If government procurement rules intended for national security risks can be abused as a way to punish Anthropic for perceived lack of loyalty, why not any other company that displeases the administration like Apple or Amazon?

This marks an important turning point for the US.

Companies who subscribed will find themselves without an important tool because the president went on a rant, and might wonder if it’s safe to depend on other American companies.

I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. has. Such a waste of talent trying to make them bend over to the government’s wishes… instead of actually fostering innovation in the very competitive AI industry.

This is a trap. Two, I guess, but let's take the first one:

Domestic mass surveillance. Domestic.

Remember the eyes agreements: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/are-the-eyes-agreements-abo...

Expanding:

> These pacts enable member countries to share signals intelligence (SIGINT), including surveillance data gathered globally. Disclosures, notably from Edward Snowden in 2013, revealed that allies intentionally collect data on each other's citizens - bypassing domestic restrictions like the US ban on NSA spying on Americans - then exchange it.

Banning domestic mass surveillance is irrelevant.

The eyes-agreements allow them (respective participating countries) to share data with each other. Every country spies on every other country, with every country telling every other country what they have gathered.

This renders laws, which are preventing The State from spying on its own citizens, as irrelevant. They serve the purpose of being evidence of mass manipulation.

Now the DoD, who are by far the largest budgetary expense for the tax payer, wants us to believe they don't have a better Ai than current industry? That is a double sword admission; either they are exposing themselves again as economic decision makers, or admitting they spend money on routine BS with zero frontier war fighting capabilities.

Either way, it is beyond time to reform the Military and remove the majority of its leadership as incompetent stewards and strategists. That doesn't even include the massive security vulnerabilities in our supply chains given military needs in various countries. (Taiwan and Thailand)

Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47188697 - Feb 2026 (31 comments)

I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186677 - Feb 2026 (872 comments)

President Trump bans Anthropic from use in government systems - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186031 - Feb 2026 (111 comments)

Google workers seek 'red lines' on military A.I., echoing Anthropic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47175931 - Feb 2026 (132 comments)

Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47173121 - Feb 2026 (1527 comments)

The Pentagon Feuding with an AI Company Is a Bad Sign - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47168165 - Feb 2026 (33 comments)

Tech companies shouldn't be bullied into doing surveillance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47160226 - Feb 2026 (157 comments)

The Pentagon threatens Anthropic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47154983 - Feb 2026 (125 comments)

US Military leaders meet with Anthropic to argue against Claude safeguards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145551 - Feb 2026 (99 comments)

Hegseth gives Anthropic until Friday to back down on AI safeguards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47142587 - Feb 2026 (128 comments)

Prediction: in time, OpenAI will be declared such to privatise profits but socialise losses

Hope is neat, but are the signatories willing to quit their jobs over this? Kind of a hollow threat if not.

Even if there was a desire for autonomous weapons (beyond what Anduril is already developing), I would think it would go through a standard defense procurement procedure, and the AI would be one of many components that a contractor would then try to build. It would have nothing to do with the existing contract between Anthropic and the Dept of War.

What, then, is this really about?

please realize that there's likely a group chat out there somewhere where all of these concerns have already been raised and considered. The best thing you can do is ask how you as an outsider can help support these organizers

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

All of this should remain a bridge too far, forever.

EDIT: It is one level of bad when someone hacks a database containing personal healthcare data on most Americans as happened not long ago. A few years back, the OPM hack gave them all they needed to know about then-current and former government employees and service members and their families. Wait until a state-sponsored actor finds their way into the surveillance and targeting software and uses that back door to eliminate key adversarial personnel or to hold them hostage with threats against the things they value most so that the adversary builds a collection of moles who sell out everything in a vain attempt to keep themselves safe.

Of course we already know what happens when an adversary employs these techniques and that is why we are where we are right now.

Also, another warning to anonymous users: it's a little bit naive to trust the "Google Forms" verification option more than the email one, given both employers probably monitor anything you do on your devices, even if it's loading the form. And, in Google's case, they could obviously see what forms you submitted on the servers, too. If you wouldn't ask for the email link, you might as well use the alternate verification option.

Anyway - I'm not claiming it's likely that the website creator is malicious, but surely it's not beyond question? The website authors don't even seem to be providing others with the verification that they are themselves asking for.

P.S. I fully realize realizing these itself might make fewer people sign the form, which may be unfortunate, but it seems worth a mention.

» We are aware of two mistakes in our efforts to verify the signatures in the form so far. One person who was not an employee of OpenAI or Google found a bug in our verification system and signed falsely under the name "You guys are letting China Win". This was noticed and fixed in under 10 minutes, and the verification system was improved to prevent mistakes like this from happening again. We also had two people submit twice in a way that our automatic de-duplication didn't catch. We do periodic checks for this. Because of anonymity considerations, all signatures are manually reviewed by one fallible human. We do our best to make sure we catch and correct any mistakes, but we are not perfect and will probably make mistakes. We will log those mistakes here as we find them.

You are working on ads, slurping up data and trapping people into rage baits and dramas with an economy centered around marketing and influencer types.

I don't think these tech elites should decide arbitrarily by signing some fake elitist pledge.

The USA has a democratic way of resolving these things. It should not be in the hands of a few. The executive branch is a side effect of elections and should hold the line against these tech elites.

I don't agree with the essence of these nonsense pledges either: they are actively undermining the US while living and breathing here thanks to the most advanced military and defense systems on earth.

Why are these tech elites not including things like "we won't slurp up ad data" or "we will not work on dark patterns" because it's easy to come up with BS pledges and seem like 'we are so holier than thou'.

It is a bit infuriating because this resulted in the mess we are in. The income disparity between the tech elites (the entire tech industry) and the rest of the country is so huge that I don't think empty posturing and pledges and moral superiority matters.

I do not want to be associated with these elitist people who as a group are extremely educated, talented, impactful - but in one very very tiny piece in the grand scheme of things. Doesn't automatically make you the controller of the entire world's decisions.

I only say this because this is not new behavior for the administration its been reported here on HN and in less biased and political ways but ends up suppressed just confused what changed?

Edit just to be clear this shouldn't be flagged and posts they deal with rights in the past shouldn't have been flagged because rights should be the preeminent concern of anyone in tech

I can't help but notice that Grok/X is not part of this initiative, though. I realize that frontier models are really coming from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, but it feels like someone is going to give in to these demands.

It's incredible how quickly we've devolved into full-blown sci-fi dystopia.

It's time to open-source everything. Papers, code, weights, financial records. Do all of your research in the open. Run 100% transparent labs 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. Start a movement to make fully transparent AI labs the worldwide norm, and any org that doesn't cooperate is immediately boycotted.

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. General intelligence should not be in the hands of a few. Give it to everyone and the good will prevail.

Build a world where millions of AGIs run on millions of gaming PCs, where each AI is aligned with an individual human, not a corporation or government (which are machiavellian out of necessity). This is humanity's best chance at survival.

I'd even go as far to say that if this is indeed a publicity campaign it is the most successful one I've seen in years. Many detractors of the existence of LLMs are suddenly leaping to Anthropic's defence.

"Title I authorizes the President to identify specific goods as 'critical and strategic' and to require private businesses to accept and prioritize contracts for these materials."

If you invented a new kind of power source, and the government determined that it could be used to efficiently kill enemies, the government could force you to provide the product to them under the DPA. Why should AI companies get an exemption to that?

If you're an employee and actually believe in this you need to commit to something, like resigning.

It’s too little too late. Don’t be evil is not a value anyone is even pretending to uphold.

I’d rather someone of these very smart people start to develop countermeasures.

I've been disappointed to see many businesses and institutions obeying in advance recently. I hope this moment wakes up the tech community and beyond.

Also, if AI exists, AI will be used for war. The AI company employees are kidding themselves if they think otherwise, and yet they are still building it (as opposed to resigning and working on something else), because in the end, money is the only true God in this world.

Maybe it can get reused after this stuff is over.

What I have known is that since its very inception, Google has been doing massive amounts of business with the war department. What makes this particular contract different? I really am trying to understand why these sentiments now.

Prisoner's Dilemma in Action!

At this point I'd go far to say I wouldn't trust any company with my AI history that caves to DoD demands for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.

Your AI will know more about you than any other company, not going to be trusting that to anyone who trades ethics for profits.

We protect our families when we are home. That's all everybody wants.

Does this mean you dipshits are going to stop your own domestic surveillance programs? You sold your souls to the devil decades ago, don't pretend like you have principles now.

I mean it's neat, but naive at best.

spoiler alert: this is already happening

do labs in China have a choice in the matter?

(I wish this were a joke)

The right way to deal with this is political - corporate campaign contributions and lobbying. You're not going to be able to fight the military if they think they need something for national security.

Are they not a huge supply chain risk? Anthropic, being second chicken to OpenAI for a long time, decided to integrate tightly with the DoW. Now that their consumer products are doing better they're making decisions for the DoW as a supplier. This isn't about whether I agree with the DoW or not, it's just that behavior obviously would never fly with any customer.

The only real surprise is I haven't heard of the DoW considering Grok, which is not only a frontier model but has an existing gov cloud platform.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/27/tech/openai-pentagon-deal-ai-...

A unified front from tech companies could have stood a chance, but there's too much money to be made and the imbalance of power is too great without departing the area of influence of the US government entirely (and then go where? China, UK, Australia, etc. are equally not shy of coercing commercial capabilities in pursuit of government goals, including military goals).

WTF does that even mean, we "hope"???!? You know they won't, what's the point of hoping? Why not quit if you have the courage, or not quit -- and shut up?

The people who:

> steal any bit of code you put on the internet regardless of the license you use or its terms, then use it to train their models, then turn around and try to sell it to you

> made it so you can't afford new, more powerful computers or smartphones anymore, or perhaps even just replacements for the ones you already have, thanks to massive GPU, DRAM, SSD, and now even HDD shortages

> flood the internet with artificial, superficial content

> aggressively DDoS your website

Real pillars of society.

I scrolled through a few pages and 40-60% are anonymous. Even a handful weakens the petition.

I wish more people would participate in civics . Attend your city council or local political party meeting. See what it takes to actually collect signatures, run a campaign.

Online slactivism actually just worsens the cause, because potential energy is vented on futile online “petitions” rather than taking real action.

[90 minutes later]

Ah! Well, nevertheless

OK, this is a cheap shot on my part. But still: we hope? What kind of milquetoast martyrdom is this? Nobody gives a shit about tech workers as living, breathing, human moral agents. You (a putative moral actor signed onto this worthy undertaking) might be a person of deep feeling and high principle, and I sincerely admire you for that. But to the world at large, you're an effete button pusher who gets paid mid-six figures to automate society in accordance with billionaires' preferences and your expressions of social piety are about as meaningful as changing the flowers in the window box high up on the side of an ivory tower. The fact that ~80% of the signatories are anonymous only reinforces this perception.

If you want this to be more than a futile gesture followed by structural regret while you actively or passively contribute to whatever technologically-accelerated Bad Things come to pass in the near and medium term, a large proportion of you (> 500/648 current signatories) need to follow through and resign over the weekend. Doing so likely won't have that much direct impact, but it will slow things down a little (for the corporate and governmental bad actors who will find deployment of the new tech a little bit harder) and accelerate opposition a little (market price adjustments of elevated risk, increased debate and public rejection of the militaristic use of AI).

Hope, like other noble feelings, doesn't change anything. Actions, however poorly coordinated and incoherent, change things a little. If your principles are to have meaning, act on them during the short window of attention you have available.

At some point its hard not to think they just cant avoid the money. At least for the SWEs these are folks who could work at much less "evil" businesses and still easily clear $150k or $200k but they just cant help themselves. This is a company that steals its training data and whose primary product is at best an anti working-class cudgel that management can use to intimidate workers and threaten them with replacement and at worse is a mass-surveillance/killing tool.

They deploy BOTS to KILL PEOPLE!

This is the only big news here.

This is the only time in this timeline where we must say "you shall not pass". The ultimate red line. And there is no going back. It's just escalation in an arms race from now on. Nothing good can come out of this.

And you are talking about details, if some guys mentioned the word "domestic" in their tweet etc.

BOTS will autonomously KILL PEOPLE!

https://x.com/i/status/2027487514395832410

This sounds way worse than dystopian, Orwellian or big-brotherly, in a world where you can't even get a human to review the 'autonomously placed lock' on your email or social media account. The Terminator saga is perhaps a good fit. But I have a feeling that they won't stop even at that.

Very disappointing the letter signatories have chosen to reinforce the US-centric idea that using the models to spy on other democracies is fine and dandy.

Altman and senior others names notable by their absence; not unexpected given the quickly following apparent submission to DoW, which leaves the signatories here (while well-intentioned) in exposed ethical positions now.

This is so great.

Well, good luck to them, but the state can control from top-down via laws, so they WILL eventually abuse people and violate their rights by proxy-force. I would not trust any of them with my data.

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

My personal guess is that Sam Altman said he'd let policy violations go without a complaint and Dario Amodei said he wouldn't.

Not all the other shit this administration has been doing?

God, I hate it here.

Huge props for the the Google and OpenAI engineers that did sign this, for those that did realize that they’re fighting for a greater thing, not just for an extra zero or two added at the end of their bank accounts. Especially as they’re taking a great amount of risk by doing it, first of all, imo they are risking their current employment status.

>After famed investor Marc Andreessen met with government officials about the future of tech last May, he was “very scared” and described the meetings as “absolutely horrifying.” These meetings played a key role on why he endorsed Trump, he told journalist Bari Weiss this week on her podcast.

>What scared him most was what some said about the government’s role in AI, and what he described as a young staff who were “radicalized” and “out for blood” and whose policy ideas would be “damaging” to his and Silicon Valley’s interests.

>He walked away believing they endorsed having the government control AI to the point of being market makers, allowing only a couple of companies who cooperated with the government to thrive. He felt they discouraged his investments in AI. “They actually said flat out to us, ‘don't do AI startups like, don't fund AI startups,” he said.

...

keep making petitions, watch the whole thing burn to the ground when Trump decides to channel the Biden ideas in this field.

As Undersecretary Jeremy Lewin clarified today[1], these weighty decisions should not be made by activists inside companies, but made by laws and legitimate government.

[1]: https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230

I appreciate the sentiment but don’t preconcede to your opposition by using their framing.

So I looked into what they cooked up in 2023, plus which countries signed it (scroll down to a link to the actual text). It's an extraordinarily pathetic text. Insulting even.

https://www.state.gov/bureau-of-arms-control-deterrence-and-...

Anthropic wanted a veto on use of force by USG. That is intolerable, no private party can have a veto over the sovereign. It is that simple.

Anthropic should have just walked away (and taken the settlement lumps) when they realized that the USG knew. But no, they started some crazy campaign.

This is so irrational on Anthropic. Purchasing managers across the US (and the world) have to understand now that while Anthropic has the best model on the planet, it is not rational (if you prefer it is not rational in ways commonly understood). It is a risk and must be treated as such.

AI is re-shaping American society in a lot of ways. And this is happening at a time where the U.S. is more politically divided than it's ever been. People who use LLMs regularly (most SWEs at this point) can understand the danger signs. The bad outcomes are not inevitable. But the conversations around this cannot only be held in internet forums and blogposts.

Hackernews is an echo chamber of early adopters of tech. The discussions had here don't percolate to the general population.

I believe many of us have a duty to make this feel real to the less technical people in our lives. Too many folks have an information filter that is one of Fox News/CNN/MSNBC. Fox is the worst on misinformation. The others are also bad. Their viewers will not hear, in any clear way, how the Trump admin is trying to bully AI companies into doing what it wants. This will be a headline or an article. A footnote not given the attention it deserves.

Plainly: there is an attempt to turn AI into a political weapon aimed at the general population. Misinformation and surveillance are already out of control. If you can, imagine that getting worse.

This feels like one of those hinge moments. If you can, have real-life conversations with people around you. Explain what's at stake and why it matters now, not later.

I love performative acts of wealthy Silicon Valley drags.

That's why it's hard for me to feel bad about companies suddenly finding themselves on the receiving end. They dug their grave inch by inch and are suddenly surprised when they get shoved into it.

The employees of these companies are complicit in creating the greatest data harvesting and manipulation machine ever built, whose use cases have yet to be fully realized, yet when the government wants to use it for what governments do best—which was reasonable to expect given the corporate-government symbiosis we've been living in for decades—then it's a step too far?

Give me a fucking break. Stop the performative outrage, and go enjoy the fruits of your labor like the rest of the elites you're destroying the world with.

Of course they were going to use it for military purposes you spiritual abortions, and there is nothing your keyboard-soft hands can do about it.

However, if we're honest, Google has a long history of selling 'the people' out on domestic surveillance. There is even a good argument that this is what it was created for in the first place, given it was seeded with money from inqtel, the CIA venture capital fund. So, while I commend acting with your conscience in this (rather minor) case, and I'm glad to see people attempt to draw a line somewhere, what will this really come to? I strongly suspect this is event itself is just theater for the masses, where corporates and their employees get to stand up to government (yay!). The reality is probably all that is being complained about, and far worse, has been going on for years.

How far would these signatories go? Would they be prepared to walk away from all that money? Will they stop the rest of the dystopian coding/legislation writing, or is that stuff still ok (not that evil)?

Ultimately, is gaining the money worth the loss of one's soul? If you know better, and know that it is wrong to assist corporations and governments in cleaving people open for profit and control, but do it anyway for the house, private schools, holidays, Ferrari, only taking a stand in these performative, semi-sanctioned events - is this really the standard you accept for yourself? If so, then no problem. If not, what exactly are you doing the rest of the time? Are you able to switch your morality/heart/soul off? Judge yourself. If you find you are not acting in accord with yourself, everything is already lost.

Private individuals and private companies do not get to create a defensive weapon with unprecedented power in a new category in the US and not share it with the US military.

You guys are batshit insane.

Anthropic appears to be situating themselves where they are set up as the "ethical AI" in the mindspace of, well, anyone paying attention. But I am still trying to figure out where exactly Hegseth, or anyone in DoW, asked Anthropic to conduct illegal domestic spying or launch a system that removes HITL kill chains. Is this all just some big hypothetical that we're all debating (hallucinating)? This[1] appears to be the memo that may (or may not) have caused Hagesth and Dario to go at each other so hard, presumably over this paragraph:

>Clarifying "Responsible Al" at the DoW - Out with Utopian Idealism, In with Hard-Nosed Realism. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and social ideology have no place in the DoW, so we must not employ AI models which incorporate ideological "tuning" that interferes with their ability to provide objectively truthful responses to user prompts. The Department must also utilize models free from usage policy constraints that may limit lawful military applications. Therefore, I direct the CDAO to establish benchmarks for model objectivity as a primary procurement criterion within 90 days, and I direct the Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment to incorporate standard "any lawful use" language into any DoW contract through which AI services are procured within 180 days. I also direct the CDAO to.ensure all existing AI policy guidance at the Department aligns with the directives laid out in this memorandum.

So, the "any lawful use" language makes me think that Dario et al have a basket of uses in their minds that they feel should be illegal, but are not currently, and they want to condition further participation in this defense program on not being required to engage in such activity that they deem ought be illegal.

It is no surprise that the government is reacting poorly to this. Without commenting on the ethics of AI-enabled surveillance or non-HITL kill chains, which are fraught, I understand why a department of government charged with making war is uninterested in debating this as terms of the contract itself. Perhaps the best place for that is Congress (good luck), but to remind: the adversary that these people are all thinking about here is PRC, who does not give a single shit about anyone's feelings on whether it's ethical or not to allow a drone system to drop ordinance on it's own.

[1] https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jan/12/2003855671/-1/-1/0/ART...

I might be being a bit conspiratorial, but is anyone else not buying this whole song and dance, from either side? Anthropic keeps talking about their safeguards or whatever, but seeing their marketing tactics historically it just reads more like trying to posture and get good PR for "fighting the system" or whatever.

"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. Also, once our models improve enough then we'll be sending in The Borg to autonomously target our Enemies™"

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.

Do they have even a basic understanding of the different regimes of safety and what allegiance means to ones own state?

It would be fine to say they are opting out of all forms of protection against adversaries.

But it feels like just more insane naive tech bro stuff.

As someone outside the tech bro bubble in fintech in London, can somebody explain this in a way that doesn't indicate these are sort of kids in a playground who think there is no such thing as the wolf?

Again, opting out and specializing in tech that you are going to provide to your enemies AND friends alike is fine. That is a good specialization. But this is not what I hear. I hear protest songs not deep thinking of thousand year mind set.

It is just so disappointing to come here and read these naive takes. Yes, Anthropic should be compelled to support the military using the DPA if necessary.

So much for this waste of a domain name. https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175

"Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network. "

You’ve lost utterly and completely. Even if you, as an individual, are a good person.

I have also been against these terms of services of restricting usage of AI models. It is ridiculous that these private companies get to dictate what I can or can't do with the tools. No other tools work like this. Every other tools is going to be governed by the legal system which the people of the country have established.