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Comment by ThunderSizzle | Hacker News Reader

I think the answer is the military finds another vendor willing to deal, or move it in house.

It's not like Anthropic will be nationalized any more than the bankrupted auto companies of 2008.

I don't care what the military does. This is pure thuggery and abuse of the rights of private firms. Any time you contract with the government and they don't like your terms, will they designate you a threat?

In this context, that designation just means that the DOD won’t use your product and it’s suppliers can’t use your product for DOD-facing activity. That’s not “thuggery” it’s something any buyer can do. Walmart or whatever could do it too.

Isn't that textbook tortious interference with a business relationship?

No, tortious interference requires use of means that are independently wrongful, such as fraud, blackmail, etc. Preventing someone from doing business with someone else isn’t by itself enough. The reason the tort exists is to address the situation where some unlawful conduct (e.g. fraudulent statements) is directed against Party A, but the damage accrues to Party B in the form of a broken contract. In that scenario, Party B couldn’t sue for fraud, because the fraudulent statements were made to Party A. But Party A couldn’t sue for fraud, because it wasn’t harmed.

For example, if you think Party A and its customers are infringing your patent, you can threaten to sue the customers unless they use your product instead. That’s not tortious interference because suing someone for patent infringement isn’t itself wrongful.

I think it is thuggery. If DOD doesn't want to use anthropic as vendor, thats fine.

Prohibiting contractors and departments from using it to produce products well within anthropic terms of service has no risk.

It is petty retaliation and strong arming.

Imagine if Ford said they weren't interested in building tanks, and then the DoD said employees and contractors can't use Ford for any purpose, because they are a supply chain risk

If Ford told the DoD you can't use the tanks they bought however they need to, and had a kill switch in it in case they wanted to cut the DoD off, then that would obviously be a supply chain risk.

The military and it's suppliers need mitigate risk, and that includes suppliers intentionally causing harm to soldiers on the front lines, or in the backend logistics supply chain.

Honestly, every company should be treating Anthropic and OpenAI as supply chain risks, and should completely avoid dealing with them.

> If Ford told the DoD you can't use the tanks they bought however they need to, and had a kill switch in it in case they wanted to cut the DoD off, then that would obviously be a supply chain risk.

This is a misrepresentation of the situation. Anthropic did NOT sell something to the DoD and then restrict usage - the DoD purchased their offering fully aware of this clause.

The ability by the supplier is the problem, regardless of there is an upfront clause or not. The upfront clause is the problem

That's true for every company and every individual involved with the dod. They can all put guns or pencils down and refuse at a future date for a unspecified reason.

That has nothing to do with supply chain risk designation. That comes from sabotage

They won't because Trumps family has billions invested in OpenAI.

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