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The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

understandingai.org

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Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#141

Post by TimorousBestie »

kristjansson wrote: post #63
TimorousBestie wrote: post #18

Article doesn’t demonstrate a good understanding of DoW’s relationship with contractors. Anthropic wanted those sweet, sweet, taxpayer dollars—well, this is what happens when you make a Faustian bargain. > One option is to invoke the Defense Production Act. . . > Another threat would be to declare Anthropic to be a supply chain risk. . . The first is a wrist-slap that still gets the government what they want; the sec…

> Anthropic wanted those sweet, sweet, taxpayer dollars The sold services to a willing counterparty at mutually agreed upon terms. And now the other side of that deal has recalled that they're Twelve and You're Not My Real Mom You Can't Tell Me What To Do, and so wishes they had agreed to different terms and is throwing a tantrum to attempt to force a change. And that's Anthropic's fault? That's a risk they should ha…

> The sold services to a willing counterparty at mutually agreed upon terms.

Yeah, and the legal environment that contract was written in, which both parties were aware of during negotiation, defines the means by which those terms can be changed.

> And that's Anthropic's fault? That's a risk they should have predicted?

It is deeply funny to me to imagine that an AI company doing inference at an unprecedented scale could not see this coming.

Go ask Claude how usgov should act if a contractor preemptively refuses to deliver. What are the top five tools they could use to demand compliance?

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#142

Post by mrexcess »

Just want to note the emergence of a two-tiered imbalance. Frontier AI providers are stacking the guardrails so high that everyday citizens can't even ask an LLM what boobs are, but simultaneously providing government with AI lacking guardrails around "any lawful purpose".

That's fundamentally antidemocratic and it normalizes the departure from the Western Enlightenment standard of, "the same law governs everyone".

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#143

Post by basch »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #44
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24

My read of this interaction is Dario is calling out Hegseths' bluff. A bluff the latter didn't even know he was blundering into because Hegseth is an idiot. SecDef invoking the DPA against Anthropic likely trashes the AI fundraising market, at least for a spell. That's why OpenAI is wading into the fight [1]. Given the Dow is sitting on a rising souffle of AI expectations, that knocks it out as well. And if there is…

Imagine if it's just Grok that plays ball because Musk doesn't want to lose SpaceX's DoD contracts now it's the same outfit.

A strong argument for the other players to play ball. "Let us use your service or we will attach our kill trigger to a wildcard whim driven vendor."

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#144

Post by jstummbillig »

ACCount37 wrote: post #82
jstummbillig wrote: post #59

On the one hand it's fantastic that people are resisting and, if nothing else, raising awareness and buying time. On the other hand, is autonomous war not obviously the endgame, given how quickly capabilities are increasing and that it simply does not require much intelligence (relatively speaking) to build something that points a gun at something and pulls a trigger? It just needs one player to do it, so everyone ha…

It's not that hard. DoD could find a contractor to do it. But Anthropic wants no part of it, and I get why.

I absolutely do get it, but if you assume that eventually (and by that I mean: very, very soon) somebody else will do it, in how far is this line of action simply opting out of having some say in all of it and taking responsibility for situation that you instrumented?

And I am honestly not sure.

If your stance is "well, this is something that should just not happen" and also believe that is absolutely will happen, then what are you doing by saying "but it won't be us, it will instead be other people (who were enabled and inspired by our work in unsurprising ways)".

On the other hand, just the act of resisting could tip the scale in some incalculable and hopefully positive way.

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#145

Post by [deleted] »

krapp wrote: post #129
5o1ecist wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Trump is mentioned over a million times in the Epstein files, he's deeply connected to Epstein. He is not "just the "currently voted-in guy" doing what he's being told to do." >"Oh but shadow government/deep state is just a dumb conspiracy-theory" ... yeah, just like an island of cheese pizza eating billionaires. This wasn't the conspiracy theory you guys believed in though. You were looking for a Satanic cabal of De…

[deleted]

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#146

Post by chasd00 »

nubg wrote: post #9

This whole standoff could set a very important precedent of the Trump administration not getting what they want, and not in a "maneuvered out of the news spotlight" kind of way (e.g. Greenland), but in a public "FUCK OFF right in your face" kind of way. The worst that can happen to Anthropic is one of the two things mentioned; loosing some contracts or some fake forced management from the Pentagon. maybe Dario having…

> The worst that can happen to Anthropic

The corporate death sentence usually goes something like "anyone who does business with Anthropic cannot do business with the US government". That pretty much means all the hyperscalers, major infrastructure providers, major software providers, and major corporations. They all have to choose between the entire US gov and all those contracts and a single AI company. That's the worst that can happen to Anthropic.

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#147

Post by jstummbillig »

stronglikedan wrote: post #93
jstummbillig wrote: post #59

On the one hand it's fantastic that people are resisting and, if nothing else, raising awareness and buying time. On the other hand, is autonomous war not obviously the endgame, given how quickly capabilities are increasing and that it simply does not require much intelligence (relatively speaking) to build something that points a gun at something and pulls a trigger? It just needs one player to do it, so everyone ha…

> It just needs one player to do it, so everyone has to be able to do it. Businesses stay out of potentially profitable market segments for various reasons, so I don't think everyone has to be able to do it to survive.

Oh, I meant at state level. Business, yeah: the DoD (excuse me: Department of War) just needs one killer model.

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#148

Post by wat10000 »

pavlov wrote: post #128
bhelkey wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this sarcasm? The US held elections during World War II [1]. [1] https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-...

The US President in 1944 was someone who wanted to have elections. In 2026 this is not the case anymore. How much of a difference it makes, nobody knows.

Elections won't be canceled. They're too important for the perception of legitimacy. Virtually every country on Earth now has elections. Russia, China, even North Korea has elections.

The modern playbook isn't to abolish elections, it's a combination of blocking opposition candidates, suppressing votes, intimidating voters, and lying about the results. That's what to watch for.

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#149

Post by Spooky23 »

Eggpants wrote: post #52

What’s interesting is Anthropic being singled out here. That either means: 1- OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc have no problem with their products being used to kill people so no need to bully them. 2- These other products are so terrible at the task that the clown shoe wearing SecDef is forced to try to bully Anthropic.

You’re reading into it like the federal government is an honest broker.

It’s just corruption. Google is a bigger fish. OpenAI is attached to Oracle and Larry Ellison, who is a Trump collaborator. Kushner is also in investor.

Anthropic is the weakest animal in the herd. They also started a campaign targeting OpenAI, which is capturing hearts and minds (everyone is talking about Claude Code), and really pissed off Sam Altman.

Re: The Pentagon is making a mistake by threatening Anthropic

#150

Post by LogicFailsMe »

dathinab wrote: post #134
LogicFailsMe wrote: post #21

I don't have a lot of hope here. When most of the creme de la creme of the billionaire class capitulated to Trump at the beginning of his term, that set the tone for everything that followed IMO. It's astounding to me that so many are willing to see him trample on the Constitution and separation of powers when they'd scream like stuck pigs if any other party attempted it. And that's the way a lot of influential Ameri…

> many are willing to see him trample there is little surprising about it Trump is pushing in the direction of an Oligarchie, billionaires would be the future oligarchs. So even iff a billionaire is no-okay with this development, if they stick out they - will lose their status/money iff Trump wins long term - will make enemies with many other billionaires, but a core trend of billionaires is taking advantage of conne…

Given there are only ~1135 billionaires in the USA right now, I'd say it's pretty much non-viable to go from sub/barely millionaire to billionaire period. But Taylor Swift doesn't seem to have murdered any kittens to get where she is nor did Rihanna so it can happen without totally selling out.
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