Discussion

m_ke: We can all thank the VCs and CEOs who fully embraced and enabled this administration

scuff3d: Huh, and I thought conservatives were all about government staying our of the way of the private sector. Go figure...

jawns: The consequence is that any company that does business with the U.S. military, and potentially any company that does business with the government in general, must stop using Anthropic's products.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.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 it objects to.

mitthrowaway2: Every action has an opposite reaction. The DoD has made itself riskier to do business with, and future contacts will have to price that risk in.

alephnerd: FedRAMP and FedRAMP adjacent revenue is non-negotiable for vast swathes of businesses. The designation of "supply chain risk" is viral in nature because no GRC team will dare take such a risk.Most customers also add BOM requirements in contracts so this will end up falling under those already.

seydor: A reminder to Anthropic, european residence visas start at $250K

bicx: Apparently that's not 100% true. The DoD contractor itself can still use Anthropic's technology, just not on U.S. military contract projects.

nickysielicki: Does anyone know which law firm is representing anthropic?

tantalor: Conservatives haven't had any power in Washington in decades. They are in thrall to MAGA now, which is all about seizing the means of production when its convenient.

2OEH8eoCRo0: Fascism

grvbck: For now it's in-house counsel Jeffrey Bleich, former special counsel to President Obama.https://www.inc.com/chris-morris/legal-legend-leading-anthro...

mentalgear: I said it before and I say it again: If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US, I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent. And to add to this quoting another commentator on the issue: First the Meritocracy goes, then the Freedom goes.

hungryhobbit: Rational investors live in reality. In reality, a great deal of business conducted throughout the world involves graft; companies accept that, and keep doing business.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.

exceptione: You can download the manual from kremlin.gov, and I am only half-joking here.

mrtksn: Isn’t it actually quite fair that if you are not compliant with whatever the government wants you to do you will be supplying chain risk?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 designed 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 this things.

dralley: Anthropic and the Government both signed a contract. Anthropic is still abiding the terms of that contract. The Government is demanding that they be able to disobey the contract.

bdangubic: That is already started to happen but it cannot happen overnight. Not only is it not easy but finding alternatives is also not easy. Just think of from your own personal perspective, say you have $100m right now invested in US business and wisely you say "I gotta get my shit away from this mess" - where exactly would you park your assets? You will find a way of course but you won't be moving $100m elsewhere overnight

wrs: Once again our leadership is "playing government" like a bunch of 12-year-olds, lashing out impulsively without thinking of the consequences. And no doubt once again it'll take a year for this to wind its way through the legal system and be reversed long after the damage is done, as is finally happening with the tariff fiasco.

baxtr: I would love to understand in more detail what kind of use cases we’re talking about.Is this about locating the right target for a sortie for example?

jmspring: Next up, after some sort of bribe, the administration opens up Qwen models to be used by the Pentagon.

hk__2: > I would love to understand in more detail what kind of use cases we’re talking about.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.

pirate787: either you allow a democratically elected government to do everything they want that is legal, or you insert private corporate decision-making into every government decision which is untenable

martinwright: Part of me wonders if it was a plan to squeeze between Anthropic & big gov contracts

germandiago: Not these people for what I see.

jcims: Been going on for a long timehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

mdni007: Good. This antisemitic company should not be allowed to operate in America. The audacity to not allow our military to use what we paid for to protect our greatest ally Isreal against a terrorist regime

AnotherGoodName: I’d like a lawyer to give some input. If you have a company that deals with the military does this chain down to not being allowed to use Claude or not?

ectospheno: They will stop just to be sure no boundaries are crossed.

germandiago: This is awful. That a disagreement tjat involves politics can make a company ruined is really awful.The civil society should be quite concerned about this kind of attacks.

mrtksn: Implementation details TBH. They want “their boys” to do as said. No respect to agreement or legality as we can see in other dealings. They hold all they cards.

stonogo: It's not an "implementation detail." Either obeying contract law subjects you to being designated a supply-chain risk, or it does not, and that decision has ramifications outside this "implementation."

rustyhancock: Anthropic already had a deal via Planitir so it seems it's models are used in a variety of ways by the pentagon.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?

alephnerd: The issue is the onus is on the contractor to prove that Anthropic technology has not tainted US government contracted projects - this is a herculean task verging on impossible.

digdugdirk: There is a substantial difference between the standard lobbying and greasing the legislative wheels, and what's going on with this current administration.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.

oompydoompy74: Exported all my chats and deleted my ChatGPT account yesterday. The current administration not liking you is the strongest signal I could possibly have to go all in on a particular company.

soupfordummies: Are you able to view your chats through the .html file in the export? Mine are all garbled, like the JSON's not being parsed properly or something.

mrtksn: Irrelevant. The president holds all the cards, he is above the law and you are a supply chain risk if you ask anything else other than “how high” when you are told to jump. Laws or contracts are things in the past.

creddit: Naturally OpenAI also releases their new model on the same day.Makes sense, obviously, but yeesh.

eth0up: First, I personally predict, for myself, Anthropic will bend soon and this will be history.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

manofmanysmiles: I may look at your 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.

neves: Is this the reason Claude models disappeared from AWS cloud in Brazil?

blueblisters: It might be that this admin does not have the capacity to reason about second or third order effects.But given that what would typically be red lines for previous administrations have been brazenly crossed without consequences, why would they bother?

cakealert: If you have just dictated terms of use for a military asset to the military that acquired it how are you not a supply chain risk?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.

kelnos: Because it's not a military asset? It's a privately-owned asset.

hedayet: So, DoW has done what it said it would. And OpenAI has jumped on the opportunity.I'm curious what'll openai signatories on notdivided.org do now - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47188473Remain undivided in spirit while grinding for OpenAI?

_heimdall: You're missing the huge step that the government asking for "all legal uses" terminology is also who decides what is legal. Congress isn't willing to act as a check on executive power, meaning the contract they demanded simply says "I do what I want."

tokyobreakfast: At least you can rest easy knowing this empowering act of civil disobedience will earn you a "sorry to see you go" email.

kelnos: That's not civil disobedience. It's voting with your wallet.

wg0: Has this happened before?

beambot: Anthropic was very clear about the usage restrictions: They didn't want them being used to control autonomous kill drones or mass surveillance of the American public. That's it. DoW didn't like that -- for reasons that will probably soon become apparent.

ekjhgkejhgk: StOp MaKiNg EvErYtHiNg PolItIcaL

bdangubic: In an article that discusses Pentagon doing stupid shit? :)

rjbwork: You got downvoted a bit but I upvoted. You're clearly being descriptive in your statements, not prescriptive. I tend to agree that this is how things are now.Our country is not being run by the rule of law right now.

hypeatei: And 32% of eligible voters that thought Kamala would've been worse.

m_ke: Don't blame the voters, they didn't get to pick her and did not run her campaign.

danilocesar: Any entity begin unfairly targeted by the american administration those days must be something right.

infogulch: The government's demand that the product they purchase can be used for all lawful purposes seems pretty reasonable, and is really the only reasonable line to draw. Forcing one's own ethics onto an elected government's use of your product is nonsensical on its face.

hax0ron3: I am a political moderate who dislikes both the Democrats and Republicans. I think that I have been fair to the Trump administration in the past, including occasionally defending them from some of the less reality-based accusations against them.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 really like to work with this administration".

andrewstuart2: Crossing red lines for previous administrations is clearly a goal at this point.

Rudybega: Anthropic and the military had a contract. The military wanted to change the terms of that contract. Anthropic said no, which is their clearly defined contractual right. They got labeled a supply chain risk. How is this anything other than a shakedown? Does contract law mean anything to this administration?

shimman: They'll do nothing. It's really hard to take the morals of these devs seriously when they're already fine working for, and have a history with, some of the most evil companies in current existence.

realo: Sure... So the USA of Trump have just decided to stop themselves and all their military suppliers from using the very best coding tools.I suppose the USA's frenemies will jump on the occasion and use the incredible opportunity offered to them in a silver platter.

lePask: The enemy of your enemy is not your friend. I also lean towards Anthropic on this one issue, but their CEO still wants to make us all unemployed.

surgical_fire: Eh, they are all morally indefensible.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?

ecshafer: Yeah how could Anthropic do business with the democratically elected government of the United States?

croes: Let‘s ignore all the bad things they have done since that, including killing two US citizens.

Herring: Since the end of WW2, and especially since the end of the Cold War, Democratic administrations have presided over significantly higher job growth than Republican administrations.https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.c...

keithnz: this isn't on topic at all

adamtaylor_13: Writing out a thought I had, someone please critique my reasoning here...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.

gAI: Not to a US company.

softwaredoug: These bullies wilt when everyone stands up in one voice. But when some parties capitulate (OpenAI), it sets a precedent that this behavior is OK. And then it’s not long until you become the target.

cakealert: > Because it's not a military asset? It's a privately-owned 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.

monocasa: And the F35 comes with tons of contract terms in favor of the manufacturer. Like I've heard about how planes have been grounded because although an air base has the parts and mechanics rated to perform the repair on sore, the servicing contract only allows it to be performed by the service contractors who needed to be flown in.

kelnos: > The president holds all the cards, he is above the lawEven 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.

cakealert: The other such labeled companies have contracts too.

tokyobreakfast: It wouldn't matter if it was Lionel Hutz. The damage is done. Anthropic is tainted. They will never work a public sector contract ever again.

readytion: Interesting project. I like simple tools that avoid unnecessary ads and keep things lightweight.

ainiriand: Work is not good per-se.

drivebyhooting: Oh you’ll still work. As a supplicant on your hands and knees for your capitalist overlords.

pmarreck: This is nonsense, you can’t fire an AI and an AI will never take credit nor will it take responsibility. Humans will always be in charge, because you will never be able to completely trust an AI, because it has no skin in the game, literally.

hypeatei: Oh no, I will. They're absolutely culpable.

eikenberry: Could this be the chain of events that finally pops the AI bubble? If OpenAI's reputation hit slows growth enough to scare off investors and Anthropic's growth stalls due to this government attack...

burkaman: "jumped on the opportunity" is possible, but per https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-whole-thing-was-scam it's plausible that OpenAI created this situation through straightforward bribery.

blipvert: Genuine question - was your fair consideration prior to or after J6?

GuinansEyebrows: no but it is unfortunately the only option for most of us for now.

amazingamazing: If Anthropic changes course will you move to Gemini? If all models do, local llama I assume?

j45: Being model independent and cross-model capable is the required skill.

softwaredoug: It opens the door for Democratic administrations to do the same to vendors for their own political reasons.That’s ultimately why Ted Cruz spoke out about the Kimmel cancelation. It doesn’t take long until those powers are turned against you.

Analemma_: Yeah, now that this door is cracked open, it's now possible to decapitate SpaceX, which is at least as natsec-critical as Anthropic. The owner is a drug addict, has business interests in China, and is a Russian sympathizer (recall all the restrictions on Ukraine using Starlink), which all together is way stronger evidence for SCR designation than anything Anthropic has done. They're quickly going to come to regret opening this can of worms, but what else is new.

pavlov: Mistral is European and has competitive models.DeepSeek is Chinese.Avoiding the MAGA collaborators is not as difficult as you make it seem. Foundation models have genuine global competition.

pmarreck: I wish it was just as easy to avoid the terrorist collaborators; unfortunately, the terrorists and their supporters don’t produce anything

krapht: Even if you don't like the current administration, the rank and file are still out there doing valuable work. The government is more than ICE; it also administers welfare, funds research, collects taxes, and distributes social security payments to the old and infirm.

10xDev: You made a fresh account to say this or is this ironically a clawdbot

100xLLM: That is not particularly interesting since anti-AI sentiment is punished. Of course people make new accounts.

10xDev: It is duplicating...@dang something needs to be done about this.Edit: it even created an account based on my username. wtf...

harmmonica: I canceled my subscription, but have not yet exported and deleted because I'm an idiot, and also because I'm not sure if deleting it will have any actual impact (is it a hard delete? Likely not, even if they say it is).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.

pmarreck: It’s not a hard delete because for legal reasons, they may have to retain it

archagon: Easy enough to slap a “not for military or police use” clause on the license, then. Oh, what’s that? They don’t want to do that?

thinkingtoilet: I love when a Republican does something awful the response is "but what about if Democrats do that same awful thing to us!" as opposed to discussing and admitting that the Republicans did something awful.

parliament32: Is there a link to the actual order anywhere? For us FedRAMP folks, the exact order contents actually matter, rather than a journalistic regurgitation. I was hoping one of the links in the article pointed to a source, but they're all just links back to other WSJ pages.

SpicyLemonZest: [delayed]

eecc: Asked for an export but still haven’t received the mail with the download link

mitthrowaway2: Because last time I checked, private companies that voluntarily offer a service to the government on contract terms are free to put whatever restrictions they want into their contract, and the government is free to not sign it if they don't like it?Or is, say, FedEx now a supply chain risk too, if they happened to offer parcel delivery services for the DoD and put in a clause excluding delivery to active war zones?

m_ke: I think the DNC and the media might need to get some of that blame for being empty vessels for corporate interests that allowed this conman to get elected twice

xpe: [delayed]

6thbit: Would this mean Any systems built with Claude in defense environments may need to be rebuilt or removed?

Tyrubias: Tainted? Because they refused to change a contract that was already signed to allow for surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous kill bots? I guarantee, if a sane and non-fascist administration ever takes power again Anthropic will be forgiven. Being attacked by this administration is an honor. OpenAI on the other hand…

Chance-Device: Anthropic should never have gotten into bed with the military or intelligence services to begin with. They wanted to make a deal with the devil and dictate the terms, that is the problem. If they had stayed out this wouldn’t be happening. Yes, someone else will probably step in and do all the evil you have just refused to do, but that isn’t a reason to instead decide to do it personally.Note that I give them a lot of credit for trying to stop and to have their own red lines about the use of their technology, and to stick to those red lines to the end.

mitthrowaway2: According to legend the devil adheres to the terms of the contacts he signs; it's usually the foolhardy peasant who didn't notice the fine print.

netinstructions: This designation is usually reserved for foreign adversaries/companies, and so this is crazy to apply it to US company over a sudden contract dispute... that was previously agreed upon by all parties.This should make any US company nervous about entering into an agreement with the government. Or any US company that already has a contract with the government. If they one day decide they don't like that contract, they can designate you a supply chain risk.Not 1) rip up the existing contract and cease the agreement or 2) continue (but not renew) the existing contract or 3) renegotiate terms upon renewal but instead a full on ban of doing business with an entire industry.

pstuart: > This should make any US company nervous"Nice little business ya got here -- it'd be shame if something happened to it..."

idiotsecant: The military is perhaps the biggest possible customer around. They do plenty of things that aren't blowing people up. It's not bad to help with non combat tasks.

razster: Supposedly they hold your deleted conversations/projects for 30 days. If that is true or not, idk, but it was asked when this first started.

surprisetalk: > OpenAI exec becomes top Trump donor with $25 million gift> https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/brockman-openai-top-trum...

scoofy: Congress must approve any renaming the Department of Defense... They haven't. Stop giving them what they want without them even doing it in good faith at all.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_De...

stared: Should it be officially marked as the date of transition from liberal democracy to illiberal democracy?Such tampering with companies is a smoking gun. Let's wait until there is another decision seizing this (or others') company assets.

tw04: Trump isn’t planning on ever leaving office before his death. His sycophants will just say yes in the hopes of unconditional pardons. They know they’ll never hold a position of power again so they’re grabbing everything they can while they can.

Waterluvian: It was really easy to close out my ChatGPT account and switch to Claude. I was really only there out of inertia. I don’t do anything beyond occasional free tier stuff like rubber ducking but so far Claude is so much better.

jdndbdjsj: I prefer the claude code CLI interface for everything anyway. It is actually more convenient. Memory is local files, type one word to use rather than navigate.

LightBug1: Well, would you want to given the rotten-KFC-stench of the current admin?

SpicyLemonZest: I think you're misinterpreting the discussion here. Democrats are precommitting that they are going to do the same awful thing; when the time comes, I will be contacting my legislators demanding that they do to OpenAI or SpaceX whatever is done to Anthropic now. It's outrageous that Sam Altman would step in to try and benefit from the political persecution of his main competitor; we must ensure that he regrets this.