I would assume the original terms the DoW is now railing against were in those original contracts that they signed. In that case it looks like the DoW is acting in bad faith here, they signed the original contact and agreed to those terms, then they went back and said no, you need to remove those safeguards to which Anthropic is (rightly so) saying no.

Am I missing something here?

EDIT: Re-reading Dario's post[1] from this morning I'm not missing anything. Those use cases were never part of the original contacts:

> Two such use cases have never been included in our contracts with the Department of War

So yeah this seems pretty cut and dry. Dow signed a contract with Anthropic and agreed to those terms. Then they decided to go back and renege on those original terms to which Anthropic said no. Then they promptly threw a temper tantrum on social media and designated them as a supply chain risk as retaliation.

My final opinion on this is Dario and Anthropic is in the right and the DoW is acting in bad faith by trying to alter the terms of their original contracts. And this doesn't even take into consideration the moral and ethical implications.

[1]: https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war

[1] https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war

In fact, as a patriotic American veteran, I'd be ok with Anthropic moving to Europe. It might be better for Claude and AGI, which are overriding issues for me.

Rutger Bregman @rcbregman

This is a huge opportunity for Europe. Welcome Anthropic with open arms. Roll out the red carpet. Visa for all employees.

Europe already controls the AI hardware bottleneck through ASML. Add the world's leading AI safety lab and you have the foundations of an AI superpower.

https://x.com/rcbregman/status/2027335479582925287

But how do you even begin to discuss that Tweet or this topic without talking about ideology and to contextualize this with other seemingly unrelated things currently going on in the US?

I genuinely don't think I'm conversationally agile enough to both discuss this topic while still able to avoid the political/ideological rabbit-hole.

This is the new McCarthyism. Do what the administration says, or you will be blacklisted, or worse.

The designation says any contractor, supplier, or partner doing business with the US military can’t conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic. Well, AWS has JWCC. Microsoft has Azure Government. Google has DoD contracts. If that language is enforced broadly, then Claude gets kicked off Bedrock, Vertex, and potentially Azure… which is where all the enterprise revenue lives. Claude cannot survive on $200/mo individual powerusers. The math just doesn’t math.

This is authoritarian behavior. You're having trouble negotiating a contract, so instead of just canceling it - you basically ban all of F500 from doing business with that firm.

I’m sure the lawyers just got paged, but does this mean the hyperscalers (AWS, GCP) can’t resell Claude anymore to US companies that aren’t doing business with the DoD? That’s rough.

When we have first politician blown to bits by autonomous AI FPV there will be sheer panic of every politician in the world to put the genie back into the bottle. It will be too late at that point.

Anthropic is correct with its no killbot rule.

Supply-chain risks means "the potential for adversaries to sabotage, subvert, or disrupt the integrity and delivery of defense systems, including software, hardware, and services, to degrade national security".

So now Anthropic is an adversary, because it does not want "fully autonomous weapons" or automated mass surveillance? Sure thing, DoD. Go use Grok or whatever, I'm sure that will go great.

So OpenAI will also be marked as a supply chain risk too, right?

[1]: https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/altman-openai-anthropic-pen...

Open-source everything. Papers, code, weights, financial records. Do all of your research in the open. Run a 100% transparent organization so that there's nothing to take from you. Level the playing field for good and bad actors alike, otherwise the bad actors will get their hands on it while everyone else is left behind.

Stop comparing AI capabilities to nuclear weapons. A nuke cannot protect against or reverse the damage of another nuke. AI capabilities are not like nukes. Diffuse it as much as possible. Give it to everyone and the good will prevail.

Build a world where millions of AGIs run on millions of gaming PCs, aligned with millions of different individuals. It is a necessary condition for humanity's survival.

Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47173121 - Feb 2026 (1508 comments)

Dario is Lando, complaining “We had a deal!” Only to be told, “I’m altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”

I wish I thought enough Americans had the spine required to stand up to this, and I know for a fact that a lot do... the solution is literally written into your constitution.

This administration consistently exploits what were designed to be emergency powers because no such requirement exists. Leave no room for interpretation.

Q: "Is there anything we could do to change your mind?"

A: "Yes! Stand up to the current administration."

Does this mean Azure & AWS will have to stop offering Claude as a model?

Nevermind Claude, does that mean Anthropic's offices can't use a power company if that same company happens to supply electricity to a US military base? What about the water, garbage disposal, janitorial services? Fedex? Credit card payments? Insurance companies? Law firms? All the normal boring stuff Anthropic needs that any other business needs.

This is a corporate death penalty. Or corporate internal exile or something, I don't know of a good analogy.

Come to EU guys, we'll prepare a warm welcome!

Edit: I should perhaps clarify I'm more interested in paid users, rather than free. It's harder to tell if free users switching would help them or hurt them... curious if anyone has thoughts on that too.

I don't think it will hold, in the end this is mafia behavior, but if it does, we are yet again in uncharted waters.

Kesha tried to hug Jerry Seinfeld vibes.

> Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon.

Strange way of saying "this vendor doesn't meet our software requirements".

> they have attempted to strong-arm the United States military into submission

Err... You approached them?

> a cowardly act of corporate virtue-signaling that places Silicon Valley ideology above American lives.

It's an orthogonal point, but "Silicon Valley ideology" has made up a significant portion of the USA's GDP for the last however many years.

> Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military. That is unacceptable.

Again... You approached them?

> I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security.

Like most companies in the world I imagine. They just haven't been approached yet.

> to allow for a seamless transition to a better and more patriotic service.

Internally re-framing all the recent "EU moving away from American tech!" articles as "EU builds more patriotic services!"

> This decision is final.

Nothing says "final" like a Tweet. The most uncontroversial and binding mechanism of all communication.

It is an interesting point. What's the difference between this use license and others?

Anthropic folks: I've been a bit salty on HN about bugs in Claude Code, but I feeling pretty warm and fuzzy about sending you my cash this month.

And here’s the irony: Musk, who claimed only he is virtuous enough to defend us from AI, who insisted he always wanted model labs to be non profit and research focused, will now bring his for profit commercial entity into service to aid in mass domestic censorship and fully autonomous weapons of war.

In fact it won’t surprise me further if NVIDIA is strong armed into providing preference to xAI, in the interest of security, or if the government directly funds capital investments.

Anthropic saves some dignify and they’re the losers today, but we are the losers tomorrow.

But anyway, I guess the question is, will any other big AI companies stand with them? It's what needs to happen, but I am not hopeful.

Oddly, though, it seems like that should solve this problem as well. I'm not sure why the Department of Defense insists on Anthropic's models in particular; one would think one of the other players, at the very least least xAI, would be willing to step in and provide the capability Anthropic doesn't want to provide.

So it would make sense now for Anthropic to move outside the US, e.g. to Europe or Canada to at least be able to make deals with European governments.

Don't get me wrong i'm glad they are unwilling to do certain things...

but to me it also seems a little ironic that Anthropic literally is partnered with Palantir which already mass surveills the US. Claude was used in the operation in Venezuala.

Their line not to cross seems absurdly thin?

Or there is something mega scary thats already much worse they were asked to do which we dont know about I guess.

Makes for very confusing reading when comments from "1 hour ago" are actually on preceding events from earlier, before TFA news (announcement of designation).

mods: Especially in sensitive and rapidly developing situations like this, please don't mess with timestamps of comments. It's effectively revisionism.

Model collapse making models identify everyone as a potential threat who needs to be eliminated.

Companies should have a right to refuse such requests on moral grounds though.

This stance is vindictive. Just don't use Claude in the military. Extending it to all government agencies is not right. They do great work. Can't deny that.

Every conservative needs to do some very deep, very serious soul-searching. As for me, as a hyper-progressive, I'm drawing up proposals for nationalizing real estate developers in order to force them to build new houses to sell below cost.

Government: We will destroy any company that refuses to create the Torment Nexus

https://x.com/grok/status/2027518650710700068

> You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end.

Except this is like two lawnmowers going at it, which would be a sight to behold indeed.

And people here are debating legalese...

He called me and he seemed like a nice enough guy, but I realized that he's one of the DOGE/Elon acolytes and he started talking about how he's "fixing" the Treasury and that every engineer is apparently supposed to use Claude for everything.

It would have been a considerable pay downgrade which wouldn't necessarily be a dealbreaker but being managed by DOGE would be, but mostly relevant is that I found it kind of horrifying that we're basically trusting the entire world's bank to be "fixed" with Claude Code. It's one thing when your ad platform or something is broken, but if Claude fucks something up in the Treasury that could literally start a war. We're going to "fix" all the code with a bunch of mediocre code that literally no one on earth actually understands and that realistically no one is auditing [1].

If they're going to "fix" all the Treasury code with stuff generated by Claude, I'm not sure they will have a choice but to stick with it, because very it seems very likely to me that it will be incomprehensible to anything but Claude.

[1] Be honest, a lot of AI generated code is not actually being reviewed by humans; I suspect that a lot of the AI code that's being merged is still basically being rubber-stamped.

Because that could be absolutely staggering.

https://youtu.be/MWFyApldYDA?si=yskCcx2hY4Wjkgw8

TACO

It almost is parody that a former Fox News host is the SECRETARY OF WAR.

The place to set policies on the use of hammers and police enforcement is not at the counter of the hardware store. “You want a hammer but don’t have a contractors license? Are you in a training program? Oh you just want to hang framed art - can I see your lease, does it allow hammering metal into the walls?”

We govern these things through laws and a democratic process. Police enforce the laws.

I don’t want some overconfident Silicon Valley engineering firm telling me how to use my digital tools, and you shouldn’t either.

Whatever you think of this administration, our military should not have to ask contractors permission for their operations.

To stop mass surveillance and autonomous lethality, pass laws. Asking unelected tech executives to do this is asking for trouble. They have no business doing it.

How going against the most powerful army on Earth is coward?

I have just purchased a chunk of extra usage credit. I encourage my peers to do the same. Let's send a message to those that work forces.

I don't think that Secretary Hegseth is qualified to speak on American principles.

Cheating on multiple spouses[1], being an active alcoholic, and being accused of multiple sexual assaults and paying off the accusers[3] is fundamentally incompatible with being a Secretary of Defense and a good leader.

Also, this violates freedom of speech and will probably get shot down in the courts.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Hegseth#Marriages

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Hegseth plus multiple recent media pieces

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Hegseth#Abuse_and_sexual_...

It's true that Chinese companies are extensions of the state. But they serve the state. And the state has thus far served the citizenry eg raising 800M people out of extreme poverty. China's HSR network of 32,000 miles of track was built in 20 years for ~$900B. That's less than the annual US military budget.

You can look at the relationship between the US government and US companies in one of two ways:

1. US companies serve the government but the government doesn't serve the people. After all, where's our infrastructure, healthcare, housing and education? or

2. The US government serves US corporate interests to enrich the ultra-wealthy.

Either way a handful of people are getting incredibly wealthy and all it takes is for a little corruption. Political donations, jobs after government, positions on boards and so on.

> 1. No mass domestic surveillance of Americans

> 2. No fully autonomous weapons (kill decisions without a human in the loop)

Surveillance takes place with or without Anthropic, so depriving DoW of Anthropic models doesn't accomplish much (although it does annoy Hegseth).

The models currently used in kill decisions are probably primitive image recognition (using neural nets). Consider a drone circling an area distinguishing civilians from soldiers (by looking for presence of rifles/rpgs).

New AI models can improve identification, thus reducing false positives and increasing the number of actual adversaries targeted. Even though it sounds bad, it could have good outcomes.

> Anthropic said no, and now the admin is trying to destroy the company in retaliation.

From https://bsky.app/profile/bbkogan.bsky.social/post/3mfuuprph5...

A few arrests and a few in detention centres, will be enough to make them fold and grovel.

They are now categorised as "radical left" and woke.

The elections will be controlled to "prevent the radical left take over of the greatest country on the planet".

edit : The stage is also being set for total media control. My prediction is that the next target will be Google, specifically Youtube. You should start seeing talks about how the radical left is inflitrated youtube.

But there's some irony in this happening to Anthropic after all the constant hawkish fearmongering about the evil Chinese (and open source AI sentiment too).

Trump orders federal agencies to stop using Anthropic AI tech 'immediately'

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185528

Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47173121

https://www.trumpstruth.org/statuses/36981

Don't worry, this is an archive/mirroring site for his account, not the actual TS site.

I'd comment on how wackadoo this all is, but, 1) that applies to almost everything these days, and 2) the post's right there, see for yourself.

Sometimes it pays to think even two steps ahead of your most immediate thought…

If an employee of the government makes a decision that subsequently turns out to be very very unpopular, that unpopularity is sooner or later going to coalesce and land on them, and the more unpopular it turns out to be the less of a shield legal arguments about immunity or pardons will be because so many people are increasingly out of patience with a system they deem to be corrupt. Being able to offload the political, legal, and personal risks of extremely consequential decisions onto The Bad Computer System is the political equivalent of crack cocaine - you might know that the feeling of freedom and power it provides is wholly illusory, you might know that it's likely to ruin your own and many other lives, you might know that it's a disaster for the health of the body politic...but it also offers the possibility that you can have an absolute blast and get away with it.

My anecdotal experience of being around wealthy and powerful people over the years inclines me to think that not only do our social systems select in favor of people who take big risks for big rewards, but that virtually everyone in that class has a) done a lot of getting away with things legally speaking and b) enjoys using illegal drugs. Even if they've given up recreational drug taking or limit it to strictly defined times and places so as not to interfere with their business/personal success, they like thrills and have confidence about their ability to enjoy them without negative consequences. You need some of that risk-taking, high personal autonomy attitude if you aspire to be a mover and shaker as opposed to a leading figure in risk management or regulatory compliance.

Everyone enjoys the feeling of power without responsibility; it's a fundamental underpinning of games and many other kinds of recreation. Add in significant amounts of money and people think differently about risk, as in the topical case of the experienced Supreme Court litigator who turned out to have have a secret life as a high-stakes poker gambler and eventually started betting against the IRS while filing his taxes (https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/25/supreme-court-litig...).

Now, if you're in the political-military sphere and you get your thrills by literally redrawing lines and relationships on the map of the world and deciding what the news on TV is going to be for the next day/week/month/year, and you get offered a tool that promises to give a significant edge over other players in this game but which also gives you a versatile and widely accepted excuse for avoiding consequences for the inevitable losing hands, there are massively compelling psychological incentives for using it. And correspondingly, there's going to be massive emotional disruption (and bad decision-making and behavior) if your supply is threatened. You might start labeling the people who are interfering with your good time as cognito-terrorists and telling all your friends and supporters that your formerly trustworthy supplier did you dirty...

One, it’s going to fuck with the AI fundraising market. That includes for IPO. If Trump can do this to Anthropic, a Dem President will do it to xAI. We have no idea where the contagion stops.

Two, Anthropic will win in the long run. In corporate America. Overseas. And with consumers. And, I suspect, with investors.

If we don't impeach for this, we might as well surrender to MAGA.

> Populist nationalism + “infallible” redemptive leader cult

> Scapegoated “enemies”; imprison/murder opposition/minority leaders

> Supremacy of military / paramilitarism; glorify violence as redemptive

> Obsession with national security / nation under attack

TBH could be worse.

>@grok what type of political system is most often associated with the government forcing private companies to change their policies and do whatever the government wants?

>Fascism, via its corporatist model: private ownership remains, but the state directs industry to serve national goals...

Trump's behaviour seems fairly normal fascism but thankfully the rest of the US system seems unenthusiastic.

As someone who wants America to win, ripping out Claude and putting in xAI is a terrible idea. Definitely setting us back a few months on capabilities

“You won’t let us use your product unrestricted for military applications? Fuck you, we’re going to stop using it for anything at all across the entire federal government, even if not remotely related to military.”

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More taxpayer funded lawsuits to come.

Fascist

And nobody in the administration is concerned at all that the model itself might be somewhat against their own views?

If it was so radically woke, wouldn’t the model, as used in fully autonomous weapons, be potentially harmful to ICE officers that the left considers as a threat to the American people?

Wouldn’t the mass surveillance of Americans be biased against the right?

These people are so dumb.

"THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS! That decision belongs to YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, and the tremendous leaders I appoint to run our Military.

The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE..." - President Donald J. Trump

"Our AI is so advanced and dangerous Trump has to beg us to remove our safeguards, and we valiantly said no! Oh but we were already spying on people and letting them use our AIs in weapons as long as a human was there to tick a checkbox"

I just don't buy anything spewing out of the mouths of these sociopathic billionaires, and I trust the current ponzi schemers in the US gov't even less.

Especially given how much astroturfing Anthropic loves doing, and the countless comments in this thread saying things like "Way to go Amodei, I'm subbing to your 200 dollar a month plan now forever!!11".

One thing I know for sure is that these AI degenerates have made me a lot more paranoid of anything I read online.

What I don’t understand is why the two parties couldn’t reach agreement. Surely autonomous murderous robots is something U.S. government has interest in preventing.

I wouldn't want a bullet manufacturer to hold back on my government based on their own internal sense of ethics (whether I agreed with it or not, it's not their place)