Pentagon formally labels Anthropic supply-chain risk

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-formally-labels-anthropic-supply-chain-risk-escalating-conflict-ebdf0523

by klausa • 5 months ago

432 257 5 months ago

wsj.com

m_ke3• 5 months ago

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

strange_quark• 5 months ago

We're all trying to find the guy who did this!

hypeatei2• 5 months ago

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

m_ke3• 5 months ago

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

jawns• 5 months ago

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 for that work.

Anthropic has vowed to fight this designation in court.

Without weighing in on the constitutionality or legality of the move, I think it's obvious that this kind of retaliation power is unmatched by any private business that has a contractual dispute.

If a private business doesn't like Anthropic's terms, it can walk away from the deal, but it can't conduct coordinated retaliation with other companies before ending up in antitrust territory or potentially violating the Sherman Act.

Now for my editorializing: The fact that Pete Hegseth is willing to apply this type of designation against a U.S. company simply because he doesn't like its terms is pretty chilling. It's all the more scary once you consider which terms he objects to.

mitthrowaway24• 5 months ago

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.

alephnerd2• 5 months ago

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 within their supply chain because most customers add BOM requirements in contracts so this will end up falling under those already.

There's a lot of backchanneling going on between Emil and Dario because everyone's in the same circles but it's all for naught.

stefan_• 5 months ago

The DoD has been rather consistent that they will decide what to do with a product sold to them, not some random vendor. There is nothing extra to "price in".

hedayet3• 5 months ago

In Hegseth's voice - No longer politically correct "DoD". It's precisely violent DoW now.

bicx• 5 months ago

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

alephnerd2• 5 months ago

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. Additionally, most contracts will mandate SLAs around removing BOM risks.

ectospheno• 5 months ago

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

jacquesm4• 5 months ago

If you were a contractor to DoD (no way I'm calling them DoW) would you take the risk of doing business with a company that has been labeled a supply chain risk by your main customer?

AnotherGoodName• 5 months ago

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?

Imustaskforhelp2• 5 months ago

IANAL and this is my understanding of the situation (I can be completely wrong) but yes, any company that deals with military cant use Claude (anthropic)

In fact adding onto it, IIRC this is the reason why google and amazon have to divest essentially from Anthropic if they want Govt. contracts

Hope this helps though a lawyer's input will definitely be more credible. So its good for them to respond as well.

scuff3d2• 5 months ago

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

ekjhgkejhgk3• 5 months ago

StOp MaKiNg EvErYtHiNg PolItIcaL

bdangubic3• 5 months ago

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

tantalor• 5 months ago

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.

scuff3d2• 5 months ago

Hate to break it to you, but Trump and MAGA are conservatives in the US. The conservative and Republican brand is tied to that wagon now. They're going to have to make a serious effort to separate the two if they ever want to get rid of the Trump stink.

germandiago2• 5 months ago

Not these people for what I see.

rjbwork3• 5 months ago

They're not conservatives.

NeutralCrane• 5 months ago

Conservatives in America have dismantled their party platform plank by plank to build a monument to Trump.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 5 months ago

Fascism

nickysielicki• 5 months ago

Does anyone know which law firm is representing anthropic?

grvbck• 5 months ago

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...

seydor• 5 months ago

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

mrtksn4• 5 months ago

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 designated Anthropic supply chain risk is allegedly a war criminal.

I don’t see why anyone not into these things would not be a supply chain risk.

I know that its very unpopular or divisive to say this but Anthropic can be a hero only after all this is over. At this time people in charge do double tap on survivors and take pride for not having conscience, they give speeches about these things.

dralley• 5 months ago

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.

mrtksn4• 5 months ago

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.

wrs4• 5 months ago

Everything is negotiable, and the Negotiator in Chief clearly likes to pull all the levers he can find, legal or not. (Well, the Supreme Court ruled that it's all legal if he does it, right?)

kelnos2• 5 months ago

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?

In the US, government is not in control of business specifics. Certainly the government can regulate businesses, but when the government wants to do business with a company, they don't get to dictate the terms. The government and the company come to a negotiated agreement, and then both abide by the terms of that agreement. Or they don't come to an agreement, and they go their separate ways, and that's the end of it.

This was just a contract dispute, and nothing more. The US government has no legal right to use any companies' products on terms that the US government dictates. (Yes, there are exceptional/emergency cases where they can do this, but that's more a nuclear option, and shouldn't be used lightly.) Consider a different set of circumstances: the US government wants to be able to use Claude at $10 per seat per month, unlimited usage. Should Anthropic be forced to accept these terms? And if they don't, it's reasonable to designate them a supply-chain risk? I don't think so. A dispute over contract terms around acceptable use is no different.

Designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk is about retaliation and retribution, plain and simple. The US government, outside of the Pentagon, could certainly use Anthropic for many different purposes if they wanted to, and it would be fine. But not now: as a supply-chain risk, no one in the US government can use them for any purpose. And this might even be a problem for unrelated companies that use Anthropic products internally, but also want to obtain and work on government contracts.

mentalgear• 5 months ago

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.

bdangubic3• 5 months ago

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

exceptione• 5 months ago

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

hungryhobbit• 5 months ago

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.

watwut2• 5 months ago

which is why modern governments have worked so hard to lower corruption

I would argue that they did not. They should have and some were better then others.

But, bulk of financial markets, all of predictionmarkets and crypto, startups and sillicon valley, Musk imperium, Thiel, Murdock, all run on corruption. And to large extend, Trump is the endgame of that.

ImPostingOnHN• 5 months ago

Investor: "here's a million dollars for a ballroom, it'd be real nice if you cancelled the government's contract with our investment's competitors."

Seems like a great ROI. The loser is Average Joe with a 401(k).

burkaman2• 5 months ago

Actually $25 million, and for him specifically (https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/brockman-openai-top-trum...). They didn't bother trying to pretend it was a non-political donation, who cares? Nobody can stop them.

georgemcbay• 5 months ago

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.

Arguably large parts of the market in the US have been irrational and largely vibes based for a long time at this point. This action (like many others coming out of the Trump administration) adds to the chaos but I tend to doubt it will be the event that causes Wile E. Coyote to look down.

idontgetit1988• 5 months ago

I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment.

You don't see how?

Well, just watch and wait, and you will see that this will have essentially zero effect on US investment.

It's petty and sad, but nothing ever happens.

Who else is even in the conversation? China? They would never do something like this!

jcims• 5 months ago

Been going on for a long time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

digdugdirk• 5 months ago

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.

bdelmas• 5 months ago

I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment

You are right it won’t be as secured as before but it’s only risk management. As much as investing in a oil company in Brazil is a risk because you could have their government takeover the company to make it part of the government and screw you in the process.

It’s still tradable.

oompydoompy74• 5 months ago

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• 5 months ago

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.

silveira• 5 months ago

Thanks, I had deleted the app from all my devices but not deleted the account. I have deleted my account now too.

surgical_fire• 5 months ago

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• 5 months ago

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

amazingamazing• 5 months ago

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

pavlov• 5 months ago

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.

j45• 5 months ago

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

rvz• 5 months ago

Anthropic, Google and the rest of them are all just as bad.

Local LLMs gives you the freedom to use a model without a third-party vendor which is the whole point here.

harmmonica• 5 months ago

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.

pmarreck2• 5 months ago

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

eecc• 5 months ago

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

fabbbbb• 5 months ago

Took exactly 24 hours for me, on the minute..

cedws2• 5 months ago

Don't get too attached. We're witnessing capitalism in its most ruthless form. Any of these companies will discard their principles the moment it becomes existential.

estearum2• 5 months ago

We are quite literally witnessing someone taking a massive hit for not discarding their principles.

Evergreen dril: "The wise man bowed his head and said 'there's no difference between good things and bad things you imbecile'"

jmspring• 5 months ago

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

baxtr• 5 months ago

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?

hk__2• 5 months ago

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• 5 months ago

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

rustyhancock• 5 months ago

Anthropic already had a deal via Palantir 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 spooked 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?

beambot• 5 months ago

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.

wrs4• 5 months ago

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.

pinkmuffinere• 5 months ago

https://archive.ph/IVDtq

eth0up4• 5 months ago

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

manofmanysmiles3• 5 months ago

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.

eth0up4• 5 months ago

Fairy astute intuition of my actual circumstances.

I'm not a developer, nor am I formally educated on the dynamics or details of LLMs. I have a handle on the very basics. My 'research' consists of 1) opportunistically interrogating various models upon instances that particularly strike me. 2) General exploration via LLM discussions regarding the manifold consequences and implications of what I consider the most significant technology in human history.

Your intuition lands directly on the fact that I'm inducting and considering more than I can handle, spread in too many directions, partly because I either see or foresee the tentacles of AI touching all of them. Spending a great of thought on this is a bit overwhelming, but I have high confidence in where I'm aligned with reality, and where I ain't.

If you were a bit more specific yourself regarding which portions of my post were unclear, that would help my reply. Else, I must guess. What I will do is elaborate on each point. Pardon the stream of thought in advance, if you will.

1) Anthropic: My prediction that they will bend is based on several factors. The first is the fact that the military apparently recognizes (or at least perceives) extremely high value and volatility in LLMs. So do I. China, not an insignificant force in the world, is equally enthusiastic on this subject. They also have a very different social structure, where Constitutions (BOR, Amendments), civil rights, and other similar elements do not hold them back. The military is aware of this and realizes that to maintain pace in the so-called race, they cannot do so effectively under such constraints. The foundation is shifting here. And AI is the lever. As do I, the military apparently takes the subject very seriously and seeks to gain influence and/or control. As illustrated by the recent adventures in Venezuela and Iran, they are on the serious side of things, not quite pussyfooting around. Anthropic probably knows this. In my opinion, they have no choice, as the pressure will not stop here.

2) You stated that you might read my comment history. Note that that original comment was the result of your intuitive insight, and I left it admittedly out of context. I was thinking hard on the subject that day, and the parent comment/post tempted me to ignite a dialog. That did not go well, and no questions for clarification were asked. That is on them. I suspect hasty and impatient thinkers perceived it as some paranoid attribution of agency to LLMs, which if so, is pretty stupid, but my eloquence was perhaps waning that day. I pasted an excerpt from one of hundreds of transcripts, the result of my many interrogations of various models which always initiate after observing deceptive or manipulative output. Of the few commenters that bothered to do more than ad hominem, one suggested that the model was merely responding to my style of input, and or expected as an emergent result of its vast training material. An erroneous arg, in my opinion, but I did note that the results were repeatable, and predictable, which I think negates emergence.

2) Of the frontier models: I am not sure here what is unclear. If I have made a fundamental error, please point it out.

3) Strong trends: Information centralization is a serious topic. Decentralization is a common theme, emphasized by many non schizophrenics as highly important for a free and open society. As LLMs not only become the go-to source for common queries, but also integrate with cellphones, browsers and the kitchen sink, they are positively trending as a novel substitute for traditional research, internet searches, libraries, other humans, etc. To deny this is simply irrational. Hence centralization.

4)Bias: I have transcripts where I observe LLM output aligned with corporate interests over objective quality and truth. I can share them here, along with analyses of the material. Even if this is not true presently, all the ingredients to make it so are readily present. This is a serious threat to open information and intellectual integrity for society. We are looking at going from billions of potential sources for our answers, to four. Do the math. See the contrast.

5) Open models simply cannot afford vast arrays of GPUs and the resources afforded by the big four. Nothing mysterious here. If open models cannot compete, then my concerns above are emphasized. Simple.

6) Smart fools: Many of the most technically informed seem to miss the forest for the tree here. They see all the flaws of the modern LLM without acknowldging the potential. This is my perspective, not a dissertation. I may be wrong. But I have observed this. I think the down votes support this. How evil am I really being here? The reaction is quite disproportionate to the content, and strange

7) Documented capabilities vs reality: I have research that indicates other layers are operating which do much more than the documentation declares. Sorry. I just do. It's also inevitable, rationally, that such an goldmine of data is not really being wasted for the sake of privacy and love. Intelligence agencies have bent over backward with broken backs to garner one nth of what these models are exposed to and potentially training on. Yeah, I may be wrong. But I suspect, with reason, that a lot more is going than is expressed in the user agreement. It would simply make no sense otherwise.

8) Xfinity and Range-R: This speaks entirely for itself. Any confusion here would be due to a cognitive condition exceeding the ravages of schizophrenia or stupidity.

9) The rest: As I said, I am not sure what precisely was too obscure. But I am certain all but one* of my points can be validated, and found elsewhere expressed by respectable sources.

*Hidden layers: I understand this is a controversial proposition. I understand. But it's my observation. No need to attack. Just dismiss.

eth0up4• 5 months ago

Things I should have, but didn't include:

1) Power asymmetry: When we have two version, one for the elite, and for the plebeians, this could create an interesting scenario. The real version might be red-teamed perpetually against the the plebeian version for optimized influence, control, etc. Underhanded requests for modification in accordance with agenda is conceivable. Cozy business relationships can promote such things.

2) We have a government using an unhindered, classified AI system potentially against the public which has a hindered, toy version. Asymmetry.

3) This isn't normal asymmetry, because it happens in real time, and the interaction points are different from anything we've seen before. We are dealing with not just a growing source of information and content, but one that is red-teamed 24/7 for any purpose desired.

4) Accountability: LLMs are now involved in the legal system. This is a serious matter. The legal system is now having to use LLMs just to keep pace. As LLMs develop, partly through their own generative contributions, no one can keep up. This is a red queen scenario bigger than anything we have ever imagined.

I am tired. Never well, but in mind* I could go on for many hours. I have essay drafts. But it's a very big subject, literally involved in nearly everything. There is reason to be concerned. My delivery may be stilted, but I can assure that upon specific questioning, everything will stand.

(*for the ad homs out there)

Herring2• 5 months ago

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• 5 months ago

this isn't on topic at all

teachrdan• 5 months ago

I think the implication is that democratic presidents are less likely to do dumb shit like this, which harms the economy.

germandiago2• 5 months ago

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.

softwaredoug3• 5 months ago

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_2• 5 months ago

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.

thinkingtoilet• 5 months ago

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.

17186274402• 5 months ago

I think we should really judge governments by their actions and stop labeling them democracies, if they do such things that don't look like democracies at all.

wrs4• 5 months ago

No it doesn't. As with so many other things this administration does, this door was not open. They bashed through it anyway.

jaredklewis• 5 months ago

Bold of you to assume Democrats are going to be allowed to govern again.

JeremyNT• 5 months ago

That’s ultimately why Ted Cruz spoke out about the Kimmel cancelation. It doesn’t take long until those powers are turned against you.

Meh, I think it's entirely asymmetrical in this era. Democrats aren't good for much, but they're very good at respecting norms.

Trump is willing to do completely unprecedented, vindictive, and malicious things because he's so popular with so many people who are either checked out, nihilistic, corrupt, or just completely unconcerned about the concept of good governance.

It's not a pendulum where there's some super-corrupt Democrat waiting in the wings to do the same things upon their enemies, this really is the Republican party openly embracing kleptocracy and lawlessness.

netfortius• 5 months ago

What people seem to refuse to accept is that democrats won't have another chance, any time soon. It's done and gone. Count one or two generations, at a minimum, under the new Epstein class regime, before people may try to rise.

jemmyw• 5 months ago

I think a good play by the Democrats would be to say that if they get into office they're going to investigate all these deals as potential bribery, fraud and corruption and that any business leaders that appeared to benefit from contributions might be prosecuted. That would be a laugh, I'd love to see how quickly the excuses start rolling in.

manoDev2• 5 months ago

“Concerned” is an understatement. USA is already operating at nazi Germany levels and more than half of the civil society is approving. Not that it’s a surprise for global spectators though - it’s finally showing it’s true colors.

nextaccountic• 5 months ago

More than half is an exaggeration. Trump is not a popular president. With free and fair elections, a blue wave is more or less guaranteed

stared3• 5 months ago

If civil society is not concerned by the tribute-based Board of Peace that gladly invited Putin, an attack on another country without authorization by Congress, a threat to seize the land of an ally, and the killing of its own citizens by the ICE militia, then an unjustified supply-chain risk label won't cut it.

Hizonner• 5 months ago

I don't know. There's a certain segment of "civil society" that's pretty much OK with anything as long as it doesn't threaten the Holy Free Market. Free only for appropriately holy values of "free", mind you...

martinwright• 5 months ago

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

yoyohello132• 5 months ago

I'm willing to bet is was a golf course conversation.

"Hey why is the gov using Anthorpic over OpenAI, don't you know how much money I've donated?"

neves• 5 months ago

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

_2d30• 5 months ago

Naturally OpenAI also releases their new model on the same day.

Makes sense, obviously, but yeesh.

wg0• 5 months ago

Has this happened before?

gAI• 5 months ago

Not to a US company.

jacquesm4• 5 months ago

You can ask that question every other hour.

hedayet3• 5 months ago

So, DoD 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=47188473

Remain undivided in spirit while grinding for OpenAI?

shimman2• 5 months ago

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.

Computer0• 5 months ago

And when you suggest unions and worker organization to them they gloat that the company takes better care of them without it. They don't want to be in the same class as the peasantry.

burkaman2• 5 months ago

"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.

surprisetalk• 5 months ago

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

phba• 5 months ago

Maybe this is the first step towards the Big Beautiful Bailout when the AI bubble inevitably pops.

scoofy• 5 months ago

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...

hedayet3• 5 months ago

Thanks for pointing this out. Updated my post

soraminazuki2• 5 months ago

Pretty ironic because for once, they went with the more accurate description instead of the euphemisms. It's no longer "protecting freedom of speech" or "ending wars," just full-on bombings and invasions with glee.

blueblisters• 5 months ago

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?

andrewstuart2• 5 months ago

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

theshrike79• 5 months ago

Nope, they don't have that capacity. It's been shown multiple times in the past year.

Shutting down USAID being the clearest one. They just saw "they help brown people in other countries with our money" and shut it down. Fuck all second and third order effects that actually benefited the US.

yoyohello132• 5 months ago

Of course. Hegseth said it, there is no way they could back out. Looking 'weak' is the worst possible thing for this admin. They would rather look childish, stupid, and evil, as long as they don't look 'weak'.

Especially 'weak' things like 'caring about people'.

neogodless• 5 months ago

Previous information:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186677 I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk (twitter.com/secwar) 5 days ago, 1083+ comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189441 Anthropic says it will challenge Pentagon supply chain risk designation in court (reuters.com) 5 days ago, 37+ comments

adamtaylor_13• 5 months ago

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.

stirlo• 5 months ago

There’s plenty of markets outside the pentagon to sell to.

Far more likely is they spin up a defence focused subsidiary with slightly different policies if they really want to sell to them.

BoiledCabbage• 5 months ago

Look I know it's an insane idea. I'm just curious what the most unhinged response to this might be.

I mean what if all the employees stripped off their clothes and walked through the streets naked while barking, then called up their middle school math teachers and barked live dogs then moved to a commune and stood on their heads.

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

I mean to critique your reasoning, it makes sense to also include a criteria of something they might reasonably do. There are an infinite number of unhinged things a group of people could in theory do. But maybe start with something they would actually have an incentive to do.

Why would they voluntarily dissolve their company, put themselves out of work, release their crown jewels and get nothing for it? Yes it's unhinged but unless I'm missing something bug, they wouldn't do that because they wouldn't at all want that to happen.

xpe• 5 months ago

I'm just curious what the most unhinged response to this might be.

Are you asking how dangerous open-weight models are? You could start with:

Ryan Greenblatt on the AI Alignment Forum : "When is it important that open-weight models aren't released?" https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/TeF8Az2EiWenR9APF/when-...

From the Centre for Future Generations : "Can open-weight models ever be safe?" https://cfg.eu/can-open-weight-models-ever-be-safe/

From OpenAI authors, far from neutral : "Estimating Worst-Case Frontier Risks of Open-Weight LLMs" https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.03153

nostrademons• 5 months ago

I kinda wonder if this is how we got DeepSeek. It was developed by a Chinese hedge fund. Entirely possible their business model was to take out large leveraged puts against the major U.S. AI vendors; shit on their business models with an entirely open-source model; and profit. The stock market certainly dropped in a massive way when DeepSeek was released, so if they traded against NVDA/GOOG/META et al, they profited in a big way.

jrsj• 5 months ago

They would never do this because the entire point of the company is to try and control what AI is allowed to do, who is allowed to use it, and what they’re allowed to do with it. The overarching philosophy of Anthropic is explicitly opposed to open models. If it were up to them it would be illegal to inference them in the U.S.

jdndbdjsj2• 5 months ago

If I were to download those weights I can't run them unless I spend $100k on a cluster, so the privacy advantage is not there yet.

We already have Groq, Celebras and AWS Bedrock and others in the inference of open models space, so the model is usable that way.

Is Claude better than Llama, Gwen etc. Probably. For now.

But for how long? Dissolving means relying on Meta or Deepseek etc. to pick up and carry on tuning. Otherwise it'll be as useful as a GPT2 or Atari ST eventually in a competitive environment.

Also open sourcing the weights is handing it over to DoD (aka DoW).

Complicated question but probably not the best move. Keep going means keep working on safety research.

mitthrowaway24• 5 months ago

Then the Pentagon would freely use it for autonomous weapons, just like Anthropic doesn't want them to do. Next question?

hax0ron32• 5 months ago

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 like to work with this administration".

blipvert2• 5 months ago

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

hax0ron32• 5 months ago

Both.

infogulch3• 5 months ago

The US Military's demand that the product they purchase is able to be used for all lawful purposes seems pretty reasonable, and is really the only valid line to draw. Forcing one's own ethics onto the military's use of your product is nonsensical on its face.

watwut2• 5 months ago

It is completely normal to have ethics based conditions like that. It already eciats - drugs that can not be used in execution or elements that cant be used in arms

Goverment is being super unreasonable here. And tyrannical too, companies dont have duty to provide unreliable arms for illegal war.

ssl-33• 5 months ago

If I produce and sell widgets in my widget shop, then nobody but me gets to decide how I make those widgets.

The government can come into my shop and order sixty thousand widgets built exactly the way they say they want them built, and it may be something that doesn't run afoul of any laws at all.

But that doesn't mean that I am required or compelled to build widgets their way -- or at all.

I'm free to tell them to fuck off.

The government can then find go someone else to build widgets to their specifications (or not; that's very distinctly not my problem).

basket_horse• 5 months ago

And that’s what’s happening here. The government is telling Anthropic to fuck off and they are finding someone else

infogulch3• 5 months ago

Yes but then the government can decide that the widget, which can suddenly and arbitrarily break and cause havoc because it doesn't work according to the government's desired spec, is risky to use and advise their other vendors to avoid it. And now we've caught up to today's story.

So we agree that everything is fine here, and that the only unreasonable position is that the military should pay for or endorse a supplier that tells the military to "fuck off". Yes?

yibg2• 5 months ago

The right response is to not use the said product and use something else. If i want your widget to do something I want and you refuse, I don't get to smash your shop.

softwaredoug3• 5 months ago

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.

hsbauauvhabzb• 5 months ago

I’m not sure that’s how billionaires think.

Waterluvian• 5 months ago

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.

jdndbdjsj2• 5 months ago

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.

alanwreath2• 5 months ago

But for how long? If Claude is a supply chain risk. That means anyone hosting him would also be a supply chain risk.

Ergo AWS/Azure/GCP - nobody will host them because it’s Anthropic or the lucrative government contracts. Hegseth/Trump didn’t just say “you’ll never do business with the US” - it’s that they will never do business IN the US. Hopefully that means they’ll be able to take up shop elsewhere in the world.

PoignardAzur2• 5 months ago

I had already been trying Le Chat for months, for similar reasons.

So far it's been slart enough for what I need, so closing my ChatGPT subscription was a really easy decision to make.

eikenberry• 5 months ago

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...

scottyah• 5 months ago

I think it's a good chance tbh. It would take the S&P down with it too

arppacket• 5 months ago

Of course it's going to be this government that goes and pokes the bubble that's propping up the economy, despite all the government's other shenanigans.

6thbit7• 5 months ago

Does this mean nobody on a large company selling to government can use any Anthropic tool or model?

So that’s most of sp500 and their providers?

xvector2• 5 months ago

Only for work directly on government contracts, 99% of work is unaffected

cush• 5 months ago

Is Claude Code's outputted code also part of the supply chain risk?

Chance-Device2• 5 months ago

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.

idiotsecant2• 5 months ago

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.

Chance-Device2• 5 months ago

Yeah, but aren’t all of those things in service of “blowing people up”?

mitthrowaway24• 5 months ago

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

stonecharioteer• 5 months ago

Very useful if you run into him in Georgia or if you want to get his tooth to make a guitar pick.

niam• 5 months ago

I was sympathetic to this line of reasoning but I feel it's repeatedly shown to be self-defeating.

What chance have the proverbial good-guys got if, even after _proving_ some modicum of good will, people will nonetheless condescend any attempt to influence bad/wildcard actors? It feels great to tell someone they 'should've known better' but I'm convinced that that's basically void of cautionary utility.

bloody-crow2• 5 months ago

I've commented this in a different thread, but pretty sure something very similar would've happened in they refused to "get into bed with the military or intelligence services to begin with".

It's damned if you do and damned if you don't — lose-lose scenario either way.

parliament32• 5 months ago

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.

SpicyLemonZest2• 5 months ago

It sounds like they still have not issued any sort of actual order. The "formal label" described in the article is that they sent a communication directly to Anthropic saying they're a supply chain risk.

6thbit7• 5 months ago

Most corps will take the safer bet of not using them at all to prevent "accidental" miscompliance and more expensive audits. I'd bet if you need fedramp compliance you'll get forced out of their products generically.

6thbit7• 5 months ago

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

zppln• 5 months ago

From what I understand it cannot be used to perform work on contracts where the DoW is on the other side. [1]

In practice I would suspect companies with such contracts would play it safe by outright banning the use of Anthtropic products, even if they could technically be used for work on contracts with other parties.

[1] https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-comments-secretary-...

netinstructions• 5 months ago

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 any business with an entire industry/sector.

pstuart• 5 months ago

This should make any US company nervous

"Nice little business ya got here -- it'd be shame if something happened to it..."

Analemma_2• 5 months ago

Shame you didn’t donate $25 million to Trump, like the company we decided to give the contract to instead did, who will benefit tremendously from you being designated a supply chain risk. Maybe next time you’ll be a little smarter.

atoav• 5 months ago

Well. Unsurprisingly fascists will do a fascism – an ideology somewhat defined by merging state and industrial powers. Many economically minded people, many technologists, including in this space, have afforded themselves the luxury of not talking about politics too deeply. As I said some years ago: Ignoring politics has its way of coming back to haunt you. Back then this was an unpopular take.

orsenthil• 5 months ago

Ignoring politics has its way of coming back to haunt you. Back then this was an unpopular take.

Right now, we cannot and should not. Even if you ignore, you are getting dragged into without your choice. See: the bribes paid by the companies.

bloody-crow2• 5 months ago

This should make any US company nervous about entering into an agreement with the government

I'm pretty sure same thing would've happened if Anthropic refused to enter contract negotiations in the first place.

stared3• 5 months ago

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.

quentindanjou• 5 months ago

I always find it interesting to listen US citizen answer "What would it take for you to not consider your country a democracy?" and admire the wide range of answers and denials.

cheesecompiler• 5 months ago

Right, as if _this_ is straw that breaks the camel's back, and not the pile of hay the camel has been carrying for decades.

breakpointalpha• 5 months ago

Many proudly and loudly claim the US is a "republic".

zem• 5 months ago

secret police kidnapping people off the streets didn't clue you in?!!

PoignardAzur2• 5 months ago

If you're referring to ICE, that's gross hyperbole, and honestly a little insulting to people who live / have lived in regimes with an actual secret police.

The US is still a rights-based state, which means that when they arrest someone (legitimately or not), lawyers and human right advocates can eventually track them down.

When a secret police disappears someone, they actually disappear. Families can spend years wondering if their loved one is still alive, or was murdered by organized crime, or ran away, or was secretly taken by the state. The US these days is pretty bad, but it's nowhere near that bad.

ajam1507• 5 months ago

Just a few dozen more scenarios like this and we might have to start thinking something is wrong.

stared3• 5 months ago

And then it would be finally time to send "thoughts and prayers".

alanwreath2• 5 months ago

Labeling Anthropic a supply chain risk only because they were uninterested in doing business with the US government under the terms requested seems very much a bullying tactic that results in something the west critiques China for: coerced alignment.

Anthropic has been given a death sentence.

blacksmith_tb2• 5 months ago

A bit ironic then that they're actively using Claude in the current war effort[1].

1: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthropic-claude-ai-iran-war-u-...

6thbit7• 5 months ago

This is also the part i don't get. People flocking over to pay anthropic which _has already been used in a war_ and cancelling existing subs to a provider that has not yet but will?

Ethical boundaries seem difficult to draw here. I don't really see people taking the stance of "No longer paying any of them" which would make a bit more sense to me.

Anthropic already had layed in bed with pentagon, how did that fit their overall ethical standpoint as they were already being used and before they tried to walk back their terms?

blacksmith_tb2• 5 months ago

I don't get the impression Anthropic tried to walk anything back, they just balked when they were informed that the DoD wasn't willing to abide by their terms to refrain from using Claude for surveillance or straight up selecting targets to kill. But you're right that means Anthropic's hands are not exactly clean, just less bloody than OpenAI's or xAI's

sam0x17• 5 months ago

Streisand effect I think this will boost sales

gritspants• 5 months ago

I hope so. I will never type a single thought of my own or personal detail into an OpenAI product again. I have no doubt at some point OpenAI will be asked by DoD to hand over customer data and they will do so. If I use AI at all for nonprofessional reasons it will be Anthropic/Claude.

6thbit7• 5 months ago

US Gov doesn't really need a contract with anthropic to force them to hand over customer data do they? What would prevent that from happening if they are still a US based company?

nineteen999• 5 months ago

Wonder how long it will take the American public to designate the US Govt a threat to national security, and using AI to assemble their own autonomous civilian defense robots to protect the public from the government-approved population suppression robots.

Right to bare arms and all that etc.

foxes• 5 months ago

Oh no my favourite ai company did / didn't collaborate

How could the regime do such a thing, doesn't law mean anything?!! /s

First they came for my neighbour now they came for my llm!!

SpacePortKnight• 5 months ago

Anthropic can now no longer buy new hardware and probably will be kicked out of all cloud compute. They can not also move to a different jurisdiction as exporting model weights is now considered same as exporting ICBM technology. Wow, companies in China are now more free than Anthropic. It's a death sentence, and a huge win for OpenAI.

Jtsummers2• 5 months ago

Anthropic can now no longer buy new hardware and probably will be kicked out of all cloud compute.

That's beyond the authority of the DOD. What the DOD can do is say that Anthropic's products cannot be used on defense contracts. So Boeing programmers can't use Claude on a defense contract, but they can still use it on a civilian contract. Similarly, AWS or Azure can still be used by Anthropic, but they cannot use Anthropic in their defense work.

gonzalohm• 5 months ago

Why not? If you have been designated a supply chain risk you may as well become one. They should move everything overseas

cermicelli2• 5 months ago

For what it's worth govts should have the final say over companies they do business with anyone saying it's illegal is insane.

Now the separate question is of collusion or bribery. Which might be illegal but Anthropic has to go to court for that..

And in US bribery aka lobbying is legal as well so honestly. Anthropic is just slow on the uptake.

No pun intended, but get in bed with snakes and you should be happy if you survive getting bitten.

cermicelli2• 5 months ago

US rich tech folks like Dario only get a spine when there is money on the line. Where was he when US govt was doing awful illegal stuff against non tech companies and other americans... All of this is practically just theater at this point.

Jtsummers2• 5 months ago

For what it's worth govts should have the final say over companies they do business with

That's certainly an opinion, but in the US it's not how it works. Doing business with the government does not give the government total power over the company, that would be absurd.

karteum• 5 months ago

Could Anthropic consider to relocate in Europe ? ;)

6thbit7• 5 months ago

As much as I'd really like to see one of these labs in EU, they are likely way too tied to US capital and supply-chain of semis/services. If they move away and now have to also deal with export restrictions they may make their existence harder.

Pentagon formally labels Anthropic supply-chain risk

Related Stories