.zeiss.com/metrology/us/explore/topics/top-10-man...
To blame democrats is wildly untrue. Nixon normalized relations with China, Regan let broad liberalization and deregulation and union busting specifically targeting manufacturing, democrats were resisting all the way but kept losing elections until Clinton adopted many of these policies. And I do think it's clear that letting China into the wto without demanding more reforms was a mistake.
But obama was actively strengthening the solar, ev, and rare earth mining sectors (with republicans screaming that he was interfering with the free market by picking winners and losers, now we have a president taking equity stakes in intel and a percentage of sales of nvidia chips while running personal businesses out of the whitehouse and china has totally captured the solar and electric manufacturing sectors that we could have and should have won) and strengthening intellectual property protections against China with the transpacific partnership that Trump destroyed. That agreement would have done more to silo China and stop the IP theft than anything else.
Your understanding of trade is wrong. Canada is not an unbalanced trading partner, the flow of goods back and forth result in finished products like cars and tractors that are sold around the world for a profit so even if I were to concede that we spend more money in their market than they do in ours, which I am not, that activity facilities broad profitable economic activity. If we import $100m of lumber to build homes and they import $0 that doesn't mean trade is imbalanced. It means we bought a product and used it to build $800 million worth of homes for a $300m profit. Further youd have to look at the cost of alternative sources of lumber if it cost $200 million for domestic lumber then we saved $100 million that could be used to fund other economic activity.
Your argument regarding BYD is contradictory. You can either have trade barriers to preserve manufacturing or free trade that allows global competition at risk of putting your domestic manufacturing out of business you cant have both. That's why our TVs are Samsung and LG and TCL instead of zineth and RCA. Most countries try to preserve at least some automotive manufacturing because it's essential in war to have that specific manufacturing capacity.
I grew up in NC and saw textiles and furniture manufacturing leave hollowing out entire cities. Your analysis is wrong and the facts and causes don't match your position
Absolute clown show in the US right now
Trump is a supply chain risk.
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Genuine question: does anyone know what concrete obligations this designation actually imposes? Everyone's arguing about the politics but I haven't seen a clear explanation of what Anthropic is now legally required to do or not do.
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Posted this in the wrong thread.
Anthropic isn't stopping me from getting Chinese parts, Yukon Jack and good Cadbury chocolate.
trump is. Designate him!
If the CEO of any other defense contractor did this, they'd be summarily fired by the board.
Not ones whose defense customer base is dwarfed by its commercial customer base.
This is technically true, but OpenAI and Anthropic do not have a moat. Their mid to longterm financial horizons desperately depend on sinking their claws into government contracts which (in time) are larger and stickier than quarterly commercial contracts. Everyone knows Anthropic's customers are feeling tremendous to move to open-weight models for cost-savings which is going to nose-dive their recurring revenue story for IPO.
No defense contractor CEO in history has ever built a company this large, this fast. I don't think anyone is even thinking about firing Dario.
A Terminator walks into military headquarters, and asks the general who it needs to kill. The general says, sorry, can't use you. I have a stipulation that I can't use terminators because of the internal AI. You might turn on us and kill all the humans. The terminator says. Fine. I'll go get work for your enemy, and walks away.
I agree with its designation. The security scans from Claude Mythos have been highly suspicious, wrong, and with a significant false positive rate. Claude also directly causes conflict within teams through excessive utility of "git blame" which weaponizes everyone against each other until only Claude has control. I've had very bad experiences with Claude and only Claude.
> Claude also directly causes conflict within teams through excessive utility of "git blame"
Lol wtf, do you think nobody here knows how to use git? this is like a Fox News comment, you are not a developer and are trying to spread fear because a word was used jokingly. "git blame" is just a diff tool.
You cannot use git blame to cause conflict.
He is literally calling Claude "evil" in another comment. Probably for the "reasons" outlined here. I am at a complete loss for words really.
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I don't think the majority of Claude users would agree with your assessment.
I think any user of Opus 5 would - it was literally a terrorist. Thank god they retired it for 5.5 superseding it!!
I never claimed they would and don't you think anyone who calls themselves a "Claude user" would be biased?
or anyone who ever used `git blame` and knew what it did
lmao trying to imagine the scenario GP envisions as they "typed" together their comment
Found the person who got blamed by Claude