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Comment by wrs | Hacker News Reader

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wrs·

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

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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.

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