It isn't in private. It's a public threat in the court of public opinion to apply societal pressure on the company. They are attempting to reshape Anthropic's decision into a tribal one, and hurt the brand's reputation within the tribe unless it capitulates.
Meanwhile the Pentagon could just build its own capacity. Commercial AI outspends federal science R&D 75:1 right now.
Edit: typo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...
But no one, especially the government, should get in bed with them, when anthropic leadership has a track record trying to use their early mover advantace, to effectively create an AI cartel [1]
I'm glad Anthropic is getting a taste of their own medicine.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-10-15/anthro...
Can you quote where I said that ?
I stand corrected
> I'm glad Anthropic is getting a taste of their own medicine.
I took that to mean that you support the Pentagon's threat which essentially IS to label Anthropic as a national security threat, simply because they wouldn't give the Pentagon the right to use Anthropic's AI to operate weapons or spy on American citizens.
Anthropic uses big $$ it to become big fish in the AI pond.
Anthropic just found there are bigger fish in their pond.
I'm glad Anthropic have been reminded of this. THat doesn't mean I endorse the US govt using law to make companies a "national security threat" , although its an extremelt easy path from: monopolistic to -> active "national security threat".
Govt can, and in fact, has a mandate to, go after businesses when those businesses threaten a functioning market. Threatening is certainly part of that arsenal.
That's what anticompetitive rules are all about.
Any company using a huge $$ war chest to shower themselves in regulation, is likely trying to usurp market powers from the public -via congressional bribes- to themselves.
Probably this https://time.com/7380854/exclusive-anthropic-drops-flagship-...
They are being reminded that the US Gov has a LOT of legal power when it comes to anything that could be considered a weapon or munitions. I don’t know why anyone is surprised.
There is exactly one party in this debate trying to help the PRC get advanced military tech, and it’s not Anthropic.
1. Builds tool extremely capable of mass surveillance and running autonomous warfighting capabilities.
2. Expresses shock — shock — when the Department of War insists on using the tool for mass surveillance and autonomous warfighting systems.
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/wyden_letter_to_d...
Plus that the US military also used anthropics products in some form during the Venezuela operation as they publicly acknowledged, plus Hegseth seeming to be willing to put the boot down anthropics’ neck according to the options presented to them, are a lot of interesting things that happened in a very short amount of time for an environment that is usually known to work as frictionless as possible.
Even for Hegseth this is a lot of public eyes on something the pentagon of previous administrations would have handled probably with the same willingness to drown anthropic in their own tears but completely out of public sight.
But the Pentagon works in mysterious ways, and therefore there might be a very good reason for this kind of pressure, that the people who are responsible for national security even risk making a public fuss about it, that we peasants simply don’t see.
I also can’t wait to see how the us military is messing this whole AI superiority softporn up. It’s not a matter of if but only of when.
They have a track record misshandling weapons of mass destruction.
https://www.atomicarchive.com/almanac/broken-arrows/index.ht...
To be fair tho, for the amount of nuclear weapons they are handling overall they are doing a pretty good job. But no more open blast doors for the pizza delivery guy, ok?
The real question is how many broken arrow events can we even have with AI? Is it better luck next time baby skynet serious or we fucked up Sir, everyone is going to die as matchsticks bad, if whatever system they use decides every problem they throw at it can be solved by removing the human from the equation, all of them preferably.
We could use AI for medical advances and to create a communist utopia without serfdom. But it's already looking like we're getting killer robots and more oppression.
Hope I'm thinking about this wrong. I fear very soon the government will begin nationalizing AI resources and forcing AI researchers to direct their efforts towards weapons systems. Similar to what happened in physics. "We have to be first to have autonomous robot armies" basically.
If the Pentagon wants Anthropic's technology because it has desirable characteristics, can it not just train its own AI models? Why can't the Pentagon build data centers full of GPUs and hire some smart people like the commercial AI providers did?
Why in this case, has the usual path for technology been flipped? Starting out as commercial tech for civilians, and then being re-purposed for military use feels unusual to me. Maybe Hegseth's "War department" has a recruiting problem.
Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.
Why would killbots be sensible moderate with the number of hallucinations LLMs have right now?
They just need to have one rm -rf bug somewhere to so something disasterous, and at least Antrhopic's CEO understands the limitations of the software.
vonneumannstan•1h ago
emsign•53m ago
knollimar•49m ago
Between military threats and this, are they trying to slaughter the golden geese of things the US has going for it?
baggachipz•40m ago
colek42•40m ago
vonneumannstan•37m ago
sandworm101•36m ago
There is a name for a system of government whereby a ruling party dictates how industry should employ its property, and it isn't democracy.
oceanplexian•31m ago
mattnewton•19m ago
Forcing those people to make weapons to be used against citizens is nothing like the total war in WW2. Why wouldn’t the pentagon just buy from another LLM supplier?
kalkin•28m ago
mattnewton•22m ago
enoch_r•21m ago
Then the government comes to me and says "hey, actually, turns out we need 500,000 forks and 300,000 knives and only 200,000 spoons."
I say "no, we are a spoon company. Very passionate about spoons. Producing forks and knives would be an entirely different business, and our contract was for spoons."
The military now threatens to destroy my company unless I give them forks and knives instead of spoons.
You say "the voters and congress tell the military how to use utensils, not SpoonCo. Shifting the decision to SpoonCo takes power away from the citizenship."
The military can sign contracts if they wish! They can decline to sign contracts if they wish!
But private citizens can also choose whether to sign or not sign contracts with the military. Threatening to destroy their business if they don't sign contracts the military likes (or to renegotiate existing contracts in the military's favor) is a huge violation.
buellerbueller•4m ago