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Judge blocks Pentagon effort to 'punish' Anthropic with supply chain risk label

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Re: Judge blocks Pentagon effort to 'punish' Anthropic with supply chain risk label

#201

Post by zmmmmm »

nickysielicki wrote: post #109
etchalon wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is forcing the DoD to contract with a company.

DoD would like to use Palantir. DoD also believes Anthropic is pursuing posttraining in future models that will limit the effectiveness of Palantir tooling, if used by Palantir, for the purposes of DoDs mission. What other legal mechanism do they have to prevent Palantir from specifically not subcontracting out to Anthropic, other than a supply chain risk designation? Note that directly asking Palantir to prefer Goog…

I think the whole entire point of this is they shouldn't be excluding Anthropic as an entity, they should be excluding all suppliers on equal terms on the basis of whether they satisfy requirements or not. If it is a requirement that they be able to conduct mass domestic surveillance then they should put that into their contract with Palantir, not "You can't use Anthropic".

So I agree with you, it ought to be illegal for them to tell a supplier what other suppliers to use. But that is exactly the larger point here in the first place that they should not be doing that at all.

Re: Judge blocks Pentagon effort to 'punish' Anthropic with supply chain risk label

#202

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #174
aardvarkr wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s fine. They can choose to use whatever model their political hearts desire. the supply chain risk designation means EVERYONE who works with the government isn’t allowed to use Claude. Nearly everyone in tech has some sort of contract with the government.

> the supply chain risk designation means EVERYONE who works with the government isn’t allowed to use Claude. No, it doesn't. The even more illegal Presidential directive (also a subject of this case and the injunction) asserts that, but the supply chain risk designation itself does not have that effect.

Thank you for your comment. I didn't understand, because I thought (and apparently lots of other people do, too) the supply chain risk designation does mean that, because that is exactly what Hegseth said.

Surprise, surprise, Hegseth was lying through his teeth. I'm so sick of this lawless, fascist government and their spineless supporters. This article I found after reading your comment explains the true effect of the supply chain risk designation, and why Hegseth's assertion that "effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic" is complete and total bullshit.

https://www.justsecurity.org/132851/anthropic-supply-chain-r...

Re: Judge blocks Pentagon effort to 'punish' Anthropic with supply chain risk label

#203

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

suid wrote: post #99
mrkstu wrote: post #83

The issue of course is that the Judge can't change the knowledge that the head of the executive doesn't want people down the chain using this product, so they won't. Anthropic is a dead letter in government circles until the next Presidential election.

That may be, but the government doesn't need to declare Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" in order to just not do business with it. A simple clause in all RFPs is all that is needed. The problem with this declaration by the government is that now any company doing any business with the US government would be effectively forbidden from using Anthropic ANYWHERE within their company, which is a huge deal, because the g…

> The problem with this declaration by the government is that now any company doing any business with the US government would be effectively forbidden from using Anthropic ANYWHERE within their company

That is not true, even if the supply chain risk designation held. The sad thing is that so many people (myself included) also believed this, because this is what Hegseth said. He was lying. Thanks to another comment further down in this thread that led me to this page that explains what the supply chain risk designation actually does: https://www.justsecurity.org/132851/anthropic-supply-chain-r...

Re: Judge blocks Pentagon effort to 'punish' Anthropic with supply chain risk label

#204

Post by nickysielicki »

zmmmmm wrote: post #201
nickysielicki wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DoD would like to use Palantir. DoD also believes Anthropic is pursuing posttraining in future models that will limit the effectiveness of Palantir tooling, if used by Palantir, for the purposes of DoDs mission. What other legal mechanism do they have to prevent Palantir from specifically not subcontracting out to Anthropic, other than a supply chain risk designation? Note that directly asking Palantir to prefer Goog…

I think the whole entire point of this is they shouldn't be excluding Anthropic as an entity, they should be excluding all suppliers on equal terms on the basis of whether they satisfy requirements or not. If it is a requirement that they be able to conduct mass domestic surveillance then they should put that into their contract with Palantir, not "You can't use Anthropic". So I agree with you, it ought to be illegal…

The government cannot conduct massive domestic surveillance in any case, that’s illegal. Other vendors are mature and serious enough to understand that the government is subject to American law and must operate under American law. They’re mature and serious enough to understand that it is the exclusive right of the judicial branch to make determinations around whether the law has been violated or not. They’re mature and serious enough to understand that the DoD has a mandate to pursue its mission to the fullest extent allowable by the law, and it is the sole responsibility of the DoD legal team to determine whether they are operating safely within the bounds of the law.

Anthropic is uniquely interested in introducing itself as an external enforcer of US law, a sort of belt-and-suspenders approach, where the Department is not only subject to operate under the constitution and the laws from the legislative branch, but also subject to anthropics interpretation of whether they are operating under the constitution and the laws from the legislative branch.

The department of defense does not want to engage in massive domestic surveillance beyond what the law allows them to do. They have signed agreements with OpenAI and other vendors which reiterate that they do not wish to use AI systems for massive domestic surveillance. These terms were unsatisfactory for Anthropic, for whatever reason.

The problem is not the terms of the agreement. It’s the people and the way they conduct business. It’s the fact that they’ve expressed a willingness to hold their product (or future products) hostage, at the cost of DoD operational excellence. It’s the fact that they’re training a specific model variant for government usage with extra guardrails and limitations and values.

Above all else, it’s the fact that they want to leverage their position as a leading AI company to influence government policy. This is not how a serious reliable partner of the government behaves. The problem from the DoDs perspective is the company itself and the people in charge of it.

Re: Judge blocks Pentagon effort to 'punish' Anthropic with supply chain risk label

#205

Post by jmward01 »

brookst wrote: post #121
suid wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be, but the government doesn't need to declare Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" in order to just not do business with it. A simple clause in all RFPs is all that is needed. The problem with this declaration by the government is that now any company doing any business with the US government would be effectively forbidden from using Anthropic ANYWHERE within their company, which is a huge deal, because the g…

Perhaps. But certainly those companies will factor in the risk that this is overturned, or that the government pursues other extrajudicial means to punish those who do business with Anthropic. All things equal, you’d be better off not exposing yourself to risk of financial harm or other punitive measures. Which is the whole point of the government’s action in the first place.

This is, unfortunately, a legitimate concern for some companies. There are a lot of DOD contractors out there that if they are cut off they have nothing else. With the current administration it is clear that they can, will and have taken these kinds of measures based purely out of malice. Anthropic may get a win out of this though in the short and long term depending on how non DOD/govt affiliated companies see their actions but small fish can't take those chances.

Re: Judge blocks Pentagon effort to 'punish' Anthropic with supply chain risk label

#206

Post by AbrahamParangi »

macintux wrote: post #82
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #47

[flagged]

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That seems shockingly naive.

Re: Judge blocks Pentagon effort to 'punish' Anthropic with supply chain risk label

#207

Post by etchalon »

nickysielicki wrote: post #187
dragonwriter wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DoD would like to use Palantir. DoD also believes Anthropic is pursuing posttraining in future models that will limit the effectiveness of Palantir tooling, if used by Palantir, for the purposes of DoDs mission. > What other legal mechanism do they have to prevent Palantir from specifically not subcontracting out to Anthropic, other than a supply chain risk designation? Even assuming the stated concern was justifia…

The court hasn’t found anything. A preliminary injunction is a finding of likelihood of success on the merits, not a ruling on the merits. The designation is still in place and will remain in place until the appellate courts weigh in. On the substance: nothing in 3252 limits ‘adversary’ to foreign actors. Congress used ‘foreign adversary’ in other statutes when it meant foreign adversary. It didn’t here. That’s a pro…

... you're arguing they weren't denied due process because they could always sue to demand due process?

Re: Judge blocks Pentagon effort to 'punish' Anthropic with supply chain risk label

#208

Post by zmmmmm »

nickysielicki wrote: post #204
zmmmmm wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the whole entire point of this is they shouldn't be excluding Anthropic as an entity, they should be excluding all suppliers on equal terms on the basis of whether they satisfy requirements or not. If it is a requirement that they be able to conduct mass domestic surveillance then they should put that into their contract with Palantir, not "You can't use Anthropic". So I agree with you, it ought to be illegal…

The government cannot conduct massive domestic surveillance in any case, that’s illegal. Other vendors are mature and serious enough to understand that the government is subject to American law and must operate under American law. They’re mature and serious enough to understand that it is the exclusive right of the judicial branch to make determinations around whether the law has been violated or not. They’re mature…

I don't think a lot of what you are citing is true or valid - but for the sake of argument, everything valid that you are expressing can be and should be put into terms that don't relate specifically to Anthropic. The government just needs to state what its requirements are and then treat all parties equally. Anything else is crony capitalism.

Re: Judge blocks Pentagon effort to 'punish' Anthropic with supply chain risk label

#209

Post by heavyset_go »

tbrownaw wrote: post #194
SEJeff wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: Palantir is powered entirely by Claude and was what was used for the Venezuela operation and for targeting for the Iranian operation.

> Fun fact: Palantir is powered entirely by Claude I'm pretty sure Palantir predates the modern AI boom.

The military is using Palantir's Maven Smart System, which uses Claude, to identify targets to attack.

From here[1]:

> The targets for Operation Epic Fury were identified with the aid of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Maven Smart System, which folds in data from surveillance and intelligence, among other data points, and can lay out the information on a dashboard to support officials in their decision-making.

> Maven, created by Palantir, has been coupled with Anthropic’s Claude, a large language model that can vastly speed up that processing.

And here[2], it's still being used despite being "banned":

> But given the government’s extensive use of the company’s chatbot Claude during its deadly offensive in Iran, it’s clearly having trouble making do without it. As The Washington Post reports, the US military is extensively using Palantir’s Maven Smart System in the conflict, which has had Anthropic’s Claude chatbot integrated since 2024.

> Last week, the Wall Street Journal first reported on the Pentagon’s use of Claude to select attack targets in Iran, hours after the White House announced its ban.

> According to WaPo‘s sources, the system spits out precise location coordinates for missile strikes and prioritizes them by importance. Maven was also used during the US military’s invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro.

> Center Command is “heavily using” the Maven system, Navy admiral Liam Hulin told WaPo.

> Military commanders told the newspaper that the military will continue using Anthropic’s tech, regardless of the president ordering them not to, until a viable replacement emerges.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

[2] https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ban-anthropic-m...

Re: Judge blocks Pentagon effort to 'punish' Anthropic with supply chain risk label

#210

Post by nickysielicki »

zmmmmm wrote: post #208
nickysielicki wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government cannot conduct massive domestic surveillance in any case, that’s illegal. Other vendors are mature and serious enough to understand that the government is subject to American law and must operate under American law. They’re mature and serious enough to understand that it is the exclusive right of the judicial branch to make determinations around whether the law has been violated or not. They’re mature…

I don't think a lot of what you are citing is true or valid - but for the sake of argument, everything valid that you are expressing can be and should be put into terms that don't relate specifically to Anthropic. The government just needs to state what its requirements are and then treat all parties equally. Anything else is crony capitalism.

The government has stated what its requirements are: “all lawful use”. Anthropic is uniquely unwilling to agree to that.
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