Anthropic has vowed to fight this designation in court.
Without weighing in on the constitutionality or legality of the move, I think it's obvious that this kind of retaliation power is unmatched by any private business that has a contractual dispute.
If a private business doesn't like Anthropic's terms, it can walk away from the deal, but it can't conduct coordinated retaliation with other companies before ending up in antitrust territory or potentially violating the Sherman Act.
Now for my editorializing: The fact that Pete Hegseth is willing to apply this type of designation against a U.S. company simply because he doesn't like its terms is pretty chilling. It's all the more scary once you consider which terms he objects to.
There's a lot of backchanneling going on between Emil and Dario because everyone's in the same circles but it's all for naught.
In fact adding onto it, IIRC this is the reason why google and amazon have to divest essentially from Anthropic if they want Govt. contracts
Hope this helps though a lawyer's input will definitely be more credible. So its good for them to respond as well.
https://www.inc.com/chris-morris/legal-legend-leading-anthro...
For example from history we know that Schindler from Schindler's List was indeed a supply chain risk. He harbored persecuted people, he took and sabotaged government contracts. He did the moral but anti-government and illegal things. He was corrupt traitor from governments perspective.
The current US government already is labeled as fascist by many, the guy who designated Anthropic supply chain risk is allegedly a war criminal.
I don’t see why anyone not into these things would not be a supply chain risk.
I know that its very unpopular or divisive to say this but Anthropic can be a hero only after all this is over. At this time people in charge do double tap on survivors and take pride for not having conscience, they give speeches about these things.
Our country is not being run by the rule of law right now.
This is provably not true. The fastest way for this to become true is to believe it, or at least to parrot it, even in a facetious way.
Even though it seems that way, he really isn't, even now. Many of his EOs and other actions have been struck down in court, and while compliance with court orders has been far from perfect (another alarming trend), Trump has not actually gotten away with doing everything he wants to do.
I do fear for the future of this country, for rule of law, and the democractic norms that degrade day by day. But Trump is not actually above the law, as much as he wants to be.
In the US, government is not in control of business specifics. Certainly the government can regulate businesses, but when the government wants to do business with a company, they don't get to dictate the terms. The government and the company come to a negotiated agreement, and then both abide by the terms of that agreement. Or they don't come to an agreement, and they go their separate ways, and that's the end of it.
This was just a contract dispute, and nothing more. The US government has no legal right to use any companies' products on terms that the US government dictates. (Yes, there are exceptional/emergency cases where they can do this, but that's more a nuclear option, and shouldn't be used lightly.) Consider a different set of circumstances: the US government wants to be able to use Claude at $10 per seat per month, unlimited usage. Should Anthropic be forced to accept these terms? And if they don't, it's reasonable to designate them a supply-chain risk? I don't think so. A dispute over contract terms around acceptable use is no different.
Designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk is about retaliation and retribution, plain and simple. The US government, outside of the Pentagon, could certainly use Anthropic for many different purposes if they wanted to, and it would be fine. But not now: as a supply-chain risk, no one in the US government can use them for any purpose. And this might even be a problem for unrelated companies that use Anthropic products internally, but also want to obtain and work on government contracts.
It's not a good thing, AT ALL. There's a huge loss of overall productivity when you have corrupt systems (see Russia), which is why modern governments have worked so hard to lower corruption. But Trump ruining all that isn't going to end business ... it's just going to make everyone pay more for everything.
I would argue that they did not. They should have and some were better then others.
But, bulk of financial markets, all of predictionmarkets and crypto, startups and sillicon valley, Musk imperium, Thiel, Murdock, all run on corruption. And to large extend, Trump is the endgame of that.
Seems like a great ROI. The loser is Average Joe with a 401(k).
Arguably large parts of the market in the US have been irrational and largely vibes based for a long time at this point. This action (like many others coming out of the Trump administration) adds to the chaos but I tend to doubt it will be the event that causes Wile E. Coyote to look down.
You don't see how?
Well, just watch and wait, and you will see that this will have essentially zero effect on US investment.
It's petty and sad, but nothing ever happens.
Who else is even in the conversation? China? They would never do something like this!
Even if companies were pretending to play by the rules before, at least they had some need to put in the effort to pretend. When a society can see belligerent ostentatious corruption going on as the norm, nothing good can follow.
Anthropic had no problems to do business with the current administration until now. Are we to pretend it was all for happy purposes until now?
It turns out a working economy requires well paid workers because somebody needs to buy shit
Even "capitalist overlords" (why not "evil bourgeois swine", while we're here) realize that. The "all SWE replaced" jabbering is a sales pitch to the uninformed. I.e. it's more P.T. Barnum than Jay Gould.
DeepSeek is Chinese.
Avoiding the MAGA collaborators is not as difficult as you make it seem. Foundation models have genuine global competition.
And I'm just trying to play out what happens if Anthropic, and Google (if they haven't already), capitulate. Am I just going to forego using the best models and suffer any repercussions of not having access when the people who couldn't care less if the military is using AI for illegal uses continue to leverage them? When I say illegal I'm talking about the surveillance-of-US-citizens red line Anthropic would not agree to. The autonomous weapon one I'm sure there are zero laws against and so that wouldn't actually be illegal.
No reasonable self-respecting person would agree to that, that’s basically “my relationship with you is contingent upon your guilt, until proven innocent.”
Is this about locating the right target for a sortie for example?
The whole point is that the use-case does not matter; either you allow the government to do everything they want, either you don’t.
More generally, are there any comparable contract requirements in the field of defense, for a company in the same position as Anthropic? I'm curious.
I suppose the USA's frenemies will jump on the occasion and use the incredible opportunity offered to them in a silver platter.
The reports about Venezuela and Iran seem to suggest it's primary role was processing bulk intel.
But also that it was being used in planning and target selection.
Presumably what spoked Anthropic was that these tools were about to be directed internally.
But it's not clear if this is a point of principle that the government wants no holds barred with it's tools?
The last I commented about LLMs I was ad hominem'd with "schizophrenic" and such. That's annoying but doesn't deter either my strange research or concerns, in this case, regarding the direction LLMs are heading.
Of 4 frontier models, one is not yet connected to the DOD(or w). While such connections are not immediate evidence, I think it's rational to consider possible consequences of this arrangement. By title, there's a gap, real or perceived between the plebeian and mil version. But the relationship could involve mission creep or additional strings as things progress.
We have already a strong trend for these models replacing conventional Internet searches. Not consummate yet, there is a centralizing force occuring, and despite being trained on enormous bodies of data, we know weights and safety rails can affect output, and bearing in mind the many things that could be labeled or masquerade as safety rails, could be formidable biases.
I frequently observe corporate friendly results in my model interactions, where clearly, honesty and integrity are secondary to agenda. As I often say this is not emergent, nor does it need be.
Meanwhile we see LLMs being integrated into nearly everything, from browsers to social profiling companies (lexis nexis, palantir, etc) to email to local shopping centers and the legal system.
'Open' models cannot compete with the budgets of the big four. Though thank god they exist. But I expect serious regulation attempts soon.
My concerns with AI are manifold, and here on hn, affiliated by some, with paranoia or worse.
And it seems to me, many of the most knowledgeable and informed underestimate LLMs the most, while the ignorant conflate them to presently unrealistic degrees. But every which way I perceive this technology, I see epic, paradigm smashing, severe implications in every direction.
One thing of many that gets little attention is documentation vs reality regarding multiple aspects of AI, e.g. where the training vs privacy boundaries really are if anywhere. As they integrate more and more tightly with common everyday activities, they will learn more and more.
A random concern of mine is illustrated by the Xfinity microwave technology which uses a router to visualize or process biological activity interacting with other wifi signals. Standalone, it's sensitive enough to determine animals from adult humans. Take for example the Range-R, a handheld device, sensitive enough to detect breathing through several walls. Well, mix this with AI and we get interesting times.
I could go on, or post essays, but I such is not well received in this savage land.
The military intervention with AI, aside from being objectively necessary or inevitable in some ways (ways I am not comfortable with), I find it foreboding, or portending. I see very little discussion on the implications, so figured I see if anyone had anything to say other than to call me a schizophrenic and criticize my writing. *
*See comment history
I am having trouble understanding what you are saying. If you were more explicit I and other people would be able to respond and interact with your writing. As it stands, I am having trouble finding anything concrete to interact with.
I feel you may be onto something, but you're not saying, so I (and I imagine other people) can't see it.
https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.c...
The civil society should be quite concerned about this kind of attacks.
That’s ultimately why Ted Cruz spoke out about the Kimmel cancelation. It doesn’t take long until those powers are turned against you.
Makes sense, obviously, but yeesh.
At the very least it demonstrated supreme naivete at the highest corporate levels. There are game theoretic reasons why a military should never accept any external restrictions on an asset.
Are you under the impression that the military is submitting Anthropic API calls?
Whatever model the military is using is as much of an asset as the F35 they purchased.
Depending on their agreements, you could argue it's a rented asset. Doesn't change any calculus.
I'm curious what'll openai signatories on notdivided.org do now - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47188473
Remain undivided in spirit while grinding for OpenAI?
But given that what would typically be red lines for previous administrations have been brazenly crossed without consequences, why would they bother?
Especially 'weak' things like 'caring about people'.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186677 I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk (twitter.com/secwar) 5 days ago, 1083+ comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189441 Anthropic says it will challenge Pentagon supply chain risk designation in court (reuters.com) 5 days ago, 37+ comments
What if Anthropic just shrugged, dissolved the company and open-sourced all of the Opus weights? Could this harm OpenAI and advance AI in a reasonable way?
Look I know it's an insane idea. I'm just curious what the most unhinged response to this might be.
Far more likely is they spin up a defence focused subsidiary with slightly different policies if they really want to sell to them.
I mean what if all the employees stripped off their clothes and walked through the streets naked while barking, then called up their middle school math teachers and barked live dogs then moved to a commune and stood on their heads.
> Writing out a thought I had, someone please critique my reasoning here...
I mean to critique your reasoning, it makes sense to also include a criteria of something they might reasonably do. There are an infinite number of unhinged things a group of people could in theory do. But maybe start with something they would actually have an incentive to do.
Why would they voluntarily dissolve their company, put themselves out of work, release their crown jewels and get nothing for it? Yes it's unhinged but unless I'm missing something bug, they wouldn't do that because they wouldn't at all want that to happen.
I canceled my ChatGPT subscription a couple of days ago. In my opinion the Trump administration has become far too much of an "imperial Presidency" in its acts of war and its attempts to bully companies. It is also corrupt on a massive scale. I distrust anyone who thinks "yes, I'd like to work with this administration".
Goverment is being super unreasonable here. And tyrannical too, companies dont have duty to provide unreliable arms for illegal war.
The government can come into my shop and order sixty thousand widgets built exactly the way they say they want them built, and it may be something that doesn't run afoul of any laws at all.
But that doesn't mean that I am required or compelled to build widgets their way -- or at all.
I'm free to tell them to fuck off.
The government can then find go someone else to build widgets to their specifications (or not; that's very distinctly not my problem).
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