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Comment by ApolloFortyNine | Hacker News Reader

I know everyone says this is political but it actually seems like a textbook designation. Anthropic wanted to have rules on how the military used AI, the military said no and therefore doesn't want anthropic used anywhere in their supply line.

This is like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike orders, now the military needs to have a special box of pens that don't have stipulations attached. With AI usage it would be the same thing except applied to entire product chains. It seems like it would just add more complexity to operations.

You can agree with the rules anthropic wanted, but having rules set by a private company at all that apply to the military does seem fair for the military to object to.

>The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary

Though they'd probably put the DoD on the cybersecurity whitelist today, the very idea of the claude whitelists for certain functionality already exists and is being used by them today.

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> I know everyone says this is political but it actually seems like a textbook designation

It literally is a textbook definition, signed into US law:

“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).

To add onto what another commenter said, the pen analogy would be more like the manufacturer designing pens that stopped working when used to sign strike orders they disagreed with.

Selling a pen labeled "this pen will refuse to sign certain orders" is not sabotage or malicious and is thus not a supply chain risk. The DoD is free to not buy from Anthropic, but designating them as a supply chain risk is incorrect, as well as arguably arbitrary and capricious given their public criticism of Anthropic's beliefs.

The DoD buys from suppliers, who buy from suppliers, and so on. Hence supply chain. Hence supply chain risk.

I don't think anyone doubts that subcontracts exist. They doubt that Anthropic's insistence that Claude isn't capable of being the operating system for an automated killbot and associated terms the DoD previously agreed to means that there's any danger to the US military from Lockheed Martin using Claude as a code assistant to build GUIs.

What if it’s a GUI to manage deployment of the kill bots? I worked for a DOD contractor on software. All our scenarios were more related. It was like “OK you’ve overthrown the civilian government of this Middle Eastern country, including the radio regulators, and now we need to coordinate radio frequency assignments for the tactical squads.”

Code which renders dots on a map isn't going to magically reorder itself if the GNSS endpoints get switched from manned to unmanned assets just because it was authored by Claude, and if the subcontractor isn't auditing and testing the code outputs properly then they're the supply chain risk, not a specific code-gen tool they use. Obviously if instead of being used as code or report generating assistants, LLM agents are used to execute combat decisions in real time that introduces a lot more risk. That's... literally Anthropic's argument against using them for that specific purpose.

It doesn't make much sense to determine that because Anthropic continues to insist that Claude is unsuitable for use as some sort of super advanced loitering munition, Lockheed using it to write job ads is as much a threat to national security as a Chinese comms terminal.

It's not like the DoD and their subcontractors and their subcontractors' subcontractors aren't used to all sorts of fine-grained separation when it comes to what is and isn't classified or export controlled under normal circumstances, or that Hegseth taking a break from fantasising about soldiers' testosterone levels for long enough to decry Anthropic's stance as 'woke' makes the decision look like one based on operational effectiveness.

"Supply chain risk" specifically refers to risk of malicious attack or sabotage through the supply chain, not all risks associated with supply chains.

A vendor with particularly poor QA might be a risk in your supply chain but isn't a "supply chain risk" according to this designation and neither would Anthropic be.

You would think that's a surprisingly easy concept to grasp, but many are viewing this through the lens of desired outcome and not reality.

Supply chain risks are usually when someone does a attack over the supply chain. Like when the mossad planted literally explosives in radio devices for Hezbollah.

Antrophic merely said they don't allow their tools to be used for autonomous killing.

A very specific case.

So where is the danger making it necessary preventing all suppliers from using Claude at all? That only concerns those who work directly on autonomous killing and only they will have to go to Altman or Musk.

So none of that is any threat to the military - so it was just black mailing to make them do the governments will - which is something usually dictatorships do, not democratic systems.

So they confessed to being a supply chain risk themselves and you're still arguing against the designation?

Private companies can not be allowed to control what our military does I feel like I'm in a crazy worlds how can people possible be arguing for that.

No, no confession of anything.

In a democratic society, the default should be, the military just buy somewhere else, then force companies to build them the terminator. So no private company controls what the military does, they just control their product. You want the military to control private companies? There is a name for that kind of system, where this is conmon.

I can build a super bioweapon that can kill millions and I don't trust the US military to use it responsibly.

The US military asks me to build the super bioweapon. I say no thanks, please ask someone else.

Am I a supply chain risk?

Yeah, there’s no chance the confession was effectively coerced.

And yes companies should be able to control how their products are used, particularly in the military. Or do you believe in compelled speech?

supply chain risk has a standard definition that matches what you think, and a legal definition that lets the government do whatever it wants.

Why has this never previously been done to an American company from which the DoD decided not to purchase something?

Perhaps people who are noticing politics here - including in the decision of two Trump-appointed judges, against the he vote of another Republican-appointed judge- are not the ones who are choosing not to see reality?

President Truman literally seized the assets of a steel company to avert a strike that would hurt the Korean War effort. The Supreme Court stopped him, but three Justices voted it was okay!

We also have the Defense Production Act: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R43767. It doesn’t happen more often because most people aren’t stupid enough to say “no” to the U.S. military. These Effective Altruists, however, are too big for their britches.

I don't know, I am just guessing because not a single American company has publicly stated they are against its product use up to a certain degree by DoD? If they have not publicly declared it then yes, DoD simply don't sign the contract.

So your argument is that the government is punishing Anthropic for its public statements? And it is correct to do so?

(I think it's also the case that Anthropic didn't make any public statements about the negotiations until after the DoD was already publicly threatening this designation. But that seems less important than the question of: is it good for the US government to try to destroy companies whose public statements it dislikes?)

So, who supplies to Anthropic that doesn't supply to OpenAI and/or Google? In other words, why should Anthropic be singled out in your explanation?

So we have a pen that may refuse to sign certain orders, and is clearly labeled as such.

If the DoD needs to sign such orders, they won't buy this pen.

If a supplier needs to sign such orders, the supplier also won't buy the pen.

If a supplier needs to sign other orders, and this pen is the best one available, the supplier may decide to buy this pen. Since the orders are within the range of what the pen will sign, they get signed, and the supplier fulfills its contract with the DoD.

Where is the supply chain risk? The ink isn't going to erase itself post-hoc.

---

Now, if the DoD suspects that Anthropic will train its models to try to actively sabotage military operations, that's a very different story. Does anyone actually believe that?

> If a supplier needs to sign other orders, and this pen is the best one available, the supplier may decide to buy this pen. Since the orders are within the range of what the pen will sign

Who decides what’s within the scope of “what orders are within the range of what the pen will sign?” The boundaries are never clear cut. You’ve got a vendor who could kill switch critical military technology if it’s used in a way they decide falls outside the scope of what they want.

> You’ve got a vendor who could kill switch critical military technology if it’s used in a way they decide falls outside the scope of what they want.

If the DoD hires ACME to build some software to make widgets, and ACME uses Claude to build that software, where is the kill switch?

I guess the Claude model could hide a kill switch in the widget manufacturing code, but so could ACME's human subcontractor. Why is Anthropic being considered a supply chain risk here?

The model can refuse to build something, but it can't take back what has already been built.

Can’t you exclude suppliers who use Anthropic?

That is what has been done

If you outsource your thinking to a server that can detect your IP address, and decide to render decision “b” instead of decision “a” to your query, that’s a risk. (Or detect by the type of query, past history of your use, etc.). Panopticlick should be having a field day with all this.

All of those verbs basically mean "degrade an existing system, after the fact". If anthropic states beforehand that certain use cases are not possible, it should be fine, no?

To give another (bad) analogy: The Pens aren't made to be weapons themselves, they are not intended for that. If the DoD now tries to shoot pens as projectiles and they just melt, that's no reason to classify the pen manufacturer as a supply chain risk, the product was not altered after the fact.

Of course, there _is_ a difference in "It could do that, but it shouldn't" and "It cannot do that". But it is not that large. That's why I don't see it as that clear cut.

It is not the textbook definition, because what Anthropic is doing is not sabotage, malicious, or subversive. Those are the key words in the definition. They are just refusing to add a feature to the military's specification. So their bid falls short of requirements.

just because someone copied one sentence from some online reference it doesn't mean that the court used it for arguing their decision.

https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/26-104...

> Whatever paradigmatic examples individual members of Congress may have had in mind, the statutory definition is not limited to “adversar[ies],” 10 U.S.C. § 3252(d)(4), and instead covers “any person,”

You're not addressing the argument, though. No one is saying that the target must be an "adversary".

Anthropic's actions were not sabotage, malicious, or subversive. That seems to be a requirement of the definition.

I tried to hint in my comment that the argument is completely different. the supply chain risk is just what the media runs with. (yes, it's in the opinion, but that is the weaker part. and the court agrees, that it basically does not apply to Anthropic.)

there's section 4713 which is roughly "Secretary of War can pull the nat.sec. card, bye"

> They are just refusing to add a feature to the military's specification.

That fails to accord with the claim:

That isn't sabotage, that is simply product design. Anthropic is free to create their products that refuse to kill people, and the DoD is free not to buy those products if they don't fit their needs.

However, that's not what a supply chain risk is. It's not an order to "don't buy these products if they don't work the way we want them to", its designating Anthropic as a national security threat because they might intentionally sabotage US military operations.

> they might intentionally sabotage US military operations

Yes, this is why the DoW won’t use them.

The name has not been legally changed. The law still says it is the department of defense, regardless of what name they choose to use.

As I said elsewhere, it's utterly preposterous that the DOD actually considers this a reasonable threat, because it's simply not a reasonable possibility. There's no way Anthropic would do that, precisely because of the consequences that would follow if they did, and got found out. Moreover, they already clearly stated their terms and preferences. It's all out of the open. There's no supply chain risk, that designation is purely political.

I work in the space industry and regularly use parts in our designs that are unapproved from space flight. Sometimes it's because it's a commercial part that we seem acceptable for flight, other times it's an unscreened or engineering model that doesn't go through the proper testing that space-qualified parts do. One vendor even dents the lid of a part to invalidate the hermetic seal guarantee that they claim for the space-qualified version (it still works fine). Many will have fine print in the data sheets saying the part is not to be used for critical applications like aerospace or medical devices. Sometimes we tell a little fib to our vendor that we are just developing non-flight devices so that they don't get upset and refuse to sell the lower-grade part to us. These vendors are scared of having something fail in an unapproved environment and are unaware of how much risk the customer is tolerating by the use of these unscreened parts.

It would have been incredibly simple for Anthropic to say "we cannot guarantee performance in a kill-chain application due to an unknown level of safeguards implemented in the baseline product and cannot estimate a cost for developing a new product capable of such application." and leave it at that.

> Moreover, they already clearly stated their terms and preferences.

No it isn’t see above

>DoW

DoD. Gulf of Mexico. Lake Ontario.

>The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary (emphasis mine)

They didn't "reasonably" fear anything. There is absolutely no evidence to support these allegations. Anthropic has the right to impose licensing terms. Merely disagreeing with the government is not evidence of wrongdoing.

If Anthropic wasn't allowed to say what they said, how would they be allowed to object to their government's illegal use of their products at all? It sounds to me like their only choices were "shut up" or "be punished", which is a clear-cut violation of their rights.

Anthropic, in the original negotiations, said the can't answer every hypothetical use case. And the DOD should just come and ask as they come up (during an operation).

Which means the exact use limitations WOULD NOT BE DELINEATED IN WRITING in advance.

What is the evidence that Anthropic said this?

That fails only if you believe and agree with the government's argument, which I don't.

I don't think it's reasonable to fear that Anthropic would change the deal after contractually agreeing to terms of use. The government is using that as an excuse because they know that Anthropic hasn't actually met the definition of a supply-chain risk.

DOD's stated concern is not a change to the deal. It is a breach of the deal: "...manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized..."

We know who has a notorious habit of changing "deals" last minute or randomly. And that isn't Anthropic.

The department feared Anthropic would refuse if it was used to mass surveil on Americans or kill people without human oversight. Facts already laid out in the terms. Instead of simply canceling or negotiating, they used overwhelming government force against it to apply a designation never before applied to an American company. When its an interaction between trump/trump's government and any other party, it is a good first approximation to assume Trumps side are wrong.

There is a dfference between “our product can’t do X” and “our product can do X, but we don’t want you to use it to do X”.

Yes certainly, I can sell highly corrosive concentrated hydrochloric acid to the government as part of some contract for the synthesis of certain chemicals but I am fully within my rights to write that the acid should not be sprayed on people from a pump.

But that is not at all a reasonable fear. Is it really reasonable to believe that Anthropic, after receiving a government contract, would then proceed to sabotage their own product to not function as contracted? That seems like an utterly ridiculous claim to me, nothing close to "reasonable". There is no charitable way to view this designation except as political punishment and/or as a favor to Altman and Musk.

> would then proceed to sabotage their own product to not function as contracted?

Claude terms here: ANTHROPIC EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE

Like most so-called AI, the Claude program is inherently unreliable. I doubt Anthropic would ever agree to "function as contracted".

The point to me is that the contract would include the understanding that the system was not 100% reliable.

Oh please. Then any MIT licensed software is also a supply chain risk.

Again: if Anthropic deliberately blocks a user from ordering it to prosecute a target, then it is degrading the software capability on purpose.

The pen example makes sense if the intermediary were to ship the pen as part of the final product but not if the pen is simply used to draft designs of the final product. It seems that this designation would prohibit using the pen anywhere in the process which doesn't really make sense.

> so as to surveil

How does Android and iPhone meet the grade given apps have pretty consistently leaked locations, base layouts etc?

Laws are only half the picture. Enforcement is an additional aspect. And yes it is extremely prone to corruption.

apps, not the actual devices by the supplier

I think that still matches "an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function".

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-cybersecurity-ad-tr...

> The U.S. military has disabled advertising tracking tools in government-issued phones, computers and other devices, officials recently told Congress.

> The different military branches confirmed they had done so, some only this summer, following reporting that commercially available data taken from these devices and sold freely by data brokers, was being used by Iran and other adversaries to track and in some cases target American bases and personnel.

Yeah, and with Strava data, you didn't even have to buy anything, just look for someone running laps in the middle of the desert.

Who is the adversary in this case?

the courts interpret the statute, we have to read their argument where they explain why they think that's not the right definition to focus on. (the "adversary" is in section 3252, but they say that independently from that section 4713 allows determination of exigency.)

https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/26-104... see page 30

Anthropic

"risk that an adversary may" any of them.

China, Russia, Iran, come to mind.

Here on planet Earth, what happened is that Anthropic imposed licensing terms. The DoD is free to reject those terms. But that is not evidence that Anthropic is planning to harm the US military by sabotaging its products. There is no evidence that Anthropic changed, or planned to change, the design of its system to work against the US military following its dispute with the DoD. Zip zero nada. Never happened. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

>To add onto what another commenter said, the pen analogy would be more like the manufacturer designing pens that stopped working when used to sign strike orders they disagreed with.

The pen analogy would be more like the manufacturer selling pens that work just fine under all circumstances but that the military starts using in hand-to-hand combat.

While amusing on the surface, let's substitute an ink-jet printer for the pen, and have a malicious party inject code as a print driver update, or maybe re-programs that chip in the ink cartridge, and the ink cartridge refuses to function on certain print jobs. Maybe it will only allow the words "WE SURRENDER" be printed as part of the message.

That's not at all what this is. Anthropic was very clear up-front what they would and wouldn't allow. They were not going to "subvert" anything. "Degrade function" in this context means that there is a risk that ongoing changes to the covered system will cause problems for the government. That wouldn't have been the case here; it would have been clear from the start what the military would and wouldn't be allowed to do with it, and that wouldn't change.

??? What are you talking about. Anthropic isn't an adversary and they're not required to sell for purposes they don't want to. It's not sabotage and it's not malicious.

This is a designation reserved for terrorists and the link.

If you're preventing the military from doing some action because you disagree with it, that makes you an adversary.

Actively handicapping a product that's otherwise capable qualifies.

> If you're preventing the military from doing some action because you disagree with it, that makes you an adversary.

No, it doesn't. The military doesn't have a right to force product requirements and terms of use on companies they contract with.

If they don't like the contract terms, they can simply not sign a contract and not do business with a company. Trying to get them designated a supply-chain risk is just political retribution.

>If they don't like the contract terms, they can simply not sign a contract and not do business with a company.

How is that not what they're saying here by banning it in the supply chain?

How else do you prevent any dod purchases or contracts from 'having contact' with a software you don't trust?

Why has this never previously been done to an American company from which the DoD decided not to purchase something?

To be credible, you need to address the point that this prevents subcontractors from using it to code.

> Actively handicapping a product that's otherwise capable qualifies.

But they're not actively handicapping it. They're saying it would be wildly irresponsible to assume it's "otherwise capable".

And very critically: they have taken zero steps to "actively handicap" it in any way.

Wanting veto power in execution is functionally the same as actively handicapping it, regardless of how implemented.

The Claude they sell to me seems quite actively handicapped when I ask it questions about cyber security or biology.

am I insane with all these people making the actively handicapping argument? Doesn't openAI sell to them the actively handicapped version?

Like they're okay with the product being designed to be incapable but not terms limiting a product.

Actively handicapping a product that's otherwise capable qualifies. If you discover that the military is using your capacitors to make rocket launchers, so you introduce a manufacturing defect that will cause them to fail at high heat, you're a supply chain risk and can be rightfully designated as such.

The converse does not qualify. If I advertise a chemical with an admixture that prevents it from being used to make explosives, the military has absolutely no right to demand that I produce a version of that chemical without the admixture. Selling a product which can't do what the DoD wants does not make me a supply chain risk, no matter how easy it would be for me to make a different product that's fit for their purpose.

So... don't buy from Anthropic? How many of the US population is an adversary, according to your definition?

Say everyone had something to sell and DOD wanted to buy it. But some people wouldn't make the product changes DOD demanded. Now, they are the adversary of the DOD?

I hear Trumplandia is nice this time of year.

The point is the DoD is telling its suppliers not to use it because the supplier of your supplier is your supplier. That’s what this does

There must be precedent if this is so normal.

The DOD keeps extreme control over their supply chain. For many things it requires specific approval to be in the supply chain in the first place

that section is not important (the court says so, read page 30 https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/26-104... ) section 4713 is ("determination of exigency" regarding procurement decisions)

I think you're confused. When the White House decided to stop having federal agencies buy paper straws [1], they didn't designate paper straws a supply chain risk, they just stopped buying them. The term has a very specific meaning which would not apply in the pen scenario.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/endi...

It's not a great analagy; it's more like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike orders, who then only ships pens with cameras and solenoids so that the point stays retracted until the camera verifies that the paper doesn't include a drone strike orders.

And that would be absolutely fine for a pen manufacturer to do. It would make them unsuitable for meeting the requirements for a government contract as a pen supplier for signing orders, but would not make them a supply-chain risk.

Same goes for Anthropic: they would only consider offering a version of their product for military use that had certain restrictions. The government is free to accept that version or reject it. Rejecting it and designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk is just political intimidation and retribution for not playing ball.

i am not sure even this covers it.

it would be like the pen manufacturer who ships pens with an automatic point retractor, AND a video livestream to the manufacturer from the pen AND remote control of the point retractor.

anthropic and contractors monitor the livestream remotely to make sure the pen is not signing drone strike orders and may choose to activate the retractor.

> anthropic and contractors monitor the livestream remotely to make sure the pen is not signing drone strike orders and may choose to activate the retractor.

I might be mistaken, but in the case of national security deployments the models are airgapped and Anthropic doesn't actually have access to telemetry/logging from them.

for current deployments the models are airgapped.

however anthropic is demanding that they have access to chat logs for anything better than opus 5.

it is not possible to run recent anthropic models in a secure way. palantir, nvidia, booz allen etc have blocked fable because they can't run it safely.

You are repeatedly saying they spy on their users? Prove it. Then prove t he other ai companies don't. Then prove that the service they offered to the US government didn't have spying disabled.

"You are repeatedly saying they spy on their users? Prove it."

again, anthropic is snooping, section F specifically: [https://www.anthropic.com/legal/service-specific-terms].

"Then prove the other ai companies don't."

xAI zdr is not snooping, section 3.4: [https://x.ai/legal/terms-of-service-enterprise]

openai azure zdr is not snooping: [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/foundry/openai/conce...]

gcp zdr is not snooping: [https://docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platfo...]

only anthropic.

"Then prove that the service they offered to the US government didn't have spying disabled."

the service they offered did have spying disabled. the security risk is from anthropic updating the claude and covertly bricking or degrading it.

quote: "In such an ongoing relationship where the vendor [...] “continuously update[s] and tune[s] the product,” the Department must establish and maintain confidence that the vendor will not add limitations that interfere with the Department’s use of the product." (p26)

"the Department relies on [petitioner] to provide regular updates to Claude" (p27)

[https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.42...]

All of these said they keep data 30 days and xai even said furthermore it can decide to keep data for even longer. You also said the version they provided to the government had spying disabled, the complaint that the govt made seems a thin excuse for what trump wanted as any and all major AI models are subject to constant updates.

if you read the policies i linked, it shows exactly the data retention available. all have zero retention available.

They're talking like Amazon Bedrock doesn't exist, which is exactly the service which provides private data and processing for models including Claude.

But also they quite clearly have no idea how classified information systems work: air gapping is step 1 of that process, and no one from Anthropic would be working on those systems without a security clearance.

there is no private processing for recent claude models. there is no fable in IL5 or IL6.

bedrock IL5, nvidia, palantir and booz allen have all blocked fable.

anthropic is demanding that they rat out their customers on anything better than opus 5.

see: [thein.fo/4dekujW]

also, bedrock govcloud does both log and review customer data. specifically, they log and review customer data when it is flagged by their csam classifier.

That article is locked behind subscription. These are private companies, and presumably not running the model on their own systems but are using an interface to the model hosted on Anthropics machine I would presume. So their decision to decline is different from the us govt which will have gotten special privileges.

“the military said no and therefore doesn't want anthropic used anywhere in their supply line”

It’s clearly a punitive measure and has nothing to do with national security.

If a supplier uses Anthropic to develop a product, how does that pose a risk to the DoD or national security? The DoD can specify that a third party system can’t rely on Anthropic for DoD use without designating the company a supply risk. It was very clear that the administration was punishing the company for saying “no”.

Anthropic took the position that our military’s decision making power should be subordinate to Anthropic’s constraints.

Any dependency on a company that thinks they have that moral authority and has the technical means to enforce it is absolutely a risk to the supply chain.

If you want to blame someone or something for this, we should start with Dario and “effective altruism”.

> Anthropic took the position that our military’s decision making power should be subordinate to Anthropic’s constraints.

Not at all. They want their product kept out of specific decisions because it's not capable.

> They want their product kept out of specific decisions because it's not capable.

Herein lies the DoW’s point. Anthropic can’t dictate how the DoW conducts business.

Of course they can. Any supplier is free to set terms for how their products are to be used. The DoD is free to not agree to those terms - but it's not free to then claim the company that offered those terms is a security risk, and bar any DoD supplier from using them for any purpose - which is what the extreme measure they took represents.

> but it's not free to then claim the company that offered those terms is a security risk

Yes they are free to do that. You have to blame Congress for giving them that authority under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act and specifically 41 U.S.C. § 4713.

But Claude’s ToS didn’t prohibit use of Claude for sensitive military operation but it was coded to do so. It was part of the government’s evidence

No, they can only do that if a company is a true supply chain risk. Not everyone some idiot in the government doesn't like is a such a huge risk to the country that they can be banned from doing business with anyone doing business with the DoD.

Ultimately this is for the courts to decide, and the current decision is not final. And while the two Trump-nominated judges agreed with you, the other judge agrees with me - so at least we can say that neither my nor your position is legally absurd.

> but it's not free to then claim the company that offered those terms is a security risk, and bar any DoD supplier from using them for any purpose

Just because you disagree with a power of the government does not mean the government does not have that power.

  > Just because you disagree with a power of the government does not mean the government does not have that power.

Sure, but we live in a democracy, not a dictatorship. The government doesn't just get to do whatever it wants. People and corporations have certain freedoms. One of those freedoms is not being compelled to work with the government. The government can't force a company to work for them except under extreme circumstances. Which currently no extreme circumstances have been claimed and no one is talking about nationalizing (the act of forcing the company to work for the government) anthropic

Sure, but also just because Congress gave the government a power to take an extraordinary measure in an extraordinary circumstance doesn't mean that the government can simply claim the circumstance happens all the time and use the measure whenever it strikes the fancy of some executive.

Ultimately whether Anthropic is a true supply chain risk for the United States military is a question of fact, and the courts will have to decide. That the President or Secretary of Defense doesn't like a company doesn't make them a supply chain risk.

Well, that's what this court case is about. The government believes they have that power, and Anthropic and others believe they don't. You clearly believe they do, and I clearly believe they don't. It's fine to disagree. Ultimately SCOTUS may decide on this, and that'll be the final word. Not that SCOTUS is always correct in its rulings, but at the end of the day, their decision is final.

> Anthropic can’t dictate how the DoW conducts business.

Sure they can. The DoD is bound by terms of use and contract terms for any product from any company that they use. They don't get a special pass just because they're the military.

I think you are latching onto terms that were not declared. This is covered in the Appeals court case.

They're offering a service, with contractual limitations that the Pentagon agreed to.

It doesn't seem any different to me than Dominos pizza offering to deliver pizzas to the Pentagon but not to the strait of Hormuz. If that somehow makes the military subordinate to Dominos Pizza, just because Dominos is able to dictate the terms of their own delivery service, then sure, ban anyone in the military supply chain from being able to order pizzas. It would make the same amount of sense.

The difference would be the DoW needing a a Tehran pizza delivery service, and thus saying "None of our pizza delivery services can use Dominos because they refuse to do the work we need".

Declaring Dominos a supply chain risk means that Boeing cannot order a Dominos pizza for their board meeting in Arlington, because Boeing sells F-35s to the Pentagon, and Dominos wouldn't agree to deliver pizzas to a war zone.

Declaring Anthropic a supply chain risk means that Boeing can't use Claude to draft a poster informing people about the board meeting.

But why can’t the military just not use Anthropic? Why can’t the DoD say “ok we’re going with a different vendor”? Even if you find Anthropic’s stance distasteful, why support taking punitive action on Anthropic?

I feel like in this thread no one is understanding what supply chain risk designation is. The government can just not use Anthropic, and that's exactly what they're doing, and they are not using it so much that they don't want Anthropic anywhere in their chain of supply. It's not necessarily punitive, the government is just covering their tracks so that if somewhere in their supply chain Anthropic exists, they want to remove them. They are complying with Anthropic's demands to not be used in war and the DoD says, okay, we won't use you anywhere and also enforce that we won't use you, just like you wanted.

Designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk means that no one in the federal government can use Anthropic's products for anything. Outside of the military, there are tons of places where Anthropic's products are a good fit for the needs of many other federal government agencies.

The DoD is perfectly free to say "no one in the DoD can use Anthropic products because we believe their products are not fit for our needs". That would 100% solve the problem.

Designating them a supply-chain risk is just political retribution for not caving to the DoD's contract negotiation demands. That's all. It's not necessary to ensure the integrity of the US military's goals and objectives. It's just punitive, elementary school grade bullying.

Maybe pre AI I'd have agreed with you but now agents are hacking entire systems and who's the say that if they're used in one part of the government that they won't infiltrate another part? People are not thinking broadly enough and just think this is some contractor not allowed to use Claude Code anymore. No, the world is changing rapidly.

Anthropic said "we don't want to be used as part of kill chain decision-making" (actually it may have been even more specifically autonomous/unmanned kill chain decision making)

The DoD responded not by saying "alright, we will use OpenAI for our kill-chain uses" but by saying "Boeing is no longer allowed to use Claude Code".

Correct, they do not want “Boeing” to use Claude models to write software for airplanes for example

> They are complying with Anthropic's demands to not be used in war

There was no such demand from Anthropic. Why are you making things up?

EDIT: Honestly, the rest of your comment is even stranger. You're starting from a false premise, a strange belief about what the designation is meant for, but you do end up providing a wonderful demonstration of your opening sentence for yourself at least. You definitely don't know what you're talking about.

> It's not necessarily punitive, the government is just covering their tracks so that if somewhere in their supply chain Anthropic exists, they want to remove them.

This reminds me of an old comment here where some idiot claimed that suicide is illegal so police are allowed to stop people from killing themselves. No, if Anthropic doesn't want their systems involved in war (that's a thing you made up, again, just to be clear) then they do not need to be designated a supply chain risk to "protect them" or whatever drivel you come up with next.

The correct response from the DOD would be to terminate contracts with Anthropic, and that's it. Then Anthropic would be responsible for ensuring that any contracts with other parties keep them out of war (again, not a thing they said they want, just your fiction). This is how it works for all other software systems where people don't want their work involved in wars or used by the police or whatever.

Designating them a supply chain risk was punitive. Only fools think otherwise.

> I feel like in this thread no one is understanding what supply chain risk designation is.

I wouldn't say "no one" understands, but you certainly don't.

Again with the lack of understanding why it matters. The DoD does not want Anthropic anywhere near any system they'd use! Because it's, well, a risk to their supply chain if Anthropic were to somehow find out and then e.g. crash a rocket if the DoD was using a third party rocket provider that used Anthropic models. This is the correct response by the DoD, they simply do not want Anthropic in their supply chain. The DoD don't care what Anthropic comes up as reasoning, they want to maintain control of their systems without any (even potential) meddling.

It's going to make things complicated w.r.t. software used anywhere within and by the DoD:

1. the linux kernel has patches created by and security vulnerabilities identified by Claude/Anthropic;

2. same with other software like SQLite and rsync.

Humans are 100% in the loop with software patches and there are many people in the chain so that provenance is maintained. It’s not that Claude could never look at the source code

Correct, anthropic's requirement was human-in-the-loop.

The DoD's response was to ban anthropic from all DoD facing activity and supply chains, whether or not there is a human in the loop. This does in fact run into exactly GP's issue. (or as I suggest elsewhere, can Boeing use Claude Code for software development?)

No. They can do that with an order covering the specific parameters under which they care about it. Supply chain risk definition is about adversaries and sabotage, not companies dictating contract terms.

They don't want Anthropic to be able to sabotage any operations the DoD has. Anthropic already has a history of trying to sabotage others like during the Fable release when they said they'd subtly wreck your code if you were working on cutting edge AI.

> Why can’t the DoD say “ok we’re going with a different vendor”?

That's exactly what they're doing. It turns out the DoD is a really big bureaucracy and has process to make sure they thoroughly exclude a vendor and transitive dependencies on that same vendor.

They do, but this is not it. This is designating Anthropic as an adversary of the USA, and it is forbidding anyone who wants to sell to the DoD from using Anthropic products for anything. This is a massive attack on free speech, free enterprise, and the market.

Supply chain risk is a technical definition not a vibes based one.

And companies absolutely have the right to dictate terms. The idea that the DoD has the unilateral authority to do whatever it wants is literal textbook fascism. It's never been the law in the US and it should not be now.

If the DoD doesn't want Anthropic anywhere in their supply chain, because Anthropic said they won't supply the services the DoD needs.. why can't the DoD bar them from being in their supply chain?

Seems very straight forward.

That's not normal in a free country - even less so in one that claims to have a free market.

Anthropic said "don't use our products for targetting decisions in military ops". The DoD could have easily said "actually then, we won't use your products at all". Instead, the DoD said "either you let us use your products in targeting decisions, or we won't let you sell to anyone who sells to us for any purpose, using a law that only applies to adversaries of the USA".

> using a law that only applies to adversaries of the USA

Everyone keeps parroting this despite it not being true. And you're missing the point. The DoD specifically doesn't want it in their supply chain at all because it's an intelligent system that will work against the DoDs goals, by design, in certain scenarios.

Your argument boils down to, "The DoD isn't allowed to not want Claude in their supply chain", which is crazy.

Anthropic did not change the terms. Those were the terms the US Government signed. It was not secret, it was explicit identified and accepted as a term.

The analogy would be: “A customer agreed to a contract, and after running into a clause of the contract they no longer wanted to follow…canceled the contract unilaterally…which also violated the contract.”

And then declared the other side a supply chain risk, claiming it is a potential vector for a national adversary to break in and cause unwanted bad things to happen unrelated to this contract.

It seems like absurdly bad faith starting at breaking the contract (over "you have to follow the law", no less!) and then to retaliate after that with trying to destroy the company's reputation and ability to do business. The boot licking going on here justifying the government operating in bad faith is both disappointing and short sighted. I didn't think the leopards would eat MY face!

And then another company got the contract, claiming they got all the conditions (and more!) that the original contractor was sour about.

I don't know how anyone can look at the situation and see anything but an abuse of power. The government could have just as easily contacted with another provider. This whole thing is vindictive

I think the better analogy is an insane nuclear power plant manager deciding it wants to buy pens to use as neutron-flux regulator rods — because after all, a pen is functionally a pencil and a pencil is made of graphite.

Then the pen manufacturer hears about this and says “Our pens are not made of graphite and are not suitable to be used in nuclear reactors”, to which the reactor owner says “it’s fine, they fit in the graphite rod holes, and we’re just using until the next generation of pens come out which will do an even better job”, and then the pen manufacturer says “I’m not going to sell you any pens until you agree that they will be used only writing.”

The previous power plant manager had, of course, already signed a contract agreeing to those terms; the power plant is subsequently under new management and upset about being bound by this contract, so they designate that none of their suppliers of parts and fuel are allowed to have any commercial dealings with the pen manufacturer or use these pens for any purpose, even writing.

> The previous power plant manager had, of course, already signed a contract agreeing to those terms

It's even more perplexing in this case though, because the original DoD contract was signed in July 2025. It was the same "plant manager" just arbitrarily changing their mind in the middle of the contract they signed.

Greg Brockman donated $25 million to MAGA Inc. in September 2025. Interesting

And why would the manager ban the manufacturers pens even for writing, except out of spite to punish the manufacturer? And coming back to the real case, is the supply chain risk designation supposed to be a punishment or only there to actually protect the supply chain?

It turns out that a gun is usable for both legitimate and illegitimate reasons, and so it’s rational to both be concerned about the presence of a gun and work very hard to make sure only reasonable people are ever in a position to use it, and that’s not a contradictory position with the notion that one might actually need a gun under certain circumstances.

And if the military needs guns to both shoot at humans and animals and a gun factory says “these guns are for shooting small animals only, using them against humans would be inhumane” and refuse to sell them to the Navy Seals, they would be designated a supply chain risk?

Why not just stop buying their guns and let contractors still use those guns if they need guns to shoot animals?

That’s the same way to do it, and in earlier eras that’s what we would have done. Unfortunately, we elected a gangster who hears “I won’t let you do this” as a personal affront. This, again, is why we need to be very, very careful before we create guns and put them in places, because if the only thing we’re relying on is that only good people are going to pick up the tools we create, we’re going to be very, very disappointed.

If you have pens in the building, and staff need a pen, they will use the pen that is available, even if there’s a sign saying “not for purpose x”. If you want to stop that happening, you need to not have limited pens available to your staff at all.

Ah so a defense contractor won’t be allowed to use Claude to create their website because they might later want to do some target selection for military strikes using AI and then they wouldn’t be able to use Claude?

Close enough - if they’re using Claude for anything, the DOD can’t trust that staff didn’t also use it in product development, so they’d have to keep track of everything downstream of that component to ensure it was never used for target selection.

It could also be as simple as "anything tainted by the Claude non-targeting-conditions can't be used in target selection, and we don't want to leak classified information about which components we use in target selection by requiring specific items to be developed without Claude, so we can't allow it anywhere".

In fairness, that sounds legit.

Humans see a hammer and a nail and don't think about the rule saying "rubber tipped hammers only in this area, flammable vapour present".

That's not accurate. DOD suppliers weren't banned from having "any commercial dealings" with Anthropic. They were banned from using Anthropic for their work with the DOD.

That's true legally, but the government's public statements did initially very explicitly present this as a ban on any dealing.

"Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic."

Presumably, according to the defenders of the designation in this thread, this was an innocent mistake that doesn't indicate any political intent.

The way things work, the CIOs and CSOs of these companies just implement blanket bans, so it really is effectively a ban for any use. Source: I am at one such company.

That analogy still makes this sound like a textbook designation. In that situation the pen manufacturer is expected to sell pens without a theory of what will happen next. The person who buys a pen might use it to kill someone or commit horrific legal/moral crimes and that has nothing at all to do with the pen manufacturer.

I can see how I might reasonably refuse to deal with that pen manufacturer. The pen manufacturer is unreasonably pushy and they're going to be massive trouble to deal with because they're all up in my business in a paranoid way and disrupting my use of their product. Companies have made my never-again list for far smaller slights.

Where’s my atomic bomb sold at Walmart?

I think you might have misread the thread so far. Do you think the US military is buying atomic bombs from a supplier who is going to try and stop them from bombing things on demand? Obviously the bomb makers have to make peace with the fact that their customers may, of their independent initiative, one day detonate the bombs.

It's been very commonplace in robotics/AI research for vendors to sell robots to the DoD that are explicitly contractually not to be used for killing people.

Citation needed

It's that guy with the long beard and sunglasses that looks like ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, walking out the Wal-Mart door with your suitcase nuke ... the clerk up front near the door was so stunned he didn't even ask to see his receipt

This isn't like using pens in a nuclear plant. AI obviously has tremendous military applications. And it's completely unsurprising that the U.S. military--whose entire doctrine for the last century has been about having the most advanced technology--demands to use frontier models without non-military people imposing restrictions.

Have you seen the movie Oppenheimer? The U.S. military did not care about the moral opinions of the nuclear scientists--they were going to get nukes first. This is like Truman telling off Oppenheimer for being upset after the U.S. used the bomb: https://www.biography.com/political-figures/a44361438/why-ha... ("Blood on his hands; damn it, he hasn’t half as much blood on his hands as I have. You just don’t go around bellyaching about it,” Truman said.... He called Oppenheimer a “cry-baby scientist” and said, “I don’t want to see that son of a b–– in this office ever again.”).

> AI obviously has tremendous military applications.

Yeah, but also we can be reasonably confident they're not good enough for many of them yet:

What would be the military equivalent of all the things on https://www.felonybench.com/ ?

Machine learning needs a lot of examples to get good. Wars and wargames (including digital ones with unbounded self-play time) and all the textbooks together will at best, on the basis of what we see in other fields, get the equivalent of a new officer fresh out of training… and then, given current observed agentic AI behaviour, "follow orders" rather than "follow lawful orders".

> Yeah, but also we can be reasonably confident they're not good enough for many of them yet

What does “not good enough mean?” Who decides what is “good enough” and what tradeoffs are acceptable? Obviously it’s the military’s job to decide that.

In the context of my comment, "not good enough" includes "committing war crimes" and "would have started a war with China if there hadn't been a human in the loop".

We can also infer from other domains, vendbench or attempts to have an LLM play Star Craft, that these models are currently extremely mediocre at management roles.

> Who decides what is “good enough” and what tradeoffs are acceptable? Obviously it’s the military’s job to decide that.

In practice, in the case of the USA, Trump and Hegseth.

The US military, so far as I can tell, are rather less thrilled with these adventures.

Right—and deciding what constitutes “war crimes” isn’t within the expertise of AI developers. They can explain the abilities and limitations of their models to the military leadership. But the actual decision about how to use AI is up to the military through its chain of command. That starts with Trump as the duly elected president and Hegseth as the duly appointed civilian head of the military. They are the democratically accountable actors. And all this is being done in the open, so if the people have a problem with it they can hold it against Trump and his party.

That decision assuredly does not belong with people like Amodei, who are not democratically accountable.

Oppenheimer was the guy who was pushing that opinion just as much as the military folks. In the case of AI, my understanding is that Amodei is not trying to beat the enemy to it.

What I don't understand is why the U.S. military is turning to a for-profit corporation when they could fund and pursue the development themselves. Why are they trying to "outsource" it to industry?

JAVA TECHNOLOGY IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND IS NOT DESIGNED, MANUFACTURED, OR INTENDED FOR USE OR RESALE AS ONLINE CONTROL EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS REQUIRING FAIL-SAFE PERFORMANCE, SUCH AS IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, DIRECT LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES, OR WEAPONS SYSTEMS, IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF JAVA TECHNOLOGY COULD LEAD DIRECTLY TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.

OP makes a category error already by ignoring the part where the US military/government wants to commit crimes (against humanity and whatnot) and pretends, questioning that would be a crime.

You here make another one by pretending, AI was just some random tool, like a screwdriver or a programming language.

AI can make decisions autonomously that would otherwise require a human. Like selecting people to be murdered by drone strike based on arbitrary criteria. A programming language by itself, JAVA, cannot do that.

An if/then statement or random number generator in Java can make decisions autonomously. Heck, the US military has deployed fully autonomous weapons since at least 1979 (long before LLMs existed).

https://www.vp4association.com/aircraft-information-2/32-2/m...

There is nothing stopping any plain old algorithm being used for the same. The difference is that people decide, for whatever reason, to use the tool or to not use it.

AI can make decisions all it likes. I if you don't integrate it with the drone strike MCP server it's as impotent as a JVM without any code to execute.

That doesn't say you can't do them, though - they just don't take responsibility if doing so fails because of Java somehow.

Basically, it voids the warranty, which you don't really have with Java anyway.

That is an analogy between one thing and another thing, but the topic of this thread is the designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk, which is not involved in your analogy. It is traditional that comments refer to the topic of discussion in some way.

For example, one might extend your analogy to "The nuclear power plant then declares that it will not buy the pens after all, and the pen manufacturer (who had banned them as a customer) sues them to force them to buy the pens after all."

Nobody is suing to force the DoD to buy anything, so maybe you shouldn't be accusing others of failing to refer to the topic of discussion.

This is the most accurate parallel as far as I can tell. I've not seen any evidence that Anthropic deliberately built automated systems or escape hatches that literally prevent the US Government from using Claude to do these things. Other than the basic AI Safety mechanisms in place for everyone/general use. It's almost the reverse, where they explicitly don't want to strip away guardrails that say things like "don't kill people".

The intent and framing matters a lot here. Refusal to remove safety features is a LOT different than deliberately building mechanisms to sabotage would-be operations.

It doesn't seem like you understand what a supply chain risk designation is for.

It's to ensure that companies that the DoW relies on don't build on top of a product that isn't fit for DoW work.

You seem to be agreeing with this designation in a way. The DoW essentially said "Pen company won't let us use their pens as neutron-flux regulator rods, so anyone building power plants for us isn't allowed to use these pens as neutron-flux regulator rods".

What is the problem you have with that?

They've essentially said "pen company won't let us use their pens as neutron flux regulator rods, so anyone building power plants for us isn't allowed to use these pens as pens"

(and yeah, there might be a completely legitimate reason to stop your subcontractors from using HuaweiSpyPens, but determining that ACME Pens is just as dangerous because they refused your neutron flux regulator order looks like a punitive measure, not practical risk reduction)

I mean if a competitors pens work for all of your use cases, then why not just use the competitor?

The statutory name of this department is the Department of Defense.

Especially considering the leadership is quite keen on dead-naming people, I will continue the practice in kind towards them.

So the DoW should have the ability to perform mass surveillance on American citizens?

Mind you, that is not the DoW’s charter. How would a restriction on that be “unfit” as you say?

The DoW is perfectly within their rights not to purchase anthropic products. That’s different than labeling them a supply chain risk.

The DOW should (and does) have ability to do anything and everything that Congress has said they can do.

Congress is not the British parliament. There is no congressional sovereignty.

The US is a constitutional republic, it does not have a system where anything Congress decides is law.

So, for example, if Congress says the military can require the entire domestic population to be Catholic and kill anyone who isn't... ?

That's not how it works.

Department of Wefense?

They manage the nuclear wessels.

> This is like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike order

I am pretty receptive to the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, but we are taking a big leap from pen to llms/artificial intelligence. I am sympathetic to some of your other points, but I simply must reject this analogy.

"the government wants to use our tool to murder people", and declaring that company that says "no" into a "supply chain risk" is absolutely retaliatory and an attempt by the government to influence the behavior of the company.

The moral and ethical scale of the issue makes this far different than someone buying a pen.

> "the government wants to use our tool to murder people", and declaring that company that says "no" into a "supply chain risk" is absolutely retaliatory and an attempt by the government to influence the behavior of the company.

If Lockheed could brick its planes if the US planned to use them for military action it disagreed with (and showed some indication they couldn't be trusted not to do it), would they be a supply chain risk?

It is not the role of a defense contractors to have oversight and control power over the military they're supplying.

The military could just use different AI models for the purposes Anthropic does not want its models used for.

Purposes Anthropic already spelled out in contract form.

Correct so what’s wrong with that? Plenty of open weight models to use

Ridiculous hypothetical for analogy purposes, but, imagine if Anthropic had developed a new type of rifle that the military was considering using, which had a black-box AI system that could prevent the trigger being pulled when aimed at certain targets. The military says, ok that's cool, as long as we can be in control of that decision-making process. Anthropic says, no, we know better than you and better than the law what kind of targets should and should not be shot with our rifles. The military would then respond “lol, lmao even” and then deem them to be a supply chain risk and adopt another rifle instead.

Or they could just not buy the product in the first place. The supply chain risk part is pure retribution.

That’s literally what they’re doing. That’s what supply chain risk means.

They don’t buy the product, and the product can’t be used in the things they do buy.

No, it's not. If Anthropic is a supply chain risk, that means that if you are working on a project that will be used for the DoD, you can't use Claude or any other Anthropic product for any purpose whatsoever in that project. Asked Claude to change the color of a PPTX for a sprint demo you're doing? Oops, you've know introduced a supply chain risk and your company is liable for damages or at least losing its entire contract with the DoD.

The problem is if they used it for a slide, they could have used it to design a part or code or something else.

These blanket rules are very typical in large organizations.

They already bought the product, and it came with a license, then they wanted to unilaterally change the license. When they couldn’t, they declared the product a supply chain risk. The idea is you declare it a risk before you buy it.

Not to mention, they simultaneously said it was a supply chain risk and that it would continue to be used by agencies that were already using it in a critical capacity. Which makes absolutely no sense.

Supply chain risk ensures nobody in the chain is buying it and thus becoming subject to Antropic's demand of usage control. They are still free to use it for non-DOD purposes, but if Antropic wants control over DOD, DOD has the right to say "no, we won't have anything to do with you, and thus you're not getting any control over us". I agree it may be unpleasant for Antropic but DOD has the right - I'd say even responsibility - to not submit to control by any private party.

No, they would simply not buy it.

That’s not even the end of the story. Anthropic has sued. They really want to sell their rifles to the government and retain control.

You’re just describing the exact situation we’re in but substituting a drone for a rifle. If the government is mad they should just partner with a contractor who is less concerned about this, which lo-and-behold they did it’s a company called OpenAI.

Anthropic isn’t a supply chain risk since they easy found someone else

Non-sense. Pentagon has many many uses of AI besides autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance, which Anthropic doesn't restrict. ie: intelligence analysis, target selection, payroll, inventory, research, supply chain and logistics, medical, bureaucracy, ...

Right but the military wants to be able to use a tool they are paying for in all cases, not just ones the manufacturer thinks they should.

If I sold steel to the Pentagon but then tried to say they they couldn't use it for ships and tanks but they are free to use for warehouses they would react the same way as they are doing now.

Edit add: What is targeting? What is surveillance?

If someone in the intelligence analysis department uses AI to generate a report, then someone else uses that report for targeting did they just break the terms? Where is that line?

Much easier for the Pentagon to say no.

Your "but then" is off-base. This is selling steel for the express purpose of nuclear reactors, with a contractual clause against its use in tanks, and the US government deciding that it doesn't feel like abiding by the rules in the contract.

> If I sold steel to the Pentagon but then tried to say they they couldn't use it for ships and tanks but they are free to use for warehouses they would react the same way as they are doing now.

They sure as hell shouldn't! Selling steel for any use except ships and tanks is a little odd but it's not a risk.

(I'm ignoring the "but then" because this was about future sales not previous ones.)

It's funny, I buy some software and the license says "for student and non-commercial use only", which lets me get it for $50 instead of the $5000 that an enterprise would pay. But I can just ignore that clause or declare them a supply-chain risk if they try to hold me to it, because now that they've taken my $50, who are they to dictate how I use it? I can do whatever I want, not just what the vendor thinks I should, right? A contact is just paper, right?

We cannot subordinate our military’s decision making power — in any arena — to a private company.

Our military must also not be dependent on a private company that believes it has the moral prerogative to control our military’s decisions, and would have the technical capability to do so.

Maybe the military should just seize the technology and nationalize the company then? Because clearly, paying a private party voluntarily entering into a contract on mutually-agreed upon terms is now a polite fiction that can be done away with.

And then what? You expect military to keep doing frontier AI R&D, after all research staff leaves to other non-nationalized frontier labs?

The military is bound by contract, just like any other government agency. They entered into a contract, with these clauses well-known. This was OK because they have all the same problems every other organization uses AI for.

They could’ve just negotiate a new contract with OpenAI, without banning it from every government agency. But I’m sure that would’ve triggered some kind of extra clause and cost money…

Your entire statement lacks any type of fact.

This is ridiculous. Anthropic should be free to say the terms for using their service. It doesn't "subordinate" the military, and the military is far from some infallible, unquestionable force here.

If the military wants to use AI to autonomously kill people, they can - Anthropic is not stopping them - thy just can't with Anthropic's services.

The government retaliating by then claiming that any use of Anthropic is risk is an obvious farce. How would Anthropic be any less of a risk if they let Claude autonomously kill people?

The complete failure of any of these Anthropic cheerleaders (to the extent that they are not AI generate comments posted by bots) to understand basic Constitutional principles of Rule of Law and Separation of Powers is mind blowing.

Their argument, in effect, is that we should throw out the entire Constitutional order and make Dario Amodei dictator of the world. The psychopathic hubris is laughable.

No entity should have a right to dictate whether your private company does business with someone or not. The military can pound sand if they don't like your contract terms. That is if you believe in democracy and capitalism. If you don't, then it's not a problem to you.

Any private entity has that right though.

I, as a person, can decide I won't do business with a company that uses Anthropic models for whatever reason. I can even decide I won't do business with a company that relies on suppliers that use Anthropic.

This right applies to private companies too. Like Walmart could set contract terms that their suppliers aren't allowed to use AWS. The suppliers are free to accept those terms or not.

You’re still absolutely free to do business with Anthropic.

Our military is simply choosing not to do business with them, or anyone that depends on them.

If you believed in democracy, you wouldn’t be supporting the EA-infected corporation that tried to make our democratic institutions subordinate to their corporate decision making.

That is not what they are doing. They could have just canceled the contract and paid the exit clause. This is retaliation, because Anthropic would not move on their pre-negotiated terms. As a result, they are now been from being used anywhere in the US government.

Let me ask you this, if Anthropic did allow them to use it for surveillance… do you think it would stop at the Pentagon?

I support any and all moves that empower private persons and corporations over the infinite force of governments. They didn't try to make anyone subordinate to anything. They made a proposal. Trump pissed and generally made a mess as he usually does and then they randomly declared them a supply chain treat.

Wouldn't that make any product with a licensing agreement a supply chain risk?

No, of course not, because life isn't black and white. Just those with licensing agreements that conflict with the militaries mission, where the product could be manipulated to hinder the mission. Most manufacturers would jump at the chance to rewrite their licensing agreements specifically for the military just to get a government contract.

This was not manipulated to hinder the mission. Every account of this indicates it was clearly spelled out. They could not use it for mass surveillance or for targeting. The lawyers at the DOD did not miss this. They agreed to the terms, because they had no intent to use it for such purpose purposes.

This is like the change order from hell.

Nothing was stopping the DOD from just entering into a new contract with OpenAI…

But if they don’t jump at the chance to retroactively rewrite the already-signed license, you’re OK with designating them a supply-chain risk?

That’s going to make it rather risky for anyone to sign licenses with the DoD. In fact, it renders the licenses pointless since you just have to do anything the licensee says.

I mean typically the outcome of civil suits is black and white (at least on a per-claim basis).

So Amazon and Microsoft don't enforce cloud licensing agreements with the USG? If the government wants to add 3,000 Windows users to support their mission Microsoft is shit out of luck in getting paid for them?

> Anthropic wanted to have rules on how the military used AI

No, they want to have rules on how the military used Anthropic AI.

Military would still be free to use OpenAI for the nasty stuff

Yes, in fact the military has a system in place to make sure that they only that they only use alternate suppliers and on Anthropic AI, They do this by placing a designation on Anthropic AI that it is a risk to the supply chain, which forces purchasers to use other suppliers.

I don't think this is how preferred suppliers have typically worked through the supply chain risk considering the US has definitely had preferred suppliers before and has not historically used this against a US company that was not on the list and the power of such a designation extends far past the military into all parts of the government. I'm pretty sure this has more traditionally been relegated to simple requirements or specifications.

The reason it appears corrupt is that OpenAI has the exact same restrictions (https://openai.com/index/our-agreement-with-the-department-o...) but was not declared a supply chain risk. If two vendors have the same restrictions and they only designate one, then the designation must be arbitrary and/or capricious.

Edit: I was wrong, the statement I linked is extremely dishonest and I was misled. The contract language lower down makes it clear that there are no "red lines", and OpenAI products can in fact be used for mass domestic surveillance, autonomous weapons, and social credit systems as long as they are considered legal.

>OpenAI has the exact same restrictions

No it doesn't. Specifically OpenAI had a "all lawful purposes" clause (which plausibly includes the existing mass surveillance apparatus), but Anthropic did not.

You're right, what an incredibly dishonest statement. The actual contract language in there makes it clear that there are no restrictions. My bad.

Were they the same restrictions though?

OpenAI just said no surveillance of U.S. persons.

Anthropic could have gone further; I think it's likely they did.

There are three restrictions:

> No use of OpenAI technology for mass domestic surveillance.

> No use of OpenAI technology to direct autonomous weapons systems.

> No use of OpenAI technology for high-stakes automated decisions (e.g. systems such as “social credit”).

These are stronger than Anthropic's restrictions (https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war), as OpenAI says themselves: "We think our agreement has more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropic’s. [...] Based on what we know, we believe our contract provides better guarantees and more responsible safeguards than earlier agreements, including Anthropic’s original contract."

Edit: I was wrong, see my original comment. Sorry.

The article only cites language for surveillance.

The other stuff...there's zero citations or quotes. Meaning that OpenAI could be having their cake and eating it too, winning a public victory, with no validation on the actual language, consequences, or enforcement.

I thought the difference is that clearly written rules or SLAs are acceptable and can even be negotiated before signing a contract, but having a person, in this case Amodei himself, manually approve DOJ's usage case by case with his own moral judgement after a contract is signed is not okay.

No one wanted case-by-case veto ability at Anthropic. The red lines were made clear ahead of time: No use of Anthropic models for autonomous weapons (Skynet) or mass-domestic surveillance, negotiated in the agreement.

OpenAI, xAI, and Google happily agreed to DoW contracts which allow both of those use cases.

Do you think OpenAI's terms for the DoD are published on a website? Pretty sure when Anthropic got zapped, OpenAI sent DoD a memo 500ms later saying they wouldn't restrict use.

Look at it pragmatically. What does the DoD use every single procurement for? Hint: military use.

I think this was discussed ad nauseum last time so I am wondering if somehow this has changed but the biggest part of the issue last time was the retaliation. You seem to suggest that this was due to the government not wanting restrictions on their actions. I feel this severely downplays how unusual this designation is considering, like Anthropic says, this has not been applied to domestic companies.

Why couldn't excluding Anthropic be done a different mechanism than a supply chain risk. Why wouldn't this be a standard part of an agreement or a request and simply refuse to renew or cancel a contract rather than being designated a supply chain risk. If some third party contractor for an unrelated non military reason wanted to use Claude as part of their process, it seems perfectly allowable.

If this was a remotely standard way of operation, why did a fair amount of corporate America sign briefs concerned with the retaliatory aspect.

Parts of the action seemed wholly retaliatory as well since Pentagon officials certainly used it as a threat. Why can't a US company have views contrary to the policies of the US government? Certainly the US government is free to not do business with them, but this designation affects everybody doing any kind of indirect business with the US government which is a rather long chain. If this becomes a legitimate mechanism, how might we distinguish caring about a secure supply chain and simply wiping out a company that disagreed with a pro war attitude? If a machining shop had a policy against manufacturing weapons at all, could they be blocked from making server racks for Microsoft or perhaps light fixtures for the Department of Labor? There are plenty of areas that are, again, non military? I don't think it's credible to claim that Anthropic will deliberately sabotage operations.

>Anthropic opposing the US government

Is it not possible that this would change the risk profile of depending on them. It makes sense to work with people who support you than oppose you for things which are critical.

- Having principles and sticking to them is not opposing.

- Just because you don't do everything someone wants you to do does not make you a supply chain risk.

My point is did everyone know all of those principals and how committed Anthropic was to them from the beginning or did new information come in and now they need to adjust. Just because something is a term in a contract that doesn't mean it's necessarily strongly held belief that will never change.

So you renegotiate the contract. You don't get to retaliate.

Only it turns out that with sufficient corruption, you do.

You are again confusing contract terms with risk. They are independent.

Who runs the government changes every 2 to 4 years… are you suggesting we completely swap every vendor in the US government to align with whatever political party is in office?

There’s nothing indicating Anthropic was not keeping their end of the contract. If they had, there would have been other recourse.

>are you suggesting we completely swap every vendor

I think American companies should be supporting the government as much as possible. Even when it switches.

>There’s nothing indicating Anthropic was not keeping their end of the contract.

Which is why we are talking about risk and not breach of contract.

> You can agree with the rules anthropic wanted, but having rules set by a private company at all that apply to the military does seem fair for the military to object to.

Oh the hypocrisy and irony. This coming from a country whose military sets rules on other countries' armed forces how weapons systems bought from US can be used.[ß] By this standard US itself should be designated as a supply chain risk for everyone else.

ß: for a very long time in the Ukraine "conflict", US refused to allow their gear from being used to attack targets outside of Ukraine's borders.

> This is like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike orders, now the military needs to have a special box of pens that don't have stipulations attached.

It's pretty common for software licenses to state that it's prohibited from being used in medical devices, life support systems, nuclear facilities, etc. Will software with those licenses also be designated supply-chain risks?

A much closer analogy than the pen one is a SAAS company having an EULA. As annoying as EULAs are I don’t think it counts as being malicious or subversive if you are very open and clear with your prospective customers what that EULA contains?

Anthropic's red lines were 'no fully autonomous AI kill chains' and 'no domestic mass surveillance'. Those are clearly not national-security or DoD functions in the first place, so why would they be in any way objectionable?

Do you think a private company should be able to accumulate enough wealth and power to dictate policy to the US federal government?

I think a private company of any size should be able to offer its products on whatever terms they choose. If the military doesn't like those terms, they're free to do business elsewhere.

Isn't that what happened?

You are obviously being disingenuous, because you are on a thread where the DoD is not just electing not to buy Anthropic's service, but also trying to bully them into submission with the unrealistic threat of the DPA, punitively and disproportionately trying to label them a national security risk, and invoking supply chain issues normally applied to our worst adversaries, for the first time putting an obviously patriotic American country on the same footing as North Korea, Iran, China and Russia.

Remember, the Anthropic red line was "no war crimes and no mass surveillance of the US population." You may think that war crimes are cool, and that mass surveillance of the US population by the department of defense would be fine, but consider the natural consequences, both for democracy and for any adversary's conduct in future wars.

So your saying they are 100% correct and Anthropic is a supply chain risk? All you're doing is trying to justify why they shouldn't be labeled truthfully rather then saying it wasn't the truth (probably because you know it was).

>obviously patriotic American country

Hi, just informing you of the typo.

> You may think that war crimes are cool

It's really rich to say this after calling me disingenuous.

I don't think it's cool that Anthropic gets to set military policy. I don't care how much I agree or disagree with the policy. Wario is not the president. And Anthropic does not strike me as "obviously patriotic," not that I think it's better if the private company bossing the military around is patriotic. It has no relevance.

"Warcrimes" is the new "racist," too. It gets thrown around willy nilly about every military action.

You mean like pharmaceutical companies refusing to supply chemicals for lethal injection?

There are already several private companies that have this, eg. Apple has specific exemptions from tariffs on smartphones, computers, and semiconductors that they got by paying off Trump and promising to make their iPhone glass in Kentucky:

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/tariff-exemptions-are-bi...

https://www.warren.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/media/doc/l...

The correct mental model for the U.S. federal government right now is not an omnipotent democratic overseer for economic activity, but rather as just one firm that negotiates directly with other major firms for legitimization and legal protection. Their power is likely to decline further, as is the value of "legitimization", as technological developments erode the military's monopoly on physical force. Interesting times ahead - historically tech transitions like this lead to a splintering of state legitimacy and then a reorganization under new forms of governance.

Somebody clearly has to

Its not dictating policy. Any company of any size should be able to set any contract they want with the government or any other party.

The DoD is free not to sign contracts. Having them be able to get a company blacklisted from a whole sector just because they couldn't agree on terms with that company is obviously very different than that.

The idea that "fair for the military to object to" implies "fair for the military to ban from their supply chain in any capacity no matter how unrelated the use" is so outlandish that it's never been done before (to a US company), and I think we can be confident that the DoD has frequently objected to would-be contractors' terms.

The claim that it being done for the first time - by a Secretary of Defense denounced the politics of the company in the same text where he announced the designation - isn't "political", is something I have a hard time believing a functioning adult who isn't employed defending the government in court could adopt.

But hey, maybe in some language this is a "textbook" official statement with no "politics":

  Cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of “effective altruism,” they have attempted to strong-arm the United States military into submission - a cowardly act of corporate virtue-signaling that places Silicon Valley ideology above American lives.

No, the DOD has super specific acquisition rulesets that don't apply outside the DOD umbrella. Limiting acquisition or refusing sales can be done without being flagged a risk. FedRAMP levels accomplish this without the political intrigue and the unnecessary defense of this action not being political.

In other words: the same outcome could easily be accomplished without being punitive to Anthropic.

The pen analogy doesn't help. Anthropic and similar services will restrict what you can use them for, and they'll change those rules at will. DoD understandably doesn't trust that if Anthropic is saying themselves they don't want their AI to be used for autonomous weapons.

> The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary

I.e. Anthrophic cannot be trusted to honour a contract.

Who'd have guessed?

In almost any case I am inclined to trust entity not trump or trumps government. So is true in this case, where they pissed their pants at anthropic simply making a proposal and decided to use overwhelming government force against it. I will leave you to decide who you consider more trustworthy, Trump or Anthropic.

I didn't understand what you said or your analogy, sorry maybe I'm stupid. Would you be able to explain this differently? Maybe something implied was omitted and I didn't follow that.

It's not you, the analogy they used was wrong, idiotic, and unnecessary.

This would be like Boeing refusing to let the DoD fly a military 737 at over 800MPH, and they designate them a supply chain risk because they really really want to make the plane go past 800MPH.

Being on the offensive cyber security whitelist for Mythos doesn't stop you from getting constant rejections. I don't know how you screw up something as simple as a whitelist.

I don't get it, did the US government and military stop using Claude? I thought they were using it to choose objectives to bomb?

To your first question, yes. To your second question, no. They used Grok for that, and it picked out a school to target.

> To your first question, yes

No they didn't. They are still using Claude in places despite the fact that the 180 days limit for the transition has expired. This surfaced from the proceedings of the appeal itself, as well as from leaked source. A memo from the DoD authorises use of Claude past the 180 days term for reasons of national security (the rare case where national security is provided by a supply chain risk!)

It would be pretty surprising to allow a private company to control the military's use in realtime.

i think this is more like the pen maker doesnt want the military top brass calling their pen sales guy to make the kill/no kill decisions while using the pen to sign drone strike orders.

similarly the pen owner doesnt want to make a variation where the pen also doubles as a knife

Nothing can stand in the way of America's forever wars, genocide, and automated killing, including performative objections by a prominent tech company.

I suppose we're supposed to be satisfied that the letter of the law supports this steamroller? Because that's what matters?

The legal apparatus is one of the tools the death machine uses to get what it wants.

Completely agree.

And I further dislike Anthropic for creating 2 situations in 2 weeks that are giving this admin an obvious opportunity to be right. The other one is David Sacks responding to the “Pace the Frontier” crap. These were the table tennis equivalent of lobs for the admin.

Also worth noting that no one knows what kind of task would get a rejection with Anthropic’s models. The documentation is near-non-existent with the air of “security,” rules change daily, the harness is buggy, the clients are buggy, and very likely the backend gating and safety mechanisms are buggy. Even if the DOD assumed the best of intentions to comply, the reliability isn’t there.

What military would buy guns that sometimes stop working, and not necessarily for reasons anyone understands, and still be taken seriously?

Also Claude clearly had no issues identifying a school that has been a school for over 10 years as a military target. Why would the military buy tech that would make them more likely to commit war crimes?

A better analogy would be an explosives manufacturer saying that it is okay to use their explosives on military targets, but not civilian targets. Comparing AI to pens trivialises its potential impact.

Incidentally the second stipulation, the restriction on domestic surveillance, sounds like direct recognition of the role IBM played in the Holocaust. Of course, the better course of action would be to deny the military access to their technology. But that's not going to happen because there is so much money on the table.

Using Claude for working on the refrigerators at the commissary is not a supply chain risk. You're just making stuff up.

You could use the same logic to defend the military declaring that Anthropic is full of pedophiles and therefore they cannot use their products as it would be contributing to pedophilia.

Anthropic offered a contract, with certain conditions, as do all contracts everywhere; that's their purpose. The military did not want to agree to those conditions. If they had stopped there, and refused to sign the contract, all would be good. (It's actually worse, they did sign such a contract, and then decided they wanted the contract to say something different than it actually did. "Pray I don't alter it any further.")

> >The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized [emphasis mine]

That is speculation, and you can't call it a "textbook designation" without discussing whether there's a basis for that "reasonable fear". Again, that argument also works for declaring you have a reasonable fear that giving money to Anthropic will support pedophilia. We do not know the specifics, but I at least have heard of zero evidence that Anthropic would sabotage something they signed a legal contract for, and yet I have an abundance of evidence that this administration will use whatever contortions are necessary to pressure and punish those who interfere with it getting what it wants. It all hinges on the word "reasonable", and based on the evidence that is public, this specific fear seems more ridiculous than reasonable to me.

If the government somehow had a way to force Anthropic to sign a contract that it did not want to sign, then this fear might become more reasonable. The twist is that this supply chain risk designation is exactly that. If Anthropic now capitulated, the accusation of supply chain risk (eg from Anthropic employees acting alone) would be justified. So the only way Anthropic can reasonably be considered a supply chain risk is because it is accused of being a supply chain risk.

This is a textbook example, yes, but it's a textbook example of corruption and judicial capture.

> Though they'd probably put the DoD on the cybersecurity whitelist today, the very idea of the claude whitelists for certain functionality already exists and is being used by them today.

And if they signed a contract permitting fully autonomous killbots, then using the whitelist mechanism would be a contract violation. I have some degree of faith that we'd know if such a contract were signed, because half the staff would quit. (As opposed to half the Google staff quitting after signing such a contract, which has been proven to be an incorrect expectation -- such a contract was signed, and I've heard of exactly one person quitting over it. There may be more, I don't know.)

except it's also stipulating that the paper supplier upon which the orders are signed also cant use anthropic. or the table maker. even though the AI helping make sleeker paper and tables has nothing to do with deciding what to bomb (analogy breaking down lol)

and trump admin originally went WAY further.

they originally said the pen, paper, table etc suppliers cant use anthropic even for products and subsidiaries that have nothing to do with their govt work; far beyond the supply chain of the pen (bomb). Mega Corp Pepsi Co Taco Bell Inc. LLC -> Staples > Pen Co. Sure pen co might be reasonabale. But telling taco bell they cant have claude help expand the baja-blast-radius is way too far. that would be just like secondary sanctions.

iirc there are 2 court cases. one ruled the original order was too broad and i think that still stands? so at least it's narrowed slightly to just the immediate supply chain?

but ianal

i agree. by nature a lease is more risky than the military having its own model.

however anthropic also believes it is some kind of entity unto itself so it is not at all reliable.

> but it actually seems like a textbook designation

How can it be a textbook designation when designating a US company as a supply chain risk is unprecedented? So many actions under the Trump administration are unprecedented it starts to feel like the norm.

No other administration (Republican or Democrat) would do this. The DoD didn’t have a problem using Anthropic’s models during the raid on Venezuela and early on in the war with Iran.

Anthropic says to the former Fox News host it doesn’t want its models used for domestic surveillance or in kill situations without a human in the loop; all of a sudden they're a supply chain risk?

Seems obviously political.

>Anthropic says to the former Fox News host it doesn’t want its models used for domestic surveillance...

Lol, do as we say not as we do!

>In addition to monitoring activists in the vicinity of Anthropic executives and keeping tabs on protests near physical Anthropic assets, the firm is also implementing a “pre-crime” approach, attempting to predict incidents before they happen.

https://prospect.org/2026/09/09/anthropic-artificial-intelli...

This is political. Everything is political at this scale.

* How much money did Anthropic and its associates donate to the Biden campaign and associated entities? * How much money was spent on lobbying by Anthropic and associated entities? * How many Biden officials were hired by Anthropic after they left office? * How exactly did Anthropic get exclusive no-bid contracts to be the Federal Government's sole AI provider for classified systems?

And with this corrupt influence, and the money that it earned them, Anthropic has attempted to:

* Stoke public fear and panic about AI * Stoke conflict with China * Eliminate domestic competition * Suppress international competition * Degrade their models in order to limit their ability to create competitive products * Train their models on their customer's proprietary data in order to steal their intellectual property

Anthropic played a game and they lost. They can wrap that up in whatever sanctimonious moralizing clap-trap they want, but nobody believes a word they say, or will ever trust them, so they might as well be talking to the wind.

OpenAI may be playing the same game but at least they have the intelligence and humility to read the room, recognize a failed strategy, and adapt.

Who wants to buy intelligence from people who are stupid enough to publicly try to dictate terms to the US Military? Complete and utter brand destruction for everyone involved.

It can be a textbook designation and a capricious punishment at the same time. It's almost comical, to suggest that anything about this decision was reasonable. Makes me long for the days of n-gate.com.

Antropic: "We don't want our AIs to be used by the Army to do yucky Army things!"

Army: "OK, we will make sure not to use your AIs"

Antropic: "How dare you! We are suing! We intended for you to keep using it but do only what we want!"

Army: "..."

They weren't against military use of their AI. They were against using it to kill American citizens without oversight or mass surveil Americans.

> They were against using it to kill American citizens

No, they were against using it to kill people without oversight. I hope nobody thinks that there's a difference between murdering American citizens and murdering people.

Oh okay, makes their position even more moral then.

...I suggest you read about what actually happened:

Anthropic: "We'll sell you access to our AI as long as you don't use it for war crimes or mass surveillance."

DoD: "Ok, deal."

...time passes...

DoD: "Wait, no, we want to be able to use it for war crimes too."

Anthropic: "Too late, you agreed already, and we won't sign a contract for that. You can keep using it for everything we agreed to."

DoD: "Change the terms or we will destroy your business."

Anthropic: "No."

DoD then signs contracts with OpenAI and Google that permit them to commit war crimes and mass surveillance as long as they get legal cover, and proceeds to apply as much leverage as it can to destroy Anthropic's business.

----

And for the record, Anthropic agreed to all "yucky Army things" usage that was an extension of past yucky Army things, they just did not agree to a new class of yucky Army things: namely, fully autonomous killbots. Even there, it was only "not yet, it's not ready". Your whole comment is a gross mischaracterization.

I quit using ChatGPT entirely over this incident, and that's not because I find Anthropic's position to be saintly. They agreed to a contract where the DoD could and in practice is using their AI for committing war crimes.

The problem here - as you probably very well know but pretend not to - that "war crimes" is a very poorly defined term that is subject to many interpretations and subjective political and partisan opinions. Antropic wanted them to be the last word in every decision, and DOD could not allow that, because they are governmental agency, which is controlled by US government, not by Antropic. Nobody is destroying anybody's business - pretending that Anthropic could never find any users for their AI outside DOD is plain silly.

US Society has mechanisms for preventing and investigating war crimes. They may not be perfect, and you may not be happy about how they are working, but I doubt that "give control over it to some random guy that makes AI models" is an adequate solution for that. If Antropic decided the risk of DOD circumventing those mechanisms is too high for them to tolerate - they have full freedom not to sell to DOD. Which they used.

> I quit using ChatGPT entirely over this incident

And this is supposed to be an argument because....?

> They agreed to a contract where the DoD could and in practice is using their AI for committing war crimes.

You have a very vivid imagination. Not trying to use it to state things that could be misinterpreted as statements of fact would be nice. Not that I am new on the internet, so I know it's not going to happen.

Ok, I'll be precise: the main dispute was over fully autonomous decisions to use lethal force. Because if the AI chose incorrectly, the military would be attacking targets that it shouldn't. Whether that is a war crime hinges upon whether it was reckless. Anthropic's position was that AI is not capable of making such decisions, which is another way of saying that giving that decision wholly to an AI is reckless. I can stop using the term "war crimes" if it bothers you so much, but I'm failing to see a distinction between what Anthropic was fearing and the definition of what a war crime is. These are fears, so this isn't about whether one specific action was a war crime or not. This is just naming what Anthropic was worried about and why.

> Anthropic wanted them to be the last word in every decision, and DOD could not allow that

Cite one source for Anthropic demanding to be in the loop. This was about the terms of a contract. If I'm agreeing to sell you a medicine, under the condition that you do not use it to euthanize homeless people, that does not mean I am demanding to follow you around and make you ask me whether each use is ok.

> Nobody is destroying anybody's business - pretending that Anthropic could never find any users for their AI outside DOD is plain silly.

Strawman much? The question is about the US government using its influence in a competitive environment to hamstring one company. It doesn't matter whether there are other customers. It doesn't matter whether the company can survive the attack. What matters is whether it is legal and ethical for our public resources to be used for retaliation in this way.

> US Society has mechanisms for preventing and investigating war crimes....I doubt that "give control over it to some random guy that makes AI models"

This is an invented claim. Cite a source.

>> I quit using ChatGPT entirely over this incident > > And this is supposed to be an argument because....?

The argument was the first part of the post. This part was me giving my perspective on things, in this case it was about how I don't find Anthropic's position to be good, just that OpenAI's is far worse. My post was not for you exclusively; based on what you have written, I have concluded that there is no value in debating you or attempting changing your mind.

>> They agreed to a contract where the DoD could and in practice is using their AI for committing war crimes. > > You have a very vivid imagination. Not trying to use it to state things that could be misinterpreted as statements of fact would be nice.

Ok, fair. Sticking to facts: the crucial part of the negotiation was about whether the DoD can use Anthropic's products for autonomous decisions on lethal force. Since then, it has come out that AI was used in the decision to target an elementary school for girls that killed 120 schoolchildren. (The Palantir Maven Smart System, fwiw, not Claude.) The Pentagon investigated and found that although a human was theoretically in the decision loop, in practice the oversight was minimal and ineffective. "No one remaining on those teams [the teams tasked with minimizing civilian harm] reviewed the strike plans in advance of the attack on the school, according to Bloomberg." Those teams had been gutted, with Hegseth explicitly stating that they were getting in the way.

My supposedly very vivid imagination translated this to reckless decisionmaking that led to a large number of innocent civilian casualties, aka war crimes.

> Because if the AI chose incorrectly, the military would be attacking targets that it shouldn't.

Regrettably, this already is happening today, and have been happening since there was a military. All the time. Intel is imperfect, situation changes quickly, people make mistakes, shit happens. The army is not interested in increasing the number of such occurrences - because the army is not incentivized on destroying targets it wasn't asked to destroy. But it still happens. It happened without AI and it will happen with AI. Putting mandatory human in the loop may be a ideological and philosophical choice, but I don't see any argument here it will always reduce such occurrences. In fact, if anything, it might increase them - humans are known for hundreds of cognitive biases.

> The question is about the US government using its influence in a competitive environment to hamstring one company.

No company is owed contract from the US government. Of course, companies that get a lot of contracts from US government, may profit more than ones that do not, but it still don't create any entitlement. US government has its specs, Antropic is unwilling to make a product for those specs, so US government is not buying from Antropic. Presenting not-buying decision as a hostile action implies there's an entitlement to be a supplier, and such entitlement does not exist.

> Since then, it has come out that AI was used in the decision to target an elementary school for girls that killed 120 schoolchildren.

We are getting into the territory of "70% of traffic crashes are blamed on sober drivers, therefore driving sober is a crime". OF COURSE once AI starts to be used, somebody will eventually make a bad call, somebody gets fed bad intel, something changes and somebody does not notice, and AI would be used in a chain that led to a disaster. AI is not God and is not Oracle of Truth, it's a tool. Every tool is imperfect and depends on its inputs and it's usage. Every tool has boundaries of usability and error margins. You can not change it coming with your post-hoc knowledge and pontificating that if some mythical all knowing human happened to be in the chain at the precisely correct moment he'd prevent the tragedy. Such human never exists at-the-time, only post-hoc, when all the social media is full of them, and there's no AI that allows you to read tomorrow's Twitter, and never will be. Claiming that DOD should not ever use tool X in a scenario that could lead to a disaster is claiming to never use tool X at all - because every practical scenario with practical assumptions can. And ultimately, it's a call for DOD to never exists as a military. Which I guess would be fine with some folks, but I think you'd not expect DOD to agree with that.

> My supposedly very vivid imagination translated this to reckless decisionmaking that led to a large number of innocent civilian casualties, aka war crimes.

As I said, extensively, the reality of warmaking will inevitably lead to innocent civilian casualties. There never was, and never will be, a war (at least real, hot, shooting war) where innocents would not be suffering. It's not the intention of DOD, it's the reality of how things happen. Now we learn your definition of "war crimes" includes, essentially, any warmaking of sufficient scale in time and space that will inevitably cause innocent casualties, and with sufficient scale, they could be claimed as "large". In other words, every (big enough) war is a crime. It is a possible position, even if a bit too idealistic and high-horse-y to my taste. But I think now at least you can appreciate why it would be very imprudent for DOD to subject themselves to people who would limit their capabilities based on such sort of definitions?

They didn't want their tech to be used to, I don't know, blow up a school with 120 children. But did want to allow other kinds of usage. Is that so weird?

Get rid of your high horse. Nobody wants to blow up a school with 120 children. The question is who is in control and making the decisions. Antropic wanted to be in control and make the decisions for the DOD. DOD refused. It's not so weird at all.

It's not a high horse, you're just misinformed. The Trump regime does want to blow up a school with 120 children. The military had, until recently, a program to prevent such incidents; Pete Hegseth gutted it (https://www.propublica.org/article/hegseth-civilian-harm-mit...) because he wants to achieve "maximum lethality" at all costs. To this date, the regime has not issued any sort of apology for the school bombing, because they're not sorry and they'd happily do it again.

> The Trump regime

I am sorry, that's where I stopped reading. If I want partisan screeching, I go to Reddit (I don't actually but that's what I would do if I wanted it). You may enjoy portraying your political opponents as raging maniacs, but I don't see how it would help me understand anything, and as such, this discussion loses any appeal to me.

> textbook designation.

Hardly. I invite you to [read the opinion][1], particularly the great pains the majority spends on wrangling the definition of the word "manipulate."

Basically, [FASCSA][2] says to denote a company is a "supply chain risk," the govt has to meet the law's rigorous definition of what a "significant" risk actually is. That definition contains a catch-all "or otherwise manipulate the function" of the thing at hand (in this case, Claude) at the very end.

The govt's whole argument is "Well Anthropic has admitted that it can technically "manipulate" the response, therefore its a significant risk, therefore we designate it as such."

The dissent gives an analogy:

> A library might post a sign saying, “Do not shout, loudly talk on the phone, play music, or otherwise disturb others.” The common understanding would be that the rule bans bringing a boom-box into the reading room with the volume turned on high but not listening to music with headphones set at a modest sound level—even though both constitute “playing music.”

It is as if the govt argued "ah ah, Anthropic played music on their headphones, they broke the rules! We therefore have the authority to ban them" and the majority insanely agrees. It is clear to anyone with basic reading comprehension that the "manipulate" clause is supposed to continue the idea of malicious or subversive manipulation that the whole section entails. The hand-waving the majority uses gives the whole game away.

[1]: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=000001a0-d91e-d276-aff6-f97f3...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SECURE_Technology_Act

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