Live data from Hacker News

Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

wsj.com

441–450 of 656 posts

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#441
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, Amazon wanted this to happen. They own 20% of Anthropic. Anthropic bleeds cash. They have to raise capital. There are only 2 ways: an IPO or follow-ons from existing investors. If the IPO gets delayed because of these restrictions, Anthropic will be forced to raise more capital from existing investors. And existing investors (Amazon) will end up owning more of Anthropic at a cheaper valuation.

Why would they have launched Fable on Bedrock if they knew they were going to be shutting it down a day later?

I'm just stating facts:

- Amazon's CEO knew what he was doing and the possible consequences

- Anthropic must raise cash, and there are only 2 ways: an IPO or follow-ons

- If the IPO is blocked, existing investors will be able to increase their stake on Anthropic at a very attractive lower valuation

- Amazon has 20% of Anthropic: so, they benefit from it

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#442
post #360
post #269

The only thing I can think of that would give Amazon reasons to dislike Mythos / Fable is that Anthropic really ruined their Bedrock story by imposing data retention requirements that cross a red line in regulatory compliance. It's just possible that Jassy would rather have nobody use Fable than doing it on the basis of, effectively, a direct data trust relationship with Anthropic. It is hard to plug it together into…

Feels like AWS could just tell them they’re not launching Fable then. Anthropic needs them more than the opposite, no? Nobody who is a big Bedrock customer will ditch for another cloud provider for the privilege of having anthropic hold on to their inputs.

Amazon’s AWS and core delivery business are fairly mature, and with consumer sentiment poor and non-AI tech contracting, having a growth vertical like Bedrock is good for shareholders. Without their own core tech, Amazon will be paying rent on AVs in a couple of years - or worse, they will lose all of the benefits or their logistics monopoly because an AV semi can afford to be inefficient

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese labs don't seem to be even close to Fable though. Aren't they still catching up to Opus 4.6?

I remember something along these lines being the talk couple years ago. And then DeepSeek R1 dropped and flipped the table. Underestimate China to your detriment.

I'm rooting for China. I want them to keep undermining the frontier models with open weight ones.

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#444
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason I can see is because Amazon wanted something like this to happen. But I'm not sure what Amazon would gain from that, since they don't have their own competing frontier models.

Of course, Amazon wanted this to happen. They own 20% of Anthropic. Anthropic bleeds cash. They have to raise capital. There are only 2 ways: an IPO or follow-ons from existing investors. If the IPO gets delayed because of these restrictions, Anthropic will be forced to raise more capital from existing investors. And existing investors (Amazon) will end up owning more of Anthropic at a cheaper valuation.

There's a much simpler explanation: Amazon's business is selling cloud services. Amazon is constantly under threat of attack and anything that disturbs the balance between attackers and defenders is bad for Amazon. Amazon also needs to keep their AWS customers safe.

This is Amazon prioritizing their 100% stake in AWS over their 20% stake in Anthropic. It's also possible that Amazon knows things that are not public.

The fact that Amazon is willing to report this despite owning shares in Anthropic and being close to a liquidation event points to whatever they found being actually serious.

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Amazon's stake in Anthropic goes up 10x, but American national security is fatally compromised in the process, I kinda doubt that's net profitable for Amazon. They're not going to be able to deliver in 2 days or hit AWS sales targets if everyone's drowning in cyberattacks.

Isn't that what the entire billionaire class has been doing for decades though? Making profit go up and up while destroying national security? They don't seem to feel it's a net negative.

No? I'm really not sure what you could be referring to. Tech billionaires are if anything too willing to follow the government's lead on national security; they don't seem to have particularly minded the whole PRISM saga, even knowing that it would fatally compromise their relationships with privacy organizations.

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic is perfectly fine with the US government using Claude to commit war crimes. The US military has done hundreds of extra-judicial killings in the waters around South America over the last year and Anthropic hasn't had anything to say about that.

Use nuance and judgement, friend. Anthropic notably pushed back on completely autonomous no-human-in-the-loop drone killings and mass surveillance of the US population, where others like OpenAI scrambled to agree. Anthropic isn't perfect but that doesn't make them equally bad.

Trust no one, friend. Believe what you want to believe.

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#447

Unfortunately even if this blocking is only temporary, a precedent has been set. The government will likely be more willing to target open source models in the future that they deem to be too powerful. A lot of open source AI infrastructure exists within reach of the US government.

The Internet will find a way to route around censorship. I’ve already started downloading notable open weight models onto my NAS and will distribute via eg BitTorrents if needed. I’m not in the US, and you can’t ban VPNs overnight.

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's astonishing how that summit sparkles the Tesla sowflakes. We gave them tens of billions of dollars in subsidies and a 100% tariff on the Chinese competition! Huge, substantive policy assistance! But Biden wanted to pal around with some union supporters and that's supposed to be some horrible slight? Please. Elon didn't drop millions on the Trump campaign and throw a double Sieg Heil at the 2025 US presidential i…

You'll notice the tariffs were helping legacy auto more than Tesla

Or that the tariffs were ham-fisted, arbitrary, and lacking in rational justifications. I’m not sure one can draw too many firm conclusions from that particular “policy”.

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#449
post #360
post #269

The only thing I can think of that would give Amazon reasons to dislike Mythos / Fable is that Anthropic really ruined their Bedrock story by imposing data retention requirements that cross a red line in regulatory compliance. It's just possible that Jassy would rather have nobody use Fable than doing it on the basis of, effectively, a direct data trust relationship with Anthropic. It is hard to plug it together into…

Feels like AWS could just tell them they’re not launching Fable then. Anthropic needs them more than the opposite, no? Nobody who is a big Bedrock customer will ditch for another cloud provider for the privilege of having anthropic hold on to their inputs.

Particularly not with OpenAI finally getting on Bedrock.

Re: Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

#450

The simplest explanation is Anthropic hasn't paid the necessary ‘taxes’ to get the required blessings. SpaceX did the right thing: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-03/spacex-ip...

Please don't refer to bribes as taxes. Extremely, extremely counterproductive.

they used quotes. Is nuance dead?
Post reply on HN