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Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

anthropic.com

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Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#291

Post by layer8 »

Stratoscope wrote: post #258
ajam1507 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, in this instance, it does seem that Anthropic is walking away from money. The supply chain risk designation will be overturned in court, and the financial fallout from losing the government contracts will pale in comparison to the goodwill from consumers. Not to mention that giving in would mean they lose lots of their employees who would refuse to work under those terms. In this case, the principles are l…

> ...the financial fallout from losing the government contracts will pale in comparison to the goodwill from consumers. In fact, a friend heard about this and immediately signed up for a $200/year Claude Pro plan. This is someone who has been only a very occasional user of ChatGPT and never used Claude before. I told my friend "You could just sign up for the free plan and upgrade after you try it out." "No, I want to…

Still, you’d need a million people to do that to compensate the $200M military contract.

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#292

Post by jart »

politician wrote: post #244
jart wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not threatening to do that. They just did. Read the tweet linked in the article. > In conjunction with the President's directive for the Federal Government to cease all use of Anthropic's technology, I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military…

"This has never happened before." US could compel Anthropic to act; simply not doing business with them is restraint, not escalation.

U.S. authorities labeled them a supply chain risk. The military went on Twitter and basically labeled Anthropic an enemy of the state. The most popular company on Earth. They did that. If USG was able to issue some kind of secret court order compelling them to act and keep it covert then they would have done it.

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#294

Post by skissane »

ajam1507 wrote: post #285
skissane wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The supply chain risk designation will be overturned in court, I'm honestly uncertain how the courts will rule. You could be right, but it isn't guaranteed. I think a judicial narrowing of it is more likely than a complete overturn. OTOH, I think almost guaranteed it will be watered-down by the government. Because read expansively, it could force Microsoft and AWS to choose between stopping reselling Claude vs drop…

> OTOH, I think almost guaranteed it will be watered-down by the government. Because read expansively, it could force Microsoft and AWS to choose between stopping reselling Claude vs dropping the Pentagon as a customer. A tweet does not have the force of law. Being designated a supply chain risk does not mean that companies who do business with the government cannot do business with Anthropic. Hegseth just has the la…

The issue is, even if the Trump admin is misrepresenting what the law actually says, federal contractors may decide it is safer to comply with the administration’s reading. The risk is the administration may use their reading to reject a bid. And even if they could potentially challenge that in court and win, they may decide the cheaper and less risky option is to choose OpenAI (or whoever) instead

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#295

Post by tlogan »

This basically means that the government is already using OpenAI, Gemini, and other AI systems for large scale surveillance. They just wanted to add Anthropic to the list, and Anthropic said no.

The most import point of this story is that this is already happening. And it will likely continue regardless of who is elected.

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#296

Post by jjmarr »

oenton wrote: post #290
jjmarr wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50% paycut for similar cost of living. Do you want to put 3 kids into a 2-bedroom apartment on your US$120k salary, with $10k of RSUs the government takes 53% of? In addition to a 13% sales tax?

How much of your U.S. paycheck goes towards healthcare premiums? How about much is daycare in the U.S. for 3 children? Conservative estimates put that at $4-$5,000 per month, and that's after tax . Is there a reason your comment omits these key differences when comparing a SWE's quality of life living in the United States vs. Canada?

I don't get free daycare in Canada either.

I'm not American, but I pay a few hundred dollars a year for the premium health insurance plan at my company. I also pay tens of thousands of dollars more in taxes to grant me the ability to wait for 72 hours in an ER hallway whenever I can't wait weeks for an appointment because urgent care isn't a thing.

My take home would triple if I lived in the USA as a new graduate because of things like favourable treatment of stock grants, less income tax, and the fact my salary would double.

I'm sure the $80,000 extra dollars is enough to pay for the healthcare premiums and daycare. My effective hourly rate would be high enough that going from a 72 hour wait to a few hours would be worth the thousands of dollars in ER bills. If I worked for the government or another lower paying profession it would not be good, but I am a well-compensated software engineer.

There's a reason why 90% of Waterloo immediately moves to the United States after graduation.

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#297

Post by scrubs »

clutter55561 wrote: post #241
lich_king wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My lived experience with tech companies is that principles are easy when they're free - i.e., when you're telling others what to do, or taking principled stances when a competitor is not breathing down your neck. So, with all respect, when someone tells me that the people they worked with were well-intentioned and driven by values, I take it with a grain of salt. Been there, said the same things, and then when the co…

HN is pretty polarised about this - they are either “the good guys” or “doing it for positive marketing”. I’m on the camp “the world is so fucked up, take the good when you can find it”. Beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to taking a stand against dictatorships.

It's gotta be thus.

For if you don't the next step is cynicism maximally operationlized: what you're not doing game/political BS to get ahead? What are you? A chump? An idiot?

That kind of stuff spreads like wild fire making corporate America ... something else to put it politely.

Doing the right thing has cost me big time here and there. I don't care. Simultaneously orgs are not all bad; thats another distortion we can do without.

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#298

Post by ParentiSoundSys »

teiferer wrote: post #271
ParentiSoundSys wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically the entire tech industry, including many of the higher ups currently camping out on the right, used to be firmly in a sort of centrist-with-social-justice-characteristics camp. Then many of those same people enthusiastically stood with Trump at his inauguration. It's completely reasonable that people have their doubts now. It's also completely reasonable to expect that if Anthropic is the real deal and op…

> enthusiastically stood with Trump I think "enthusiastically" looks different. They had to choose between kissing Trumps butt to make good business for 4 years or see their companies at a severe disadvantage. I'm not saying what they did was good, nor do I support it. But from a business angle it's not hard to see why they chose to do that. If you'd ask them privately off the record then I'm sure most of them would…

Mark Zuckerberg was in a big hurry to call Trump a "badass" in the wake of the Butler hoax, and is clearly trying to appeal to the right with his cultivated jiu jitsu Chad image. It doesn't mean a damn thing what these CEOs are willing to say behind closed doors when their public decisions are to remain in lockstep with the agenda and fire anyone who asks questions about whether it's the right one.

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#299

Post by scrubs »

stouset wrote: post #242
lebovic wrote: post #94

I used to work at Anthropic, and I wrote a comment on a thread earlier this week about Anthropic's first response and the RSP update [1][2]. I think many people on HN have a cynical reaction to Anthropic's actions due to of their own lived experiences with tech companies. Sometimes, that holds: my part of the company looked like Meta or Stripe, and it's hard not to regress to the mean as you scale. But not every patt…

> I think the decision was made because the people making this decision at Anthropic are well-intentioned, driven by values, and motivated by trying to make the transition to powerful AI to go well. The entire problem is that this lasts as long as those people are in charge. Every incentive is aligned with eventually replacing them with people who don’t share those values, or eventually Anthropic will be out-competed…

I mean, yah. How else could it be? Xerox, GE, IBM (1990 Gerstner) and a zillions of other rock stars fell hard. And had to be over hauled. Thats why continuous improvement is a thing, and why a platonic take on the world was never a thing.

Re: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

#300

Post by scrubs »

jimmydoe wrote: post #187
19123127 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did they work with Palantir then, which is the integrator in the DoD? It does not take a genius to figure out where this was going. I don't know why a personal testimony to the effect that "these are the good guys" needs to be at the top of every Anthropic thread. With respect to astroturfing and stealth marketing they are clearly the bad guys.

The further away from God, the more need to believe there are good guys.

>further away from god

What is that? Some new bit you're working on?

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