Discussion

Judge blocks Pentagon’s effort to ‘punish’ Anthropic by labeling it a supply chain risk

comrade1234: I'm sure the contracts will start rolling in now.

JohnTHaller: Some judicial pushback against authoritarian policies is good to see.

charcircuit: What's the point of a supply chain risk distinction if you can't mark a company as a risk if they express that they will be a risk?

0x3f: Is the practical outcome much different? I doubt they'll get contracts either way, so the labelling was just a formality.If anything it seems the label gave a veneer of legitimacy for the admin by using an existing mechanism and terminology rather than just saying "we're going to block your access because we feel like it".

paulpauper: So much for all that alarmism a month ago. Just got to be patient and wait for cooler heads to prevail. Or it goes to show how Anthropic handled it well, by making their case as persuasively and assertively without delay as they had done.

SpicyLemonZest: I completely disagree with the idea that a court not allowing the Secretary of Defense to bankrupt a company for disagreeing with him means it's wrong to be alarmed that he tried. It remains extraordinarily alarming that the guy who runs the US military thinks anyone who tries to stop him from doing what he'd like is a threat.

jonplackett: It’s all a big PR campaign. They will reveal shortly that they used Claude as their legal team.

why_only_15: The point of the supply chain risk designation was not just to have the DoD stop using Anthropic (they could have done that by just cancelling the contract). Their intended effect was to force every company that sells to the US government, no matter how indirectly, to not use Anthropic in any way, which would effectively destroy them because almost every company is in the supply chain (for example my company is https://calaveras.ai/ because we sell to AI companies who in turn sell to DoD).

0x3f: I understand that, but I suspect the admin will now just have an informal, not-written-down policy that does exactly the same thing.

why_only_15: This is not really possible. My guess is that the government is not willing to spend the necessary quantity of money to get e.g. Amazon or Google to divest of Anthropic and stop providing them computing resources.

0x3f: I believe Palantir are the only ones providing gov with Claude access

why_only_15: The point is that if DoD's supply chain restriction does what Hegseth seems to want, all contractors involved with Anthropic would have to divest. That includes Amazon and Google, who are both DoD contractors who provide massive quantities of capital and compute to Anthropic. It's irrelevant that Anthropic provides Claude through Palantir.

tim4ock: Not surprising given since Biden appointed Rita F. Lin as a U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California, confirmed by the Senate in a 52-45 vote on September 19, 2023.Won't stick on appeals and for sure if it makes it to the supreme court will be a costly suit.

mmoustafa: The Supply Chain Risk label requires every single company in the supply chain of a product or service provided to the US Government to either drop Anthropic or get dropped themselves. This is not just suppliers, but also includes suppliers of suppliers all the way down. This is a much larger chunk of the economy (approaching 100%) than the Pentagon/DOW.

0x3f: Yes, but> I suspect the admin will now just have an informal, not-written-down policy that does exactly the same thing.

root_axis: That doesn't make any sense. You can't apply an informal policy to the entire supply chain.

Dylan16807: How is an unwritten policy about suppliers of suppliers of suppliers going to affect a million companies?

alienbaby: I'd wish more for an impartial, considered judgement

KronisLV: > Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the governmentWhat issue do you take with that statement or the outcome here? I think Anthropic’s position on what the tech should not be used for was well reasoned.It feels like the govt. flipped out based on their public messaging and this whole ordeal - instead of them themselves being more measured and just choosing not to use Anthropic’s services if they take an issue with it.

ethin: I believe designating an entity a supply chain risk has far deeper implications than the DoD avoiding that entity, and goes as far as a lawful prohibition for any contractor of the USG being also prohibited from using or working with the entity so designated. Ironically enough, if the comments in this discussion are true that Palantír uses Claude, Palantír would've also been prohibited as well.

AbrahamParangi: meta, but the comment pattern in this thread strongly suggests inorganic support for the government's position.

fwipsy: Can you be more specific? I see a lot of uninformed takes, but no specific bias. Do you mean downvotes?

salawat: To act as a safety valve against foreign companies acting as proxies for an adversary. Not for use against an American company that won't let you retroactively violate already agreed to terms. Anthropic isn't jeopardizing the supply chain, they simply will not let the Government force them into providing services they otherwise wouldn't.

nickysielicki: This is entirely procedural. This preliminary injunction does not take effect for a week (eg: the order does not take effect for another week and the ban stays in place in the interim), which is done precisely to give the DoD the time to appeal to a higher court, whereupon this preliminary injunction order will very likely be reversed/blocked until the lower court has time to rule on the merits.It’s not really unexpected.

Waterluvian: I think the verdict has been in for years now that there is nothing that Americans will mobilize against if it’s only the principles of freedom and liberty on the line. I think it will take being poked with a rather large stick to see some movement. Crippling the economy might be that stick. Unfortunately we all get to suffer their idiocracy.

SpicyLemonZest: As I've told people in the past, what you have to understand is that the First Amendment gives Americans wide latitude to mobilize in ways which don't code as mobilization. There's a nationwide protest scheduled for Saturday based on the premise that Trump is a tyrant and we the people won't let him do what he wants. But it's legal and common for people to say that; indeed, it's even legal to say (and I do say) that Trump should be overthrown. So what would be "mobilization" in a lot of places is just another weekend.

verdverm: The "mark" was capricious and vindictive. That's at the heart of why it was injuncted.

Dylan16807: Is this question supposed to have anything to do with the situation at hand, where what they did was refuse to perform certain categories of service?

verdverm: There are multiple designations, any part of government, defense applications, not allowed.For example, in certain outcomes, Anthropic may not be used by the Pentagon, but still be used by the IRS.

davidw: If you turn on the thing that shows 'dead' comments, there is a larger than normal number here.

dfabulich: Indeed, and the dead comments (from new users!) overwhelmingly favor the government position.But, this is a non-story, because those comments were correctly killed precisely so they wouldn't clog up this thread.

Ifkaluva: No you don’t understand, they can’t accomplish the same by an informal policy.Both Google and Amazon are government contractors. With the designation, they might have had to divest their positions in Anthropic and be unable to serve their models.No informal rule accomplishes that.

0x3f: I don't think that's true, as I stated elsewhere:> I'm not sure that's how the supply chain risk thing works. AFAIK, it has to be part of the supply chain for the products delivered to the DoD to count. I don't think just because Amazon is unrelatedly involved with Anthropic, this forces them to sever that relationship. I'm not sure if Hegseth thinks otherwise, but it's entirely possible that he is wrong or that being wrong is expedient to his threats.

longislandguido: Are you suggesting there is a government conspiracy to influence this dusty corner dive bar of the Internet?

ahhhhnoooo: Are there tech workers who don't know what HN is? It's a pretty reasonably sized social media site.

Waterluvian: You don’t think the horses are not already out of the barn and long gone?

0x3f: I'm not sure that's how the supply chain risk thing works. AFAIK, it has to be part of the supply chain for the products delivered to the DoD to count. I don't think just because Amazon is unrelatedly involved with Anthropic, this forces them to sever that relationship. I'm not sure if Hegseth thinks otherwise, but it's entirely possible that he is wrong or that being wrong is expedient to his threats.

conception: This case means nothing since the administration can simply say well we’re gonna treat them that way, even if they aren’t officially labeled and if you’re doing business with them, we’re gonna cancel your contract. Mob tactics don’t extend to the courtroom..

vdfs: You are absolutely right! /s

nickysielicki: This whole event was precipitated by Palantir using Claude in the Maduro raid, and news of this surprising Anthropic and resulting in them asking questions and maybe suggesting in private discussions that they took issue with this and wanted to introduce more posttraining limits on the ways their model was used by the department. This has been widely reported and I don’t think anyone is really disputing that.If that’s true, then what you’re suggesting is absurd. Because it’s not enough for the pentagon to merely stop contracting with Claude, because that was never the problem in the first place from their risk model. Their problem was they had a prime contract with Palantir for their wargaming service, and Palantir subcontracted with Anthropic as an LLM provider. So if DoD ceased to contract with Anthropic directly, it would have no impact on the risk that Anthropics new posttraining limits potentially posed to their mission insofar as they are reliant on Palantir and it’s services.I have to ask, what other tool do you think they have to protect themselves from this? You can argue that these guardrails from Anthropic are useful and important, and that’s fine, but it really is and ought to be the departments decision about whether they’re comfortable with that or not. It’s their call. They have access to information that the public doesn’t. And they’re responsible when lives are lost. And if they’re not comfortable with trusting service member lives to a specific post trained Opus 4.6 model, I’m not sure what other avenue they have to solve that problem across their entire prime contracting space other than a supply chain risk designation.Any sort of backroom dealings where they whisper off the record to defense CTOs that they have a problem with anthropics leadership and would prefer that they sub out to OpenAI or Gemini instead for LLM services would be totally illegal and a violation of procurement law. So they definitely can’t do that. A supply chain risk designation is the only real tool they have to single out a single company.One thing worth noting: Anthropic is a PBC, which is a new corporate structure that makes it relatively unaccountable to traditional profit motives. But those traditional profit motives are precisely the carrot that the DoD relies on dangling to motivate companies toward its mission. Traditional for profit companies are lead by people who have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit by serving the government. PBCs are specifically designed to remove that incentive structure. That sounds like… exactly the kind of thing you don’t want in your military supply chain.

0x3f: > Any sort of backroom dealings where they whisper off the record to defense CTOs that they have a problem with anthropics leadership and would prefer that they sub out to OpenAI or Gemini instead for LLM services would be totally illegal and a violation of procurement law. So they definitely can’t do that.It doesn't seem they'd be subject to any kind of effective enforcement to me

0x3f: I think that's what the common reporting implies, but I'm not confident that it's true. My understanding is that a supply chain risk must specifically be involved in the supply chain, hence the name. It may be that the admin hypes up their powers for the purposes of instilling fear, but as evidenced by this very post, they can be wrong.

charcircuit: >was refuse to perform certain categories of service?Anthropic wanted to have the power over what the government could or couldn't do. If there was any false positive on something that was supposed to be allowed the government would have to work with Anthropic and get permission from them to do something they are allowed to do. This to me is the risk that Anthropic was giving to the government. If Anthropic expresses that they want this level of power over what the military can do I think that such intention can justify being a risk. That is how it relates to my comment.

longislandguido: Do you think it's more likely a government influence operation, or a single dipshit lazily pasting LLM slop?

longislandguido: I'm reminded of that episode of Portlandia where the mayor was obsessed with thinking the city was bigger and more important than it actually is.

SpicyLemonZest: How would they implement such a policy? Amazon, Google, etc. aren't realistically going to terminate all business with Anthropic based on an informal policy that the DoD won't write down.

0x3f: Same as they already pressure these companies. Remove access to the admin thus giving them unfavorable terms on other issues compared to their rivals. Tell them as much in private and what they can do to rectify it. That's this admin's whole modus operandi, is it not? There's a reason all the CEOs clamor to go to the relevant WH events.

nutjob2: Google the "arbitrary and capricious" legal standard. And try to stick to the facts about Anthropic's actions.

genthree: I recommend reading the law on which this action was based.

SEJeff: Fun fact: Palantir is powered entirely by Claude and was what was used for the Venezuela operation and for targeting for the Iranian operation.

deaux: > Fun fact: Palantir is powered entirely by ClaudeHaha what, OpenAI has been in bed with them and their models used by them since before Anthropic was even a thing. Claude will just have been picked because they considered it the strongest at the task at that point in time.It's crazy to see this kind of misinformation.

SEJeff: Palantir maven uses Claude. This is not misinformation, but fact.https://www.reuters.com/technology/palantir-faces-challenge-...

sashank_1509: Yes, anthropic wanted that power through a legal agreement. Not by spying on the pentagon , or training their AI model to lie to them etc, which seems more appropriate for supply chain risk. The government in this case can just cancel its legal agreement with Anthropic and move on, which was always its expected move. Trying to unilaterally destroy Anthropics business for a contractual disagreement is not fair and I’m glad the judicial is pushing back.

swsieber: I wouldn't call something a non-story just because the ultimate end-goal was mitigated. The fact that it was attempted is a story, especially when it's a meta commentary on story about trying the same thing _officially_.

joe5150: The military can work with someone else's product or use a bit of their trillion-dollar budget to come up with their own.

nutjob2: Could be organic dipshits with little to offer the discussion. That's the most common case in my view.Said dipshits tend have an unnecessarily high degree of self regard.

yubainu: Opinions on the merits vary, but in this instance, the government's actions were undeniably overbearing and unilateral. It is encouraging to see the judiciary successfully function as a check and balance against such executive overreach.

jimbob45: Lost in the cacophony is the fact that Anthropic fumbled a strong lifeline while hemorrhaging cash without a business model. It’s fun to look down at OpenAI but they may not get another chance like this again.

israrkhan: This government contract was a very small part of anthropic revenue. Almost negligible. Their 2026 revenue is projected to be $14 billion to $20 billion. This contract was $200M over 2 years.

MeetingsBrowser: Claude has had such a massive increase in usage since being labeled a supply chain risk the service has been struggling to scale to meet increase demand.On top of that, the prevailing opinion seemed to be that courts would overrule the supply chain risk designation, allowing Anthropic to work with the government and its subcontractors again.It’s hard to see how they could have navigated this better

mrkstu: The issue of course is that the Judge can't change the knowledge that the head of the executive doesn't want people down the chain using this product, so they won't. Anthropic is a dead letter in government circles until the next Presidential election.

macintux: > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ahhhhnoooo: I don't think I overstated it. Tech workers is a small piece of the global population.

felixgallo: It's fun to say that Anthropic doesn't have a business model, but clearly they do. Hopefully they can achieve it while maintaining their standards, even if in the eyes of some that's 'fumbling a strong lifeline'.

mr_00ff00: Had this conversation with a friend, but I think as an America you can be very optimistic about the institutional strength of democracy in the country.People are very pessimistic recently, but if anything, we are seeing that our system works well. A person got into power that a majority voted for, but when he oversteps, the courts and other institutions (even judges and fed reserve chairs he picked!) seem to hold him to the rules.I get the pessimism, but for the most part, I kinda think the system is working.

mxkopy: This is one ruling out of many, many of which directly benefit Trump. See Trump vs. United States 2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_StatesThere’s absolutely 0 reason to be optimistic towards a court stacked explicitly in his favor.

cwillu: The question is not whether the walls can contain the bull until animal control arrives, but whether any china will remain intact.

SecretDreams: They're definitely highly regarded.

nickysielicki: What are you smoking? The DoD will not be compelled by the judicial branch to contract with a company they believe poses a risk to service member lives during an active war where American lives have been lost. That’s just the way it is, and it should be obvious to you if you have a basic understanding of history or law.This is a Biden appointee with two years on the job, and this will immediately be taken up by a higher court and blocked until a ruling on the merits is made. It will be appealed. DoD might have to go to the Supreme Court before this is all said and done, but they will win in the end, and this ban will stay in place until that happens.

etchalon: No one is forcing the DoD to contract with a company.

suid: That may be, but the government doesn't need to declare Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" in order to just not do business with it. A simple clause in all RFPs is all that is needed.The problem with this declaration by the government is that now any company doing any business with the US government would be effectively forbidden from using Anthropic ANYWHERE within their company, which is a huge deal, because the government does want to vet any vendors' software development practices.But as long as the Judge in this case pushes back against such an action by the government, that leaves companies free to use Anthropic for their own internal uses. And most companies WILL continue to use them if it makes economic sense.

Dylan16807: Anthropic wanted power over what the government would do with the servers Anthropic runs. That's not weird and that's not being a risk. It's normal business negotiation.

bakies: The type of contract they had was optional anyway. They could have just not done business with Anthropic in the first place. Really I think this has only promoted their platform as being sane and moral.

SecretDreams: Eh. The actors that use these features use a shotgun approach. The result is you see a bunch of dead comments and assume the system is working as intended, while a couple of the less inconspicuous comments persist. This happens frequently on specific topics.

ncallaway: Eh, it’s not going to be transitively problematic for Anthropic the way the supply chain risk designation would’ve been.Amazon isn’t going to have to divest from Anthropic because of this. Yes, they probably won’t be able to get a contract with Raytheon, but that wasn’t the main risk of being tagged with the supply chain risk designation.

ryanmcbride: whatever you say boss

brandensilva: On top of that, Palantir has been designated as a multi year contract and they use Anthropic under the hood.

rustystump: I had no idea what hn was until about 2 years ago. This would be 8 years into a career in tech… there are dozens of us.

ronsor: They're specifically referring to the dead comments from new users in this thread, so it's not insinuation. They're pointing out a higher-than-normal quantity of shill bots flocked to this thread.The fact that the comments are dead means the system is working as intended, but it's not unreasonable to point out the nature of the comments.

nickysielicki: DoD would like to use Palantir. DoD also believes Anthropic is pursuing posttraining in future models that will limit the effectiveness of Palantir tooling, if used by Palantir, for the purposes of DoDs mission.What other legal mechanism do they have to prevent Palantir from specifically not subcontracting out to Anthropic, other than a supply chain risk designation? Note that directly asking Palantir to prefer Google or OpenAI over Anthropic is a violation of procurement law and highly illegal.What other mechanism do they have?

dathery: They can say "sorry Palantir, we will only sign a contract with you if you commit not to use Claude to provide services" and then Palantir is free to decide if they want to accept the terms of the contract or not. This is how business works.

nickysielicki: That would be illegal and ripe for corruption. It would also require the DoD to renegotiate the thousands of existing defense contract it has outstanding.That’s the entire reason this law exists, because what you’re suggesting is impractical. The department has to confidentially document its rationale for marking a company as a supply chain risk. It’s in the confidential record of this very court case. That’s the legal way to do this.

brookst: Perhaps. But certainly those companies will factor in the risk that this is overturned, or that the government pursues other extrajudicial means to punish those who do business with Anthropic.All things equal, you’d be better off not exposing yourself to risk of financial harm or other punitive measures. Which is the whole point of the government’s action in the first place.

mpalmer: OpenAI smells desperate, and is already understood to be overextended. It isn't Anthropic that retired their flashy video gen platform, ceding competitive ground to Google.

charcircuit: Yes, they can work with someone else. Marking them as a supply risk is one way they can avoid using them and instead use someone else for their needs. So now it seems like we are in a limbo where the government knows that Anthropic is a risk to work with, but they can't official put them on a list that states that.

MeetingsBrowser: Can you explain how Anthropic is a risk to work with?

dathery: Did you read the order? It directly addresses your comment:> More importantly, as discussed above, no one is entitled to conduct business with the Federal Government, see Perkins, 310 U.S. at 127, and irrespective of the challenged actions, DoW and other federal agencies are free to terminate its contracts and agreements with Anthropic, as Anthropic readily admits.https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.46...

nickysielicki: This entire event came about because Anthropic raised concerns with Palantir annd the Department around how Palantir used Claude when the pentagon used Palantir in the Maduro raids.The pentagon can terminate its direct contract with Anthropic but it does nothing to address the risk that Anthropic poses to Palantir’s services, which are (at this point) critical to the way that the Department operates.People keep repeating this lie and I’m sick of it. The direct usage of Claude by the pentagon is not what they’re trying to address, it’s the usage of Claude by Palantir that they’re trying to address. And this is the legal way for them to do that.Again, for the third time in this thread, they MAY NOT ask Palantir off the record to just not use Anthropic. This would be extremely illegal and would give Anthropic standing to sue to the government.

paulv: > that a majority voted forA majority of people who voted. Not a majority of eligible voters and certainly not a majority.

BeetleB: At my previous job at a well known, established large tech company - I didn't find anyone who had heard of HN.Not about people using HN. But even being aware the site exists.

SpicyLemonZest: A CEO's time isn't that valuable. Even if you count an amortized fraction of their total compensation, sending them to a White House event for an evening is orders of magnitude less costly than giving up access to the best software development tools.