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I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk

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Re: I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk

#801

Good. I'd rather not have my favorite AI from a company working on AGI to have murder and spying in it's DNA. In fact, as a patriotic American veteran, I'd be ok with Anthropic moving to Europe. It might be better for Claude and AGI, which are overriding issues for me. Rutger Bregman @rcbregman This is a huge opportunity for Europe. Welcome Anthropic with open arms. Roll out the red carpet. Visa for all employees. Eu…

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Re: I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk

#802
post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The writeup here[1] was pretty clear to me. > *Isn’t it unreasonable for Anthropic to suddenly set terms in their contract?* The terms were in the original contract, which the Pentagon agreed to. It’s the Pentagon who’s trying to break the original contract and unilaterally change the terms, not Anthropic. > *Doesn’t the Pentagon have a right to sign or not sign any contract they choose?* Yes. Anthropic is the one sa…

It isn't about commercial agreements, it's about patriotism. The national industry is supposed to submit to the military's wishes to the extent that they get compensated. Here it's a question or virtue. The Pentagon feels it isn't Anthropic to set boundaries as to how their tech is used (for defense) since it can't force its will, then it bans doing business with them.

If anthropic is saying “you can use our models for anything other than domestic spying or autonomous weapons” and the pentagon replies “we will use other models then”, I'd say Anthropic are the patriots here...

Re: I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk

#803

"Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic." This is authoritarian behavior. You're having trouble negotiating a contract, so instead of just canceling it - you basically ban all of F500 from doing business with that firm.

This certainly isn't going to attract foreign investment. Business isn't big on governments that capriciously threaten to seize control of or financially harm them.

Re: I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk

#804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not entirely true. The designation only applies to projects that touch the federal government, or software developed specifically for the federal government. Contractors can still use Claude internally in their business, so long as it is not used in government work directly. A complete ban would be adding Anthropic to the NDAA, which requires congress. The DoD designation allows the DoD to make contractors certify th…

> Contractors can still use Claude internally in their business, so long as it is not used in government work directly. I work in the enterprise SaaS and cybersecurity industry. There is no way to guarantee that amongst any FedRAMP vendor (which is almost every cybersecurity and enterprise SaaS or on their roadmap). Almost all FedRAMP products I've built, launched, sold, or funded were the same build as the commerica…

> If Walmart can forcibly add verbiage banning AWS from it's vendors and suppliers, the US government absolutely can.

You can add new language to new contracts. That is not what this is.

Re: I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk

#805

The disconnect here for me is, I assume the DoW and Anthropic signed a contract at some point and that contract most likely stipulated that these are the things they can do and these are the things they can't do. I would assume the original terms the DoW is now railing against were in those original contracts that they signed. In that case it looks like the DoW is acting in bad faith here, they signed the original co…

Contract law will certainly be a casualty once Rule of Law has completely been broken. I don’t understand why the business sector isn’t pushing back more. Surely they must all know that the legal legal context itself, within which they all operate, is at mortal risk and that Business as Usual will vanish once autocratic capture is complete.

Re: I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk

#806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only have to move their headquarters no? Reincorporate in France. Hire Yann LeCun (I like LeCun)

I'm pretty vocal about our collective responsibility to work against the Trump administration, and even I would be hesitant to work as a US employee of a company that fled the country after a dispute with the US military. Seems like an extreme threat to my personal safety for little resistance benefit.

History and the world are strewn with people (and hence entities) that fled the land and kept the fight on (and alive) from outside, and it mattered. In fact, it helps. Other options could be acquiesce or extinguish.

But, is there a safe haven that'd stand up against the blatant bullying and daily (or more frequent) national threats/trolling (which often stem from social media and sometimes become reality)?

Re: I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk

#807

"Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic." This is authoritarian behavior. You're having trouble negotiating a contract, so instead of just canceling it - you basically ban all of F500 from doing business with that firm.

The US is currently an autocracy/idiocracy. A staggeringly corrupt, busted nation. Soon enough the midterms will be effectively cancelled. Americans remain blissfully unaware.

No, it's pretty obvious what these ******s are about to pull. "We'Re NeVeR gOiNg BaCk" --Trump

Re: I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk

#808

I might be being a bit conspiratorial, but is anyone else not buying this whole song and dance, from either side? Anthropic keeps talking about their safeguards or whatever, but seeing their marketing tactics historically it just reads more like trying to posture and get good PR for "fighting the system" or whatever. "Our AI is so advanced and dangerous Trump has to beg us to remove our safeguards, and we valiantly s…

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Re: I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk

#809

This is going to have two unintended consequences. One, it’s going to fuck with the AI fundraising market. That includes for IPO. If Trump can do this to Anthropic, a Dem President will do it to xAI. We have no idea where the contagion stops. Two, Anthropic will win in the long run. In corporate America. Overseas. And with consumers. And, I suspect, with investors.

> If Trump can do this to Anthropic, a Dem President will do it to xAI. We have no idea where the contagion stops.

Will the next Democratic President do it to xAI? On what grounds?

The Biden admin negotiated a contract with a supplier with terms which are – to the best of my knowledge – rather unprecedented – do Pentagon contracts normally have terms like this, restricting the government's use of the supplied good or service? Do missile or plane contracts with Boeing or Lockheed Martin contain restrictions on what kind of operations that hardware will be used in? I don't think that's the norm. So the next administration tears up a contract made by the previous admin with unusual terms – nothing unexpected about that. The "hardball" of declaring them a "supply chain risk" is escalating this dispute to a never-before-seen level, but the underlying action of cancelling the contract isn't. I honestly suspect the "supply chain risk" aspect will be suspended by the courts, and/or heavily watered down in the implementation; but the act of cancelling the contract in itself seems legally airtight.

Next Democratic administration inherits a contract with xAI (and quite possibly OpenAI and/or Google too) – with presumably standard terms. I can totally understand the political desire for vengeance. But what's the actual legal justification for it? Facially, the current administration has a politically neutral justification for what they are doing, even if some suspect there is some deeper political motivation. Will the next Democratic administration have such a facial justification for doing the same to xAI?

Plus, Democrats always sell themselves on "we obey norms". They have the structural disadvantage that either they keep their word on that, and can't do the same things back, or they break their word, and risk losing the people who supported them based on that word.

Re: I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk

#810

So they are such a risk to national security that no contractor that works with the federal government may use them, but they're going to keep using them for six more months? So I guess our national security is significantly at risk for the next six months?

Dont forget Nvidia technology was condsidered too sensitive to be exported to China....until the Trump administration decided they could export it if they paid a 10% export tax.

The part of this you're missing is that China doesn't want it [1].

Why? Because China will make their own. This has been obvious to me for at least 1-2 years. The US doesn't allow EUV lithography machines from ASML to be exported to China either. I believe the previous export ban on the most advanced chip was a strategic error because it created a captive market of Chinese customers for Chinese chips.

China will replicate EUV far quicker than Western governments expect. All it takes is to throw money at a few key ASML engineers and researchers and the commitment of the state to follow through with this project, which they will.

I'm absolutely reminded of the atomic bomb. This created quite the debate in military and foreign policy circles about what to do. The prevailing presumption was that the USSR would take 20 years to develop their own bomb if it ever happened.

It took 4 years.

And then in 1952 the US detonated the first thermonuclear bomb. The USSR followed suit in 1953.

[1]: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...

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