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We Will Not Be Divided

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Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#471

Post by nickysielicki »

tyre wrote: post #415
snickerbockers wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It prohibits DoD agencies and contractors from using Anthropic services. It'd be one thing if the DoD simply didn't use Anthropic. But that's what the supply-chain risk is for? I'm legitimately struggling to understand this viewpoint of yours wherein they are entitled to refuse to directly purchase Anthropic products but they're not entitled to refuse to indirectly purchase Anthropic products via subcontractors.

Supply chain risk is not meant for this. The government isn't banning Anthropic because using it harms national security. They are banning it in retribution for Anthropic taking a stand. It's the same as Trump claiming emergency powers to apply tariffs, when the "emergency" he claimed was basically "global trade exists." Yes, the government can choose to purchase or not. No, supply chain risk is absolutely not correc…

> The government isn't banning Anthropic because using it harms national security. They are banning it in retribution for Anthropic taking a stand.

You might be completely right about their real motivations, but try to steelman the other side.

What they might argue in court: Suppose DoD wants to buy an autonomous missile system from some contractor. That contractor writes a generic visual object tracking library, which they use in both military applications for the DoD and in their commercial offerings. Let’s say it’s Boeing in this case.

Anthropic engaged in a process where they take a model that is perfectly capable of writing that object tracking code, and they try to install a sense of restraint on it through RLHF. Suppose Opus 6.7 comes out and it has internalized some of these principles, to the point where it adds a backdoor to the library that prevents it from operating correctly in military applications.

Is this a bit far fetched? Sure. But the point is that Anthropic is intentionally changing their product to make it less effective for military use. And per the statute, it’s entirely reasonable for the DoD to mark them as a supply chain risk if they’re introducing defects intentionally that make it unfit for military use. It’s entirely consistent for them to say, Boeing, you categorically can’t use Claude. That’s exactly the kind of "subversion of design integrity" the statute contemplates. The fact that the subversion was introduced by the vendor intentionally rather than by a foreign adversary covertly doesn’t change the operational impact.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#472

Post by 9dev »

snickerbockers wrote: post #421
tyre wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply chain risk is not meant for this. The government isn't banning Anthropic because using it harms national security. They are banning it in retribution for Anthropic taking a stand. It's the same as Trump claiming emergency powers to apply tariffs, when the "emergency" he claimed was basically "global trade exists." Yes, the government can choose to purchase or not. No, supply chain risk is absolutely not correc…

It doesn't harm national security, but only so long as it's not in the supply-chain. They can't have Lockheed putting Anthropic's products into a fighter jet when Anthropic has already said their products will be able to refuse to carry out certain orders by their own autonomous judgement.

I’m not sure if you deliberately choose to not understand the problem. It’s not just that Lockheed can’t put Anthropic AI in a fighter jet cockpit, it’s that a random software engineer working at Lockheed on their internal accounting system is no longer allowed to use Claude Code, for no reason at all. A supply chain risk is using Huawei network equipment for military communications. This is just spiteful retaliation because a company refuses to throw its values overboard when the government says so.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#473

Post by [deleted] »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #319
danny_codes wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a rough precedent that the government can force private citizens to build weapons for them.

The government has always had monopoly over violence. Not only in the US, but everywhere else there is a government. Arthropic is trying to make that a corporate prerogative, which is why its causing such a stir.

[deleted]

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#474

Post by 9dev »

snickerbockers wrote: post #413
tshaddox wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t sound right. Surely there’s a big difference between Anthropic selling the government direct access to its models, and an unrelated contractor that sells pencils to the government and happens to use Anthropic’s services to help write the code for their website.

Let me put it this way: DoD needs a new drone and they want some gimmicky AI bullshit. They contract the drone from Lockheed. Lockheed is not allowed to source the gimmicky AI bullshit from Anthropic because they have been declared a supply-chain risk on the basis that they have publicly stated their intention to produce products which will refuse certain orders from the military.

But parent is right, both Lockheed and the pencil maker will have to cease working with Anthropic over this.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#475

Post by scarmig »

ipaddr wrote: post #447
ted_dunning wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means that all companies contracting with the government have to certify that they don't use Anthropic products at all . Not just in the products being offered to the government. This is a massive body slam. This means that Nvidia, every server vendor, IBM, AWS, Azure, Microsoft and everybody else has to certify that they don't do business directly or indirectly using Anthropic products.

Microsoft, Azure, AWS, Nvidia and IBM all have deals with other providers for AI. That itself doesn't turn the needle.

Going by what Hegseth said, it bans them from relationships or partnering with Anthropic at all. No renting or selling GPUs to them; no allowing software engineers to use Claude Code; no serving Anthropic models from their clouds. Probably have to give up investments; Amazon alone has invested like $10B in Anthropic.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#476

Post by [deleted] »

timr wrote: post #165
thimabi wrote: post #68

The problem with forcing public policy on companies is that companies are ultimately made from individuals, and surely you can’t force public policy down people’s throats. I’m sure nothing good can come out of strong-arming some of the brightest scientists and engineers the U.S. has. Such a waste of talent trying to make them bend over to the government’s wishes… instead of actually fostering innovation in the very c…

I don't see how public policy is being "forced" on anyone here? It seems like the system is working as intended: government wants to do X; company A says "I won't allow my product to be used for X"; government refuses to do business with company A. One side thinks the government should be allowed to dictate terms to a private supplier, the other side thinks the private supplier should be allowed to dictate terms to t…

[deleted]

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#477

Post by segmondy »

torben-friis wrote: post #151

Among other consequences, if Anthropic ends up being killed it’s going to be just another nail in the coffin of trust in America. Companies who subscribed will find themselves without an important tool because the president went on a rant, and might wonder if it’s safe to depend on other American companies.

Anthropic will just move out of the US. A lot of scientists fled Nazi Germany in the early stages. A lot of them fled to USA and end up being part of the Manhattan project that gave the Abomb that helped US win and end the war. We are going to bleed a lot of AI researches and engineers.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#478

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

snickerbockers wrote: post #421
tyre wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply chain risk is not meant for this. The government isn't banning Anthropic because using it harms national security. They are banning it in retribution for Anthropic taking a stand. It's the same as Trump claiming emergency powers to apply tariffs, when the "emergency" he claimed was basically "global trade exists." Yes, the government can choose to purchase or not. No, supply chain risk is absolutely not correc…

It doesn't harm national security, but only so long as it's not in the supply-chain. They can't have Lockheed putting Anthropic's products into a fighter jet when Anthropic has already said their products will be able to refuse to carry out certain orders by their own autonomous judgement.

That's not what anthropic said. They said their products won't fire autonomously, not that they will refuse when given order from a human.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#479

Post by Tepix »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #319
danny_codes wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a rough precedent that the government can force private citizens to build weapons for them.

The government has always had monopoly over violence. Not only in the US, but everywhere else there is a government. Arthropic is trying to make that a corporate prerogative, which is why its causing such a stir.

Conscientious objectors are recognized under US law

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#480

Post by scarmig »

snickerbockers wrote: post #420
dyslexit wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making it sound like this is commonly practiced and a standard procedure for the DoD, yet according to Anthropic, >Designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk would be an unprecedented action—one historically reserved for US adversaries, never before publicly applied to an American company. Some very brief googling also confirmed this for me too. >Everyone is fixated on the name of the rule (and to be fair: t…

>an unprecedented action it's also unprecedented for a contractor to suddenly announce their products will, from now on, be able to refuse to function based on the product's evaluation of what it perceives to be an ethical dilemma. Just because silicon valley gets away with bullying the consumer market with mandatory automatic updates and constantly-morphing EULAs doesn't mean they're entitled to take that attitude w…

> it's also unprecedented for a contractor to suddenly announce their products will, from now on, be able to refuse to function based on the product's evaluation of what it perceives to be an ethical dilemma

That is a deeply deceptive description of what happened. Anthropic was clear from the beginning of the contract the limitations of Claude; the military reneged; and beyond cancelling the contract with Anthropic (fair enough), they are retaliating in an attempt to destroy its businesses, by threatening any other company that does business with Anthropic.

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