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?

I’m worried why many big companies aren’t worried about when the shoe is on the other foot.

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.

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 mean the ones that have been doing so for many administrations across 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.

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.

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.

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.

How would this destroy Anthropic, exactly?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

I thought the Democrats were the party of big government and regulations whereas the Republicans were for reducing regulations?

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.

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.

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).

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.

Democrats don't control the courts.

Whose fault is that?

Mitch McConnell's?

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.

You mean the president than literally ran on "lock her up"? That's the victim here?

Stop trying to both sides this.

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.

If the CEO of any other defense contractor did this, they'd be summarily fired by the board.

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?

No. This also means that no companies that work with th DoD can use anthropic models for any purpose.

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

Sure why not? The government is just exercising its power as a purchaser.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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)

I don’t, for profit company you say, nah

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...

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.

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.

I don't think the majority of Claude users would agree with your assessment.

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.

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.

Then the government should have invoked that legislation.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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...

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.

Personally I am enjoying Muse the most and so far havent hit any limits. I also (i know it's not a popular thing) have enjoyed wearing my Meta Ray Ban's since 2023 even if they break as MANY months later they come back to life.

EDIT: Oh damn getting downvoted, tho not surprising. It looks like Meta Glasses are hated as MAGA, maybe Zuckerberg should call them MAGA glasses ha

Keep your perv glasses at home weirdo

You and anyone i dont know are not special ... to me and thus would never appear in my videos or photos.

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!

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Or they could just not buy the product in the first place. The supply chain risk part is pure retribution.

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 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.

so as to surveil

How does Android and iPhone meet the grade given apps have pretty consistently leaked locations, base layouts etc?

Who is the adversary in this case?

"risk that an adversary may" any of them.

China, Russia, Iran, come to mind.

Why is this downvoted? Seeing a bunch of downvotes right now that feel disingenuous (or just knee jerk on keyword matching). Ideally we downvote low quality content not things we don't like.

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.

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

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.

“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”.

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?