911–920 of 1001 posts
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If anthropic is saying “you can use our models for anything other than domestic spying or autonomous weapons” and the pentagon replies “we will use other models then”, I'd say Anthropic are the patriots here...
I like the endless consideration for spying on allies. or wait...
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This is quite literally the norm for things with known dangerous use cases. Go look at the package on a kitchen knife and it says not to be used as a weapon
These knife and lead analogies don't map well to the reality of AI. Note: just talking about the analogy itself not the point you are making. Edit: hell I get downvoted and look where the knife analogy got us. A load of weird replies miles away from anything related to AI or DoD.
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Dont forget Nvidia technology was condsidered too sensitive to be exported to China....until the Trump administration decided they could export it if they paid a 10% export tax.
Aren't export taxes against the US constitution?
If it’s payments to continuously verify National Security protections, it’s all good.
This could kill Anthropic. The designation says any contractor, supplier, or partner doing business with the US military can’t conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic. Well, AWS has JWCC. Microsoft has Azure Government. Google has DoD contracts. If that language is enforced broadly, then Claude gets kicked off Bedrock, Vertex, and potentially Azure… which is where all the enterprise revenue lives. Claude canno…
If an employee of the government makes a decision that subsequently turns out to be very very unpopular, that unpopularity is sooner or later going to coalesce and land on them, and the more unpopular it turns out to be the less of a shield legal arguments about immunity or pardons will be because so many people are increasingly out of patience with a system they deem to be corrupt. Being able to offload the political, legal, and personal risks of extremely consequential decisions onto The Bad Computer System is the political equivalent of crack cocaine - you might know that the feeling of freedom and power it provides is wholly illusory, you might know that it's likely to ruin your own and many other lives, you might know that it's a disaster for the health of the body politic...but it also offers the possibility that you can have an absolute blast and get away with it.
My anecdotal experience of being around wealthy and powerful people over the years inclines me to think that not only do our social systems select in favor of people who take big risks for big rewards, but that virtually everyone in that class has a) done a lot of getting away with things legally speaking and b) enjoys using illegal drugs. Even if they've given up recreational drug taking or limit it to strictly defined times and places so as not to interfere with their business/personal success, they like thrills and have confidence about their ability to enjoy them without negative consequences. You need some of that risk-taking, high personal autonomy attitude if you aspire to be a mover and shaker as opposed to a leading figure in risk management or regulatory compliance.
Everyone enjoys the feeling of power without responsibility; it's a fundamental underpinning of games and many other kinds of recreation. Add in significant amounts of money and people think differently about risk, as in the topical case of the experienced Supreme Court litigator who turned out to have have a secret life as a high-stakes poker gambler and eventually started betting against the IRS while filing his taxes (https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/25/supreme-court-litig...).
Now, if you're in the political-military sphere and you get your thrills by literally redrawing lines and relationships on the map of the world and deciding what the news on TV is going to be for the next day/week/month/year, and you get offered a tool that promises to give a significant edge over other players in this game but which also gives you a versatile and widely accepted excuse for avoiding consequences for the inevitable losing hands, there are massively compelling psychological incentives for using it. And correspondingly, there's going to be massive emotional disruption (and bad decision-making and behavior) if your supply is threatened. You might start labeling the people who are interfering with your good time as cognito-terrorists and telling all your friends and supporters that your formerly trustworthy supplier did you dirty...
I admire Anthropic for sticking to their principles, even if it affects the bottom line. That’s the kind of company you want to work for.
This whole saga is extremely depressing and dystopic. Anthropic is holding firm on incredibly weak red lines. No mass surveillance for Americans, ok for everyone else, and ok to automatic war machines, just not fully unmanned until they can guarantee a certain quality. This should be a laughably spineless position. But under this administration it is taken as an affront to the president and results in the government…
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To be clear, the sovereign is generally considered to be vested in Congress as representatives of the true sovereign, the people.
That’s not true at all. The people selected an executive.
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Regardless of the original contract, it's entirely appropriate for a vendor to tell the customer how to use any materials. Imagine a _leaded_ pipe supplier not being allowed to tell the department of war they shouldn't use leaded pipes for drinking water! It's the job of the vendor to tell the customer appropriate usage.
> Regardless of the original contract, it's entirely appropriate for a vendor to tell the customer how to use any materials. Utter nonsense. When the US built the Blackbird, it could only use titanium because of the heat involved in traveling at that speed. But they didn't have enough titanium in the US. So the the US created front companies to purchase titanium from the Soviet Union. Do you think the US should have…
Your comparison seems backwards
Its one thing to say "we cannot abide by these terms, so let's part ways", and its another entirely to respond this drastically. The Trump administration will look back on this decision as the most consequential in their efforts to win the 2026 midterms and Republican efforts in 2028. This is a $400B+ American company that has significant partial ownership from Amazon, Google, and other private equity sources; they j…
OTOH it could amplify their base: “Big Tech refusing to work with us on National Security matters!” The base will never hear what/where the red line was drawn, just that Some Company in California (liberal/bad) is being Woke and Political.