I think many people on HN have a cynical reaction to Anthropic's actions due to of their own lived experiences with tech companies. Sometimes, that holds: my part of the company looked like Meta or Stripe, and it's hard not to regress to the mean as you scale. But not every pattern repeats, and the Anthropic of today is still driven by people who will risk losing a seat at the table to make principled decisions.

I do not think this is a calculated ploy that's driven by making money. I think the decision was made because the people making this decision at Anthropic are well-intentioned, driven by values, and motivated by trying to make the transition to powerful AI to go well.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47174423

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47149908

I've been seeing it a lot lately, but don't remember ever really seeing it before. Do members of the military prefer this title?

“To the best of our knowledge, these exceptions have not affected a single government mission to date.”

I had assumed these exceptions (on domestic surveillance and autonomous drones) were more than presuppositions.

It's also incoherent that the DoD/DoW was threatening to invoke the Defense Production Act OR classifying them as "supply chain risk". They're either too uniquely critical to national defense OR they're such a severe liability that they have to be blacklisted for anyone in the DoD apparatus (including the many subcontracts) to use.

How are other tech companies supposed to work with the US government and draw up mutual contracts when those terms are suddenly questioned months later and can be used in such devastating ways against them? Setting the morals/principals aside, how does this make for rational business decision to work with a counterparty that behaves this way.

Mass surveillance of people constitutes a violation of fundamental rights. The red line is in the wrong place.

DPA? All Writs Act?

Force them to comply and then prevent them talking about it with NSLs?

I appreciate that Anthropic may be the least bad of a bunch of really bad actors here, but this has played out before in the US, and the burden of trust is, and should be, really high. I believe that Anthropic don't want to remove the "safety barriers" on their tech being used for domestic surveillance and military operations, but that implies they're ok with those use-cases so long as the "safety barriers" are still up. Not really the best look, IMHO.

So what happens when we all get rosy eyed about Anthropic (the only slightly evil company) winning a battle against the purely evil government, and then the gov use the various instruments at their disposal to just force anthropic to do what they want, and then force them to never disclose it?

Did the world learn nothing from Snowden?

"Zee rockets go up! Who cares vhere zey come down? Zat's not my department" says Wernher von Braun.

Europe is a nice place, too. In case you need GPUs we have AI factories for you : https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/ai-factori...

We also don't engage in mass surveillance or develop autonomous weapons.

Perhaps it’s time or even past time to think of ways of screwing up their training sets.

I guess our democracies don't count and we don't have any rights.

I don’t really expect this to last but if it does I will happily continue to offer this kudos on an indefinite basis.

/In theory./

In practice, if your biggest customer tells you to drop Anthropic, you listen to them.

"Secretary Hegseth has implied this designation would restrict anyone who does business with the military from doing business with Anthropic. The Secretary does not have the statutory authority to back up this statement. Legally, a supply chain risk designation under 10 USC 3252 can only extend to the use of Claude as part of Department of War contracts—it cannot affect how contractors use Claude to serve other customers.

In practice, this means:

If you are an individual customer or hold a commercial contract with Anthropic, your access to Claude—through our API, claude.ai, or any of our products—is completely unaffected. If you are a Department of War contractor, this designation—if formally adopted—would only affect your use of Claude on Department of War contract work. Your use for any other purpose is unaffected."

I applaud Anthropic's candor in the public sphere. Unfortunately the country party is unworthy of such applause.

The most import point of this story is that this is already happening. And it will likely continue regardless of who is elected.

> Sam Altman told OpenAI employees at an all-hands meeting on Friday afternoon that a potential agreement is emerging with the U.S. Department of War to use the startup’s AI models and tools, according to a source present at the meeting and a summary of the meeting seen by Fortune. The contract has not yet been signed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47188698

Fuck this authoritarian bullshit.

That’s okay! The use of autonomous weapons is only risky for the civilians of the country you’re destabilizing this week!

https://x.com/USWREMichael/status/2027568070034608173

1. I don’t understand what is controversial about any supplier making their own rules for trade. I don’t have to agree with their beliefs, but I find it the basis of a functioning society to allow others to hold beliefs that I do not share, and to develop products as they want, as long as they don’t pose any dangers. If I don’t like the product, I am free to shop elsewhere or develop my own.

2. I thought that there is was a shared understanding of the line between voluntary business deals, and coercion and punishment. I thought we agreed that the law should protect people and businesses in ways so that nobody can exert power over another. Not on the hows, but on the why. And not based on ethical considerations (beliefs) but purely on logical grounds that we know how violence begets violence, use of it will only escalate conflict, and we will ultimately lose.

3. I thought we all agreed that government agencies were bound by the law and its policies. If you were to use the designation of Supply Chain Risk, you would at least have to sufficiently provide logical arguments. Here, they even openly disclose how they plan to use the mechanism purely as punishment, against the spirit of the law, not because a product carries any risk and should be limited, but because it is too limited.

Is this some form of collective narcissistic psychosis? The desire to burn it all down in suicide?

"We'd sure love to turn our AI into a mass surveillance tool! Please, aim it at the Americans Population! And Kill Bots, we can't wait!"

They want to present themselves as moral. What better endorsement than by being rejected by the US military under Trump? You get the people who hate trump and the people who hate the military in one swoop.

At the same time its kind of a non story. Anrhropic says it doesn't want its products used in certain ways, US military says fine, you can't be part of the project where we are going to make the AI do those things. Isn't that a win for both sides ? What's the problem?

It would be like someone part of a boycott movement being surprised the company they are boycotting doesn't want to hire them.

LMFAO

This administration is comfortable with blatantly picking winners and OpenAI is better connected with the admin than Anthropic.

What the actual fuck. How can anyone side with Anthropic. They are not the good guys by any means whatsoever. Mass surveillance against anyone is wrong and having killbots "when AI is ready" is totally fucked and dystopian. Imagine killbots rampaging while the good American people are at home living a nice peaceful life. Fuck any of that, fuck Anthropic, fuck ClosedAI, fuck Google, fuck Trump, fuck the DoD and fuck every American who is patriotic to the monster their country became. Fuck every country that also tries to do stuff like this. Fuck all companies taking part in such insanity.

This is another statement, to their customers about Hegseth's social post, but perhaps resulting in further escalation because you know the other side doesn't like having their weaknesses pointed out.

It’s the library of Alexandria all over again.