U.S. appeals court upholds designation of Anthropic as supply chain risk
cnbc.com279 points by cramer4next 5 hours ago
279 points by cramer4next 5 hours ago
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.
> 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.
Selling a pen labeled "this pen will refuse to sign certain orders" is not sabotage or malicious and is thus not a supply chain risk. The DoD is free to not buy from Anthropic, but designating them as a supply chain risk is incorrect, as well as arguably arbitrary and capricious given their public criticism of Anthropic's beliefs.
The pen example makes sense if the intermediary were to ship the pen as part of the final product but not if the pen is simply used to draft designs of the final product. It seems that this designation would prohibit using the pen anywhere in the process which doesn't really make sense.
> 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.
Because it's incorrect.
Those are (arguably) adversaries but the actor here is Anthropic, which is not an adversary.
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
That isn't sabotage, that is simply product design. Anthropic is free to create their products that refuse to kill people, and the DoD is free not to buy those products if they don't fit their needs.
However, that's not what a supply chain risk is. It's not an order to "don't buy these products if they don't work the way we want them to", its designating Anthropic as a national security threat because they might intentionally sabotage US military operations.
The department feared Anthropic would refuse if it was used to mass surveil on Americans or kill people without human oversight. Facts already laid out in the terms. Instead of simply canceling or negotiating, they used overwhelming government force against it to apply a designation never before applied to an American company. When its an interaction between trump/trump's government and any other party, it is a good first approximation to assume Trumps side are wrong.
I think the better analogy is an insane nuclear power plant manager deciding it wants to buy pens to use as neutron-flux regulator rods — because after all, a pen is functionally a pencil and a pencil is made of graphite.
Then the pen manufacturer hears about this and says “Our pens are not made of graphite and are not suitable to be used in nuclear reactors”, to which the reactor owner says “it’s fine, they fit in the graphite rod holes, and we’re just using until the next generation of pens come out which will do an even better job”, and then the pen manufacturer says “I’m not going to sell you any pens until you agree that they will be used only writing.”
The previous power plant manager had, of course, already signed a contract to those terms; the power plant is subsequently under new management and upset about being bound by this contract, so they designate that none of their suppliers of parts and fuel are allowed to have any commercial dealings with the pen manufacturer or use these pens for any purpose, even writing.
This is the most accurate parallel as far as I can tell. I've not seen any evidence that Anthropic deliberately built automated systems or escape hatches that literally prevent the US Government from using Claude to do these things. Other than the basic AI Safety mechanisms in place for everyone/general use. It's almost the reverse, where they explicitly don't want to strip away guardrails that say things like "don't kill people".
The intent and framing matters a lot here. Refusal to remove safety features is a LOT different than deliberately building mechanisms to sabotage would-be operations.
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.
You are repeatedly saying they spy on their users? Prove it. Then prove t he other ai companies don't. Then prove that the service they offered to the US government didn't have spying disabled.
You could use the same logic to defend the military declaring that Anthropic is full of pedophiles and therefore they cannot use their products as it would be contributing to pedophilia.
Anthropic offered a contract, with certain conditions, as do all contracts everywhere; that's their purpose. The military did not want to agree to those conditions. If they had stopped there, and refused to sign the contract, all would be good.
> >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 [emphasis mine]
That is speculation, and you can't call it a "textbook designation" without discussing whether there's a basis for that "reasonable fear". Again, that argument also works for declaring you have a reasonable fear that giving money to Anthropic will support pedophilia. We do not know the specifics, but I at least have heard of zero evidence that Anthropic would sabotage something they signed a legal contract for, and yet I have an abundance of evidence that this administration will use whatever contortions are necessary to pressure and punish those who interfere with it getting what it wants. It all hinges on the word "reasonable", and based on the evidence that is public, this specific fear seems more ridiculous than reasonable to me.
If the government somehow had a way to force Anthropic to sign a contract that it did not want to sign, then this fear might become more reasonable. The twist is that this supply chain risk designation is exactly that. If Anthropic now capitulated, the accusation of supply chain risk (eg from Anthropic employees acting alone) would be justified. So the only way Anthropic can reasonably be considered a supply chain risk is because it is accused of being a supply chain risk.
This is a textbook example, yes, but it's a textbook example of corruption and judicial capture.
> 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.
And if they signed a contract permitting fully autonomous killbots, then using the whitelist mechanism would be a contract violation. I have some degree of faith that we'd know if such a contract were signed, because half the staff would quit. (As opposed to half the Google staff quitting after signing such a contract, which has been proven to be an incorrect expectation -- such a contract was signed, and I've heard of exactly one person quitting over it. There may be more, I don't know.)
Anthropic did not change the terms. Those were the terms the US Government signed. It was not secret, it was explicit identified and accepted as a term.
The analogy would be: “A customer agreed to a contract, and after running into a clause of the contract they no longer wanted to follow…canceled the contract unilaterally…which also violated the contract.”
And then declared the other side a supply chain risk, claiming it is a potential vector for a national adversary to break in and cause unwanted bad things to happen unrelated to this contract.
It seems like absurdly bad faith starting at breaking the contract (over "you have to follow the law", no less!) and then to retaliate after that with trying to destroy the company's reputation and ability to do business. The boot licking going on here justifying the government operating in bad faith is both disappointing and short sighted. I didn't think the leopards would eat MY face!
“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”.
> Anthropic took the position that our military’s decision making power should be subordinate to Anthropic’s constraints.
Not at all. They want their product kept out of specific decisions because it's not capable.
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?
I feel like in this thread no one is understanding what supply chain risk designation is. The government can just not use Anthropic, and that's exactly what they're doing, and they are not using it so much that they don't want Anthropic anywhere in their chain of supply. It's not necessarily punitive, the government is just covering their tracks so that if somewhere in their supply chain Anthropic exists, they want to remove them. They are complying with Anthropic's demands to not be used in war and the DoD says, okay, we won't use you anywhere and also enforce that we won't use you, just like you wanted.
It's going to make things complicated w.r.t. software used anywhere within and by the DoD:
1. the linux kernel has patches created by and security vulnerabilities identified by Claude/Anthropic;
2. same with other software like SQLite and rsync.
> They are complying with Anthropic's demands to not be used in war
There was no such demand from Anthropic. Why are you making things up?
Anthropic said "we don't want to be used as part of kill chain decision-making" (actually it may have been even more specifically autonomous/unmanned kill chain decision making)
The DoD responded not by saying "alright, we will use OpenAI for our kill-chain uses" but by saying "Boeing is no longer allowed to use Claude Code".
> Why can’t the DoD say “ok we’re going with a different vendor”?
That's exactly what they're doing. It turns out the DoD is a really big bureaucracy and has process to make sure they thoroughly exclude a vendor and transitive dependencies on that same vendor.
> 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.
The military could just use different AI models for the purposes Anthropic does not want its models used for.
Purposes Anthropic already spelled out in contract form.
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.
Supply chain risk ensures nobody in the chain is buying it and thus becoming subject to Antropic's demand of usage control. They are still free to use it for non-DOD purposes, but if Antropic wants control over DOD, DOD has the right to say "no, we won't have anything to do with you, and thus you're not getting any control over us". I agree it may be unpleasant for Antropic but DOD has the right - I'd say even responsibility - to not submit to control by any private party.
That’s literally what they’re doing. That’s what supply chain risk means.
They don’t buy the product, and the product can’t be used in the things they do buy.
You’re just describing the exact situation we’re in but substituting a drone for a rifle. If the government is mad they should just partner with a contractor who is less concerned about this, which lo-and-behold they did it’s a company called OpenAI.
Anthropic isn’t a supply chain risk since they easy found someone else
That’s not even the end of the story. Anthropic has sued. They really want to sell their rifles to the government and retain control.
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, ...
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.
Your "but then" is off-base. This is selling steel for the express purpose of nuclear reactors, with a contractual clause against its use in tanks, and the US government deciding that it doesn't feel like abiding by the rules in the contract.
> 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.
They sure as hell shouldn't! Selling steel for any use except ships and tanks is a little odd but it's not a risk.
(I'm ignoring the "but then" because this was about future sales not previous ones.)
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.
The military is bound by contract, just like any other government agency. They entered into a contract, with these clauses well-known. This was OK because they have all the same problems every other organization uses AI for.
They could’ve just negotiate a new contract with OpenAI, without banning it from every government agency. But I’m sure that would’ve triggered some kind of extra clause and cost money…
Your entire statement lacks any type of fact.
This is ridiculous. Anthropic should be free to say the terms for using their service. It doesn't "subordinate" the military, and the military is far from some infallible, unquestionable force here.
If the military wants to use AI to autonomously kill people, they can - Anthropic is not stopping them - thy just can't with Anthropic's services.
The government retaliating by then claiming that any use of Anthropic is risk is an obvious farce. How would Anthropic be any less of a risk if they let Claude autonomously kill people?
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.
That is not what they are doing. They could have just canceled the contract and paid the exit clause. This is retaliation, because Anthropic would not move on their pre-negotiated terms. As a result, they are now been from being used anywhere in the US government.
Let me ask you this, if Anthropic did allow them to use it for surveillance… do you think it would stop at the Pentagon?
I support any and all moves that empower private persons and corporations over the infinite force of governments. They didn't try to make anyone subordinate to anything. They made a proposal. Trump pissed and generally made a mess as he usually does and then they randomly declared them a supply chain treat.
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.
This was not manipulated to hinder the mission. Every account of this indicates it was clearly spelled out. They could not use it for mass surveillance or for targeting. The lawyers at the DOD did not miss this. They agreed to the terms, because they had no intent to use it for such purpose purposes.
This is like the change order from hell.
Nothing was stopping the DOD from just entering into a new contract with OpenAI…
But if they don’t jump at the chance to retroactively rewrite the already-signed license, you’re OK with designating them a supply-chain risk?
That’s going to make it rather risky for anyone to sign licenses with the DoD. In fact, it renders the licenses pointless since you just have to do anything the licensee says.
I mean typically the outcome of civil suits is black and white (at least on a per-claim basis).
So Amazon and Microsoft don't enforce cloud licensing agreements with the USG? If the government wants to add 3,000 Windows users to support their mission Microsoft is shit out of luck in getting paid for them?
> 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 don't think this is how preferred suppliers have typically worked through the supply chain risk considering the US has definitely had preferred suppliers before and has not historically used this against a US company that was not on the list and the power of such a designation extends far past the military into all parts of the government. I'm pretty sure this has more traditionally been relegated to simple requirements or specifications.
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.
>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.
You're right, what an incredibly dishonest statement. The actual contract language in there makes it clear that there are no restrictions. My bad.
I thought the difference is that clearly written rules or SLAs are acceptable and can even be negotiated before signing a contract, but having a person, in this case Amodei himself, manually approve DOJ's usage case by case with his own moral judgement after a contract is signed is not okay.
Do you think OpenAI's terms for the DoD are published on a website? Pretty sure when Anthropic got zapped, OpenAI sent DoD a memo 500ms later saying they wouldn't restrict use.
Look at it pragmatically. What does the DoD use every single procurement for? Hint: military use.
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.
The article only cites language for surveillance.
The other stuff...there's zero citations or quotes. Meaning that OpenAI could be having their cake and eating it too, winning a public victory, with no validation on the actual language, consequences, or enforcement.
I think this was discussed ad nauseum last time so I am wondering if somehow this has changed but the biggest part of the issue last time was the retaliation. You seem to suggest that this was due to the government not wanting restrictions on their actions. I feel this severely downplays how unusual this designation is considering, like Anthropic says, this has not been applied to domestic companies.
Why couldn't excluding Anthropic be done a different mechanism than a supply chain risk. Why wouldn't this be a standard part of an agreement or a request and simply refuse to renew or cancel a contract rather than being designated a supply chain risk. If some third party contractor for an unrelated non military reason wanted to use Claude as part of their process, it seems perfectly allowable.
If this was a remotely standard way of operation, why did a fair amount of corporate America sign briefs concerned with the retaliatory aspect.
Parts of the action seemed wholly retaliatory as well since Pentagon officials certainly used it as a threat. Why can't a US company have views contrary to the policies of the US government? Certainly the US government is free to not do business with them, but this designation affects everybody doing any kind of indirect business with the US government which is a rather long chain. If this becomes a legitimate mechanism, how might we distinguish caring about a secure supply chain and simply wiping out a company that disagreed with a pro war attitude? If a machining shop had a policy against manufacturing weapons at all, could they be blocked from making server racks for Microsoft or perhaps light fixtures for the Department of Labor? There are plenty of areas that are, again, non military? I don't think it's credible to claim that Anthropic will deliberately sabotage operations.
>Anthropic opposing the US government
Is it not possible that this would change the risk profile of depending on them. It makes sense to work with people who support you than oppose you for things which are critical.
- Having principles and sticking to them is not opposing.
- Just because you don't do everything someone wants you to do does not make you a supply chain risk.
My point is did everyone know all of those principals and how committed Anthropic was to them from the beginning or did new information come in and now they need to adjust. Just because something is a term in a contract that doesn't mean it's necessarily strongly held belief that will never change.
Who runs the government changes every 2 to 4 years… are you suggesting we completely swap every vendor in the US government to align with whatever political party is in office?
There’s nothing indicating Anthropic was not keeping their end of the contract. If they had, there would have been other recourse.
>are you suggesting we completely swap every vendor
I think American companies should be supporting the government as much as possible. Even when it switches.
>There’s nothing indicating Anthropic was not keeping their end of the contract.
Which is why we are talking about risk and not breach of contract.
It would be pretty surprising to allow a private company to control the military's use in realtime.
This would be like Boeing refusing to let the DoD fly a military 737 at over 800MPH, and they designate them a supply chain risk because they really really want to make the plane go past 800MPH.
> but it actually seems like a textbook designation
How can it be a textbook designation when designating a US company as a supply chain risk is unprecedented? So many actions under the Trump administration are unprecedented it starts to feel like the norm.
No other administration (Republican or Democrat) would do this. The DoD didn’t have a problem using Anthropic’s models during the raid on Venezuela and early on in the war with Iran.
Anthropic says to the former Fox News host it doesn’t want its models used for domestic surveillance or in kill situations without a human in the loop; all of a sudden they're a supply chain risk?
Seems obviously political.
>Anthropic says to the former Fox News host it doesn’t want its models used for domestic surveillance...
Lol, do as we say not as we do!
>In addition to monitoring activists in the vicinity of Anthropic executives and keeping tabs on protests near physical Anthropic assets, the firm is also implementing a “pre-crime” approach, attempting to predict incidents before they happen.
https://prospect.org/2026/09/09/anthropic-artificial-intelli...
> textbook designation.
Hardly. I invite you to [read the opinion][1], particularly the great pains the majority spends on wrangling the definition of the word "manipulate."
Basically, [FASCSA][2] says to denote a company is a "supply chain risk," the govt has to meet the law's rigorous definition of what a "significant" risk actually is. That definition contains a catch-all "or otherwise manipulate the function" of the thing at hand (in this case, Claude) at the very end.
The govt's whole argument is "Well Anthropic has admitted that it can technically "manipulate" the response, therefore its a significant risk, therefore we designate it as such."
The dissent gives an analogy:
> A library might post a sign saying, “Do not shout, loudly talk on the phone, play music, or otherwise disturb others.” The common understanding would be that the rule bans bringing a boom-box into the reading room with the volume turned on high but not listening to music with headphones set at a modest sound level—even though both constitute “playing music.”
It is as if the govt argued "ah ah, Anthropic played music on their headphones, they broke the rules! We therefore have the authority to ban them" and the majority insanely agrees. It is clear to anyone with basic reading comprehension that the "manipulate" clause is supposed to continue the idea of malicious or subversive manipulation that the whole section entails. The hand-waving the majority uses gives the whole game away.
[1]: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=000001a0-d91e-d276-aff6-f97f3...
> 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
I.e. Anthrophic cannot be trusted to honour a contract.
Who'd have guessed?
In almost any case I am inclined to trust entity not trump or trumps government. So is true in this case, where they pissed their pants at anthropic simply making a proposal and decided to use overwhelming government force against it. I will leave you to decide who you consider more trustworthy, Trump or Anthropic.
i agree. by nature a lease is more risky than the military having its own model.
however anthropic also believes it is some kind of entity unto itself so it is not at all reliable.
except it's also stipulating that the paper supplier upon which the orders are signed also cant use anthropic. or the table maker. even though the AI helping make sleeker paper and tables has nothing to do with deciding what to bomb (analogy breaking down lol)
and trump admin originally went WAY further.
they originally said the pen, paper, table etc suppliers cant use anthropic even for products and subsidiaries that have nothing to do with their govt work; far beyond the supply chain of the pen (bomb). Mega Corp Pepsi Co Taco Bell Inc. LLC -> Staples > Pen Co. Sure pen co might be reasonabale. But telling taco bell they cant have claude help expand the baja-blast-radius is way too far. that would be just like secondary sanctions.
iirc there are 2 court cases. one ruled the original order was too broad and i think that still stands? so at least it's narrowed slightly to just the immediate supply chain?
but ianal
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.
There are already several private companies that have this, eg. Apple has specific exemptions from tariffs on smartphones, computers, and semiconductors that they got by paying off Trump and promising to make their iPhone glass in Kentucky:
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/tariff-exemptions-are-bi...
https://www.warren.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/media/doc/l...
The correct mental model for the U.S. federal government right now is not an omnipotent democratic overseer for economic activity, but rather as just one firm that negotiates directly with other major firms for legitimization and legal protection. Their power is likely to decline further, as is the value of "legitimization", as technological developments erode the military's monopoly on physical force. Interesting times ahead - historically tech transitions like this lead to a splintering of state legitimacy and then a reorganization under new forms of governance.
You mean like pharmaceutical companies refusing to supply chemicals for lethal injection?
Its not dictating policy. Any company of any size should be able to set any contract they want with the government or any other party.
Using Claude for working on the refrigerators at the commissary is not a supply chain risk. You're just making stuff up.
Antropic: "We don't want our AIs to be used by the Army to do yucky Army things!"
Army: "OK, we will make sure not to use your AIs"
Antropic: "How dare you! We are suing! We intended for you to keep using it but do only what we want!"
Army: "..."
They weren't against military use of their AI. They were against using it to kill American citizens without oversight or mass surveil Americans.
Not sure if I’m just in my own national security bubble, but I find it troubling to see the perspective that most of the conversation in this thread is coming from.
The US government took a legal designation explicitly crafted to protect against foreign adversaries and deployed it against a private, domestic entity, to their immediate and great detriment.
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?
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.
> 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.
Can't there be more politicians that talk about the pragmatic aspects too? Didn't El-Sayed win the Michigan nomination? I don't understand how this is hard for politicians to grasp, it happened with the Roosevelts and the New Deal, not sure why it can't happen now, even despite money in politics, as Mamdani and El-Sayed winning shows, who both had much fewer dollars spent on them than the competition.
>> the modern Democrats are primarily a corporate dominated party
> I suspect this is changing.
Nope. The democrats have been on the cusp of becoming serious for as long as I've been following politics. It's a con to get your hopes up. Don't.
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).
Multiple attempts at net neutrality legislation have made by democrats, in the meantime the FCC pushed for neutrality under Democrats while republican administrations have a much worse track record of support
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.
The filibuster exists as a convenient excuse to not do anything without offending constituents
I thought the Democrats were the party of big government and regulations whereas the Republicans were for reducing regulations?
> 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?
> 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.
The "everyone has access to the ER" has to be paid somehow, which is through tax dollars. The USA has a for-profit health system but typical neo-liberalism has a safety net where corporates get to dip into a different bottom-less pot. So it makes sense that we make this visible by taxing everybody who isn't paying their own insurance, since they still expect access to ER.
It "literally" did not. What enforcement exists is financial (a tax penalty) and not compulsory. And obviously most people are covered via employer plans or Medicare, as has always been the case. A quick Google says that 19.2M Americans are enrolled in ACA plans. I don't have statistics, but I'd bet that the overwhelming majority of those are willing purchasers. Most people view health care as desirable.
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
Ah yes, the very hard hitting anti-business rule that says if you don't become a customer of my friend's company, you must give me money. I'm sure the businesses were quivering in their boots when every citizen either became a customer, paid a fine, or became a felon.
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.
You would have about the same or less. Maybe UNH gets you a couple extra percentage points per year, but that's because they have an enormous healthcare provider business instead of just being an insurer. But it's still nowhere near a positive risk adjusted return when comparing to a relatively risk-less investment in SP500.
https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/
https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/
Since Jan 1, 2010, 18% for UNH, 15% for MOH/CNC, 14% for CI/ELV/HUM/SP500, 8.5% for CVS.
Also, these businesses are competing to sell a completely fungible commodity good with tons of non profits like Kaiser Permanente, HCSC, Cambia, Independence Blue Cross, and many others. It makes no sense to expect those businesses to be able to earn any decent profit margin when their competition only needs 0%.
> Then why do the 7 publicly listed health insurers have shitty shareholder returns?
CNC is up 90% YoY. That's far more than any of the largest tech companies. Alphabet is the highest of the tech stocks, and it's up 38% in the same period. When we look at the performance of the seven large U.S. publicly traded health insurers, their returns were extraordinary in the decade following the ACA.
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.
This is why this kind of stuff is so difficult to argue about. G-S was repealed primarily by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act in 1999. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bl...
And it is true, that it was signed by Clinton. But it was otherwise an entirely partisan bill passed with exclusively republican votes. All 44 democrats voted nay.
Now, given that, do you really feel that that's a supporting argument to the upthread contention that Democrats are a corporate-dominated party and not interested in regulation?
Please point to the hard-hitting ones, almost all the big co's at the time thought they got off too easy and were expecting a lot worse. At the end of the day, Sarbox and Dodd-frank basically just required those businesses to increase headcount 10%.
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.
> There are rumbles about doing it (anti trust, supporting unions, climate change), but it never _quite_ seems to actually materialize into anything.
There's only so much they can do when dealing with obstructionism, but the party is still putting forward legislation. For recent examples see The American Homeownership Act (https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/senate-demo...) and the Stop Corporate Takeovers of Physicians Act (https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren...)
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.
What a load of bullshit. There are better candidates and parties and worse ones, they are not all the same. This sort of attitude just feeds voter apathy and resignation.
Democracy is an imperfect system, but its much better than the alternatives. If more people paid attention and participated, we would have much better outcomes.
"Both sides"
This is such a tired argument that over simplifies an entire group of people on both sides into a single entity that happens to be the same.
In recent history:
* removed filibuster for lower-court nominations ("nuclear option")
* impeached the president twice in a term
* tried that former president in the Senate after his term ended
* expanded mail-in voting en masse
* repeatedly attempted to eliminate 60-vote rule for legislation
I'm not claiming these were illegal, I'm just saying the process adapts to the needs.
> 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?
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.
> who again, was very obviously and publicly mentally incompetent
You can repeat that as often as you want, but it doesn't seem well grounded. He's always had a stutter, and since he left office he has given speeches which suggest his mental faculties remain intact. Is he slowing down? Yeah. He's got quite a long ways to go before he's in McConnell territory.
In any case, what does his choosing to run have to do with process? Did he violate the process? Seems to me he was following it to a tee.
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.
So one man's desires become the rule for everyone else? That doesn't sound very democratic.
There's no reason picking someone every 4 years is democratic but every 8 years isn't...
Don't forget how Harris wasn't even nominated.
And all the shenanigans around 2016 when Bernie Sanders was shut out by the DNC. Even Elizabeth Warren said outright that the DNC rigged the 2016 nomination. I think the outcome would have been very, very different if the DNC didn't fuck with the timeline and forced Hillary as the Dem nominee.
I’m worried why many big companies aren’t worried about when the shoe is on the other foot.
I worry that they don't expect to leave power because they're acting like they will never be held accountable.
None of them really believe our economic or political systems will be recognizable by 2029. Everyone's playing for position in the short takeoff.
> What's to stop a Democratic president from doing the same thing and destroying them?
They probably will, and the comment section here on HN will overwhelmingly applaud it. Next question?
Democrats don't control the courts.
Whose fault is that?
Whose "fault" is it that the judiciary has become an extension of the executive branch and been taken over by a single party? You tell me..
What's to stop indeed? Some of us in the tech industry want the dems to slice and dice every tech company into irrelevance. They've betrayed society and they should be rightfully punished in fun + creative ways.
How would this destroy Anthropic, exactly?
Not just Anthropic, but practically speaking, the leading foundational model labs like Anthropic and OpenAI are burning through enormous amounts of money, and will need to pay that money back. If they are designated as supply chain risks, or controlled technologies, their ability to achieve that ROI is severely constrained.
They are not turning a profit, and aside from enterprise token billing, every other offering they have is a loss leader. In order to flip that around they need to drive down the cost of inference significantly, either through massive compute improvements, more efficient or lower cost models, and either one lowers the barrier to entry for local and/or private cloud inference for open models. The moat established by the expertise in model training is effectively dissolving as they approach recursive self improvement because any mechanism that prevents model distillation effectively reduces the quality and utility of the models, so each improved model makes their competitors better by default if they want to realize those gains.
The reason for the pivot to control and regulation seems to be more about erecting an artificial moat in their market, and having these technologies controlled or highlighted as supply chain risks will continue to drive investments in alternatives, especially in other countries where data sovereignty and domestic tech has become a priority given the last decade of the US dominated tech industry.
I don't think that AI is going to go away, but I think the future of AI in the next several years looks alot like massive overfunded foundational model providers collapsing, their employees launching dozens or hundreds of direct competitors, and the leading hyperscalers buying up datacenter capacity the way they bought up dark fiber 20 years ago.
The supreme court, I guess. What makes you think they would allow that as long as Trump cronies have the majority there?
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.
I think the blue team has been in a cold civil war since 2016. They can't come to terms with their progressive hegemony ending, but also can't pivot to a new politics because elections are too close to risk a mass preference cascade needed to revitalize the party.
I think the red team is only now starting to come to similar terms, and will increasingly do so as the blue team continues to maximally exercises power against their opponents instead of revitalize the tarnished reputation of instituions.
Around 2030, the US will need to spend 100% of it's tax revenue to service the debt, and California will need to a federal bailout or risk either default or wiping out their state pensions. I believe the coming financial disaster will likely be the catalyst that quiets the 'nothing ever happens' crowd, and both teams will need to reset their politics to the new world, distinctly different than the post-WW2 open society liberal consensus.
A similar phenomenon is happening in Europe.
You mean the president than literally ran on "lock her up"? That's the victim here?
Stop trying to both sides this.
are you seriously equating empty rhetoric to legal action?
Trump was an idiot who made himself an easy target for nobodies with no strategic bones in their body to go after him. note that his guilt or lack thereof is irrelevant, what matters is that legal action was initiated against a past president. this one action doomed the republic just like it did the previous Roman one.
There's a difference between campaigning on something and actually doing it.
Letitia James campaigned on putting her political opponents in prison and then proceeded to try doing so.
This isn't difficult to understand.
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?
You mean the ones that have been doing so for many administrations across both parties?
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're definitely not following my logic because of your false equivalence WRT private companies and private prisons.
If you think prisons should have profit motives where growth only comes from continually seeking punitive policies to imprison people then I don't know what to tell you. The extrapolation isn't that hard and I don't see anything good coming from it. Weird takes.