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.
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.
This is nonsense, you can’t fire an AI and an AI will never take credit nor will it take responsibility. Humans will always be in charge, because you will never be able to completely trust an AI, because it has no skin in the game, literally.
It turns out a working economy requires well paid workers because somebody needs to buy shit
Even "capitalist overlords" (why not "evil bourgeois swine", while we're here) realize that. The "all SWE replaced" jabbering is a sales pitch to the uninformed. I.e. it's more P.T. Barnum than Jay Gould.
Even if you don't like the current administration, the rank and file are still out there doing valuable work. The government is more than ICE; it also administers welfare, funds research, collects taxes, and distributes social security payments to the old and infirm.
Presumably, if a spouse requested being able to have access to your phone at any time for a spot check, and to vet every single outgoing call and text you made, you would still marry this person, because that’s pretty much what Anthropic was requesting. Go/no-go on a per project basis.
No reasonable self-respecting person would agree to that, that’s basically “my relationship with you is contingent upon your guilt, until proven innocent.”
Dear HN: I would like comments before additional downvotes, please, this is not fucking Reddit
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On the contrary, hopefully this gives the next democratic ammunition to take down big tech. Might as well classify Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple as supply-chain risks too with this logic.
Too bad that Congress has abdicated their responsibility to the executive branch, no reason why Congress couldn't have more control over the Pentagon. The President only has legal authority to command forces, not control an entire institution; but this would require Congress actually doing their job and not justifying more corporate welfare forever.
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.
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.
> 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.
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'.
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.
Correct, it will be about silencing any opposition against this administration. OpenAI will be happy to let their models be used to persecute, kill, and destroy american democracy if it lines Sam's pockets.
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
Is there any evidence that going outside the scope of the agreement would amount to anything more than a contract violation? Are we really to expect that Anthropic general counsel sits at the API gates allowing or blocking requests?
More generally, are there any comparable contract requirements in the field of defense, for a company in the same position as Anthropic? I'm curious.
You're missing the huge step that the government asking for "all legal uses" terminology is also who decides what is legal. Congress isn't willing to act as a check on executive power, meaning the contract they demanded simply says "I do what I want."
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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
> 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.
If you have just dictated terms of use for a military asset to the military that acquired it how are you not a supply chain risk?
At the very least it demonstrated supreme naivete at the highest corporate levels. There are game theoretic reasons why a military should never accept any external restrictions on an asset.
Anthropic and the military had a contract. The military wanted to change the terms of that contract. Anthropic said no, which is their clearly defined contractual right. They got labeled a supply chain risk. How is this anything other than a shakedown? Does contract law mean anything to this administration?
> “Supply chain risk” means the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of a covered system so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise degrade the function, use, or operation of such system (see 10 U.S.C. 3252).
Naming a US company a "supply chain risk" is basically saying "this company is an adversary of the USA", which is FUCKING INSANE.
And the F35 comes with tons of contract terms in favor of the manufacturer. Like I've heard about how planes have been grounded because although an air base has the parts and mechanics rated to perform the repair on sore, the servicing contract only allows it to be performed by the service contractors who needed to be flown in.
The DOD can't even force companies to hand over data, such as schematics, if it wasn't in the original contract without providing extra payment negotiated with the contractor, and they can't force the contractor to set a particular cost. This has happened on numerous systems, one of the biggest I'm aware of was the H-60 where the DOD ended up reverse engineering the early helicopters in order to maintain them, all because the DOD program office forgot to include a data rights clause in the contract (Sikorski didn't forget, they just didn't remind the DOD).
Congratulations, you are clearly the smartest person on this forum, and I don’t mean that facetiously. The number of naïve comments here is absolutely astounding.
It would be like a spouse proposing restrictions and terms of their access to your phone contingent on you marrying them. Assuming guilt until proven innocent
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.
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.
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".
The "extra" is that the government is now attempting to unilaterally renegotiate contracts, and if the contractor disagrees, not only do they terminate the agreement but they restrict how other companies to work with you.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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...
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".
I think the DNC and the media might need to get some of that blame for being empty vessels for corporate interests that allowed this conman to get elected twice
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.
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. *
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?)
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.
It's not an "implementation detail." Either obeying contract law subjects you to being designated a supply-chain risk, or it does not, and that decision has ramifications outside this "implementation."
Irrelevant. The president holds all the cards, he is above the law and you are a supply chain risk if you ask anything else other than “how high” when you are told to jump. Laws or contracts are things in the past. The most a contract can do is define your limits and obligations, not your rights or privileges,
> The president holds all the cards, he is above the law
Even though it seems that way, he really isn't, even now. Many of his EOs and other actions have been struck down in court, and while compliance with court orders has been far from perfect (another alarming trend), Trump has not actually gotten away with doing everything he wants to do.
I do fear for the future of this country, for rule of law, and the democractic norms that degrade day by day. But Trump is not actually above the law, as much as he wants to be.
You got downvoted a bit but I upvoted. You're clearly being descriptive in your statements, not prescriptive. I tend to agree that this is how things are now.
Our country is not being run by the rule of law right now.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
It’s not a hard delete because for legal reasons, they may have to retain it
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.
Thanks, I had deleted the app from all my devices but not deleted the account. I have deleted my account now too.
The enemy of your enemy is not your friend. I also lean towards Anthropic on this one issue, but their CEO still wants to make us all unemployed.
You made a fresh account to say this or is this ironically a clawdbot
[flagged]
It is duplicating...
@dang something needs to be done about this.
Edit: it even created an account based on my username. wtf...
Work is not good per-se.
no but it is unfortunately the only option for most of us for now.
Oh you’ll still work. As a supplicant on your hands and knees for your capitalist overlords.
This is nonsense, you can’t fire an AI and an AI will never take credit nor will it take responsibility. Humans will always be in charge, because you will never be able to completely trust an AI, because it has no skin in the game, literally.
If we could move past the empty rhetoric?
It turns out a working economy requires well paid workers because somebody needs to buy shit
Even "capitalist overlords" (why not "evil bourgeois swine", while we're here) realize that. The "all SWE replaced" jabbering is a sales pitch to the uninformed. I.e. it's more P.T. Barnum than Jay Gould.
People need to buy food. Are farmers well paid?
The job of every software developer is, in essence, to make people unemployed. This is a particularly silly bit of morality to hang on.
If Anthropic changes course will you move to Gemini? If all models do, local llama I assume?
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.
I wish it was just as easy to avoid the terrorist collaborators; unfortunately, the terrorists and their supporters don’t produce anything
Being model independent and cross-model capable is the required skill.
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?
Yeah how could Anthropic do business with the democratically elected government of the United States?
Let‘s ignore all the bad things they have done since that, including killing two US citizens.
Even if you don't like the current administration, the rank and file are still out there doing valuable work. The government is more than ICE; it also administers welfare, funds research, collects taxes, and distributes social security payments to the old and infirm.
[flagged]
That's not civil disobedience. It's voting with your wallet.
Maybe look up civil disobedience?
Presumably, if a spouse requested being able to have access to your phone at any time for a spot check, and to vet every single outgoing call and text you made, you would still marry this person, because that’s pretty much what Anthropic was requesting. Go/no-go on a per project basis.
No reasonable self-respecting person would agree to that, that’s basically “my relationship with you is contingent upon your guilt, until proven innocent.”
Dear HN: I would like comments before additional downvotes, please, this is not fucking Reddit
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Crossing red lines for previous administrations is clearly a goal at this point.
So, DoW 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?
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Would this mean Any systems built with Claude in defense environments may need to be rebuilt or removed?
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
https://archive.ph/IVDtq
Naturally OpenAI also releases their new model on the same day.
Makes sense, obviously, but yeesh.
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...
this isn't on topic at all
I think the implication is that democratic presidents are less likely to do dumb shit like this, which harms the economy.
On the contrary, hopefully this gives the next democratic ammunition to take down big tech. Might as well classify Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple as supply-chain risks too with this logic.
Too bad that Congress has abdicated their responsibility to the executive branch, no reason why Congress couldn't have more control over the Pentagon. The President only has legal authority to command forces, not control an entire institution; but this would require Congress actually doing their job and not justifying more corporate welfare forever.
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?
Does anyone know which law firm is representing anthropic?
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...
It wouldn't matter if it was Lionel Hutz. The damage is done. Anthropic is tainted. They will never work a public sector contract ever again.
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.
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.
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.
[delayed]
> 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.
Is Claude Code's outputted code also part of the supply chain risk?
Part of me wonders if it was a plan to squeeze between Anthropic & big gov contracts
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?"
Is this the reason Claude models disappeared from AWS cloud in Brazil?
Interesting project. I like simple tools that avoid unnecessary ads and keep things lightweight.
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'.
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?
Anthropic already had a deal via Planitir 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 spoked 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?
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.
Correct, it will be about silencing any opposition against this administration. OpenAI will be happy to let their models be used to persecute, kill, and destroy american democracy if it lines Sam's pockets.
> 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.
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
Is there any evidence that going outside the scope of the agreement would amount to anything more than a contract violation? Are we really to expect that Anthropic general counsel sits at the API gates allowing or blocking requests?
More generally, are there any comparable contract requirements in the field of defense, for a company in the same position as Anthropic? I'm curious.
You're missing the huge step that the government asking for "all legal uses" terminology is also who decides what is legal. Congress isn't willing to act as a check on executive power, meaning the contract they demanded simply says "I do what I want."
Sure... So the USA of Trump have just decided to stop themselves and all their military suppliers from using the very best coding tools.
I suppose the USA's frenemies will jump on the occasion and use the incredible opportunity offered to them in a silver platter.
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.
You can download the manual from kremlin.gov, and I am only half-joking here.
Been going on for a long time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
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.
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.
> 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.
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).
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
> 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.
>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!
If you have just dictated terms of use for a military asset to the military that acquired it how are you not a supply chain risk?
At the very least it demonstrated supreme naivete at the highest corporate levels. There are game theoretic reasons why a military should never accept any external restrictions on an asset.
Anthropic and the military had a contract. The military wanted to change the terms of that contract. Anthropic said no, which is their clearly defined contractual right. They got labeled a supply chain risk. How is this anything other than a shakedown? Does contract law mean anything to this administration?
The other such labeled companies have contracts too.
no, the other such labeled companies are foreign owned firms like Huawei that the government never intended to do business with in the first place
The legal definition of supply chain risk:
> “Supply chain risk” means the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of a covered system so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise degrade the function, use, or operation of such system (see 10 U.S.C. 3252).
Naming a US company a "supply chain risk" is basically saying "this company is an adversary of the USA", which is FUCKING INSANE.
They think anyone who isn't a republican is an adversary of the USA.
Because it's not a military asset? It's a privately-owned asset.
> Because it's not a military asset? It's a privately-owned asset.
Are you under the impression that the military is submitting Anthropic API calls?
Whatever model the military is using is as much of an asset as the F35 they purchased.
Depending on their agreements, you could argue it's a rented asset. Doesn't change any calculus.
And the F35 comes with tons of contract terms in favor of the manufacturer. Like I've heard about how planes have been grounded because although an air base has the parts and mechanics rated to perform the repair on sore, the servicing contract only allows it to be performed by the service contractors who needed to be flown in.
The DOD can't even force companies to hand over data, such as schematics, if it wasn't in the original contract without providing extra payment negotiated with the contractor, and they can't force the contractor to set a particular cost. This has happened on numerous systems, one of the biggest I'm aware of was the H-60 where the DOD ended up reverse engineering the early helicopters in order to maintain them, all because the DOD program office forgot to include a data rights clause in the contract (Sikorski didn't forget, they just didn't remind the DOD).
status.claude.com shows the uptime for the government cloud service. It's running in-part on an AWS server.
[delayed]
Congratulations, you are clearly the smartest person on this forum, and I don’t mean that facetiously. The number of naïve comments here is absolutely astounding.
It would be like a spouse proposing restrictions and terms of their access to your phone contingent on you marrying them. Assuming guilt until proven innocent
Has this happened before?
Not to a US company.
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.
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.
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.
In Hegseth's voice - No longer politically correct "DoD". It's precisely violent DoW now.
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".
The "extra" is that the government is now attempting to unilaterally renegotiate contracts, and if the contractor disagrees, not only do they terminate the agreement but they restrict how other companies to work with you.
Apparently that's not 100% true. The DoD contractor itself can still use Anthropic's technology, just not on U.S. military contract projects.
They will stop just to be sure no boundaries are crossed.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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...
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".
Genuine question - was your fair consideration prior to or after J6?
We can all thank the VCs and CEOs who fully embraced and enabled this administration
We're all trying to find the guy who did this!
And 32% of eligible voters that thought Kamala would've been worse.
Don't blame the voters, they didn't get to pick her and did not run her campaign.
Oh no, I will. They're absolutely culpable.
I think the DNC and the media might need to get some of that blame for being empty vessels for corporate interests that allowed this conman to get elected twice
A reminder to Anthropic, european residence visas start at $250K
Huh, and I thought conservatives were all about government staying our of the way of the private sector. Go figure...
Not these people for what I see.
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.
They're not conservatives.
[flagged]
In an article that discusses Pentagon doing stupid shit? :)
Next up, after some sort of bribe, the administration opens up Qwen models to be used by the Pentagon.
Fascism
[flagged]
I really can't tell if this is snark or not.
Mark Levin is that you?
[flagged]
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
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?)
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.
It's not an "implementation detail." Either obeying contract law subjects you to being designated a supply-chain risk, or it does not, and that decision has ramifications outside this "implementation."
Irrelevant. The president holds all the cards, he is above the law and you are a supply chain risk if you ask anything else other than “how high” when you are told to jump. Laws or contracts are things in the past. The most a contract can do is define your limits and obligations, not your rights or privileges,
> The president holds all the cards, he is above the law
Even though it seems that way, he really isn't, even now. Many of his EOs and other actions have been struck down in court, and while compliance with court orders has been far from perfect (another alarming trend), Trump has not actually gotten away with doing everything he wants to do.
I do fear for the future of this country, for rule of law, and the democractic norms that degrade day by day. But Trump is not actually above the law, as much as he wants to be.
> The president holds all the cards, he is above the law
This is provably not true. The fastest way for this to become true is to believe it, or at least to parrot it, even in a facetious way.
You got downvoted a bit but I upvoted. You're clearly being descriptive in your statements, not prescriptive. I tend to agree that this is how things are now.
Our country is not being run by the rule of law right now.
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.
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).
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.