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Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

1170 points by surprisetalk 8mo ago

throw310822 8mo ago
From the statement: "Secretary Hegseth has implied this designation would restrict anyone who does business with the military from doing business with Anthropic. The Secretary does not have the statutory authority to back up this statement. Legally, a supply chain risk designation under 10 USC 3252 can only extend to the use of Claude as part of Department of War contracts—it cannot affect how contractors use Claude to serve other customers. In practice, this means: If you are an individual customer or hold a commercial contract with Anthropic, your access to Claude—through our API, claude.ai, or any of our products—is completely unaffected. If you are a Department of War contractor, this designation—if formally adopted—would only affect your use of Claude on Department of War contract work. Your use for any other purpose is unaffected."
- andkenneth 8mo ago
  I'm wondering how this plays out in practice. Does the administration decide to strongarm contractors into cutting all ties? Will that extend to someone like google who provides compute to anthropic? Will the administration just plain ignore any court ruling? (as they've shown they're ready to do recently with the tarrifs situation) If the legal system works as intended, the blast radius isn't too big here and something Anthropic will accept even if it hurts them. Maybe they even win and get the supply chain risk designation lifted. But I have zero faith that the legal system will make a difference here. It all comes down to how far the administration wants to go in imposing it's will. Bleak.
  - solenoid0937 8mo ago
    It does NOT extend to compute. GCP and AWS cannot use Claude to build anything part of a DoD contract, but they do not need to deny Anthropic access to compute itself.
    - tshaddox 8mo ago
      > conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic Surely that would cover both buying things from and selling things to Anthropic.
      - solenoid0937 8mo ago
        Yes but that part is an overreach (they don't actually have the authority to do this, regardless of what they say.)
- infamouscow 8mo ago
  They can also classify it as restricted data -- like nuclear weapons technology. Sure, there will be a court battle, but I don't think these companies want to take that chance. They'll capitulate after the lawyers realize that option is on the table.
  - strix_varius 8mo ago
    > They'll capitulate after the lawyers realize that option is on the table. Hopefully their lawyers read HN comments so they can negotiate with your deeper understanding of the legal landscape.
  - dragonwriter 8mo ago
    > They can also classify it as restricted data -- like nuclear weapons technology. Nuclear weapons technology is restricted under very specific legislative authority, where is the corresponding authority that could be selectively applied to a particular vendors AI models or services?
    - readitalready 8mo ago
      EDA software, software to design computer chips in general, has been classified as ITAR now under this administration. Trump can do that to AI.
    - thinkthatover 8mo ago
      agreed but the current administration is pretty adept at using the slimmest margin for justification and benefiting from the fact that the legal process playing out over years is extremely detrimental to everyone but the government
verdverm 8mo ago
Title is off: "Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth" This is another statement, to their customers about Hegseth's social post, but perhaps resulting in further escalation because you know the other side doesn't like having their weaknesses pointed out.
- tomhow 8mo ago
  Fixed, thanks!
hank2000 8mo ago
Stay strong Anthropic. We just like you more for this.
- deleted 8mo ago
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- deleted 8mo ago
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- abtinf 8mo ago
  I don't know if I like Anthropic more, but I certainly like their competitors much less now. The new thing that I know about leading AI companies that aren't Anthropic (i.e. OpenAI, Google, Grok, etc) is that they knowingly support using their tools for domestic mass surveillance and in fully autonomous weapon systems.
  - SilverElfin 8mo ago
    Exactly - the implication is that every other company is absolutely open to surveilling you and killing you. They’re complicit. They participate in whatever the regime calls for.
  - phpnode 8mo ago
    Is that actually the case? or are they just not supplying LLMs to DoW and Anthropic is?
    - nickthegreek 8mo ago
      The other companies have signed the waiver, however they aren’t being used in classified systems currently. So that type of use is already extremely limited for them. Now once they enter into those contracts to be used in those systems without these protections, I will cancel my subs to them and switch to Anthropic. xAi entered into that contract last week. Altman is now publicly siding with anthropic, so he better stand on that position with openai as they are currently negotiating for use in those system.
Rapzid 8mo ago
Hegseth is the, ultra unqualified, Secretary of Defense. Defense. JFC even when "pushing back" everyone is capitulating.
- aryonoco 8mo ago
  I think that choice of words to call them the Department of War and Secretary of War multiple times in that statement was very much intentional. And a point well made.
  - Rapzid 8mo ago
    Interesting angle..
chirau 8mo ago
Doesn't NSA have a backdoor to all these companies by default? I could have sworn I read somewhere years ago that the government demands a backdoor to all US companies if they can't get in on their own.
- nerdsniper 8mo ago
  3 parts to this: 1) The US gov generally does have close partnerships with most large-scale, mature tech companies. Sometimes this is just a division dedicated to handling their requests, often it’s a special portal or API they can use to “lawfully” grab information from for their investigations. Often times these function somewhat like backdoors. Anthropic is large, but not mature. Additional changes must still take place for “backdoor” style partnerships to be effected. 2) The NSA can pretty much use any computer system they set their eyes on - famously including computers that were never connected to the internet secured in the middle of a mountain (Stuxnet). If they wanted to secretly utilize the Claude API without Claude finding out, that is within their capabilities. Google had to encrypt all their internal datacenter traffic to try to prevent the NSA from logging all their server-to-server traffic, after mistakenly thinking their internal networks were secure enough not to need that. 3) This isn’t about being “able” to do whatever the administration wants. This is the administration demonstrating the consequences of perceived insubordination to make other companies think twice about ever trying to limit use of corporate technology.
  - chirau 8mo ago
    Interesting. On point 3, are you saying this will dissuade other companies from taking Anthropic's stance? Somehow I actually thought this would set precedent for how to actually stand up to gov. Quite interesting how we see the same situation and come up with totally different conclusions.
    - toraway 8mo ago
      They're describing the intent of the administration not predicting the future impact on other companies. Essentially making the point that your original question about NSA being able to get whatever they want clandestinely isn't actually relevant because Hegseth/Trump don't actually care this much about Claude doing X or Y -- they were trying to make an example of punishing Anthropic with the expectation they would immediately crumble like the rest of Big Tech, as a warning for anyone else to stay in line and keeps their mouth shut.
parl_match 8mo ago
Anthropic's stance here is admirable. If nothing else, their acknowledgement of not being able to predict how these powerful technologies can be abused is a bold and intelligent position to take.
- stavros 8mo ago
  I'd admire them if they took a principled or moral stance on AI. As it stands, they're saying "we don't want fully autonomous weapons because they might kill too many Americans by accident while trying to kill non-Americans" and "we don't want AI to surveil Americans, but anyone else, sure".
- dmix 8mo ago
  It’s not just admirable it’s the obvious position to take and any alternative is head scratching. It’s clear that this is mostly a glorified loyalty test over a practical ask by the administration. Strangely reminiscent of Soviet or Chinese policies where being agreeable to authority was more important than providing value to the state.
  - kyle-rb 8mo ago
    If it's a loyalty test then you'd think the DoD would be willing to let them "fail" and simply drop the contract, but instead they're threatening to label Anthropic a supply chain risk. If we're going by Occam's razor: it's Friday so Pete probably started drinking ~10:30-11am.
    - dmix 8mo ago
      This administration has repeatedly shown it will try to bully or take an outrageous negotiating position just to gain featly. Whether they get anything or whether the dispute is actually what the label says should always be treated with skepticism, especially these days with social media information wars. That’s the benefit of realpolitik when you’re a superpower, you often don’t actually need anything, you can just make an example of people to keep the flock in check.
soared 8mo ago
Is this the first company to actually face to face stand up to the current administration?
- ch4s3 8mo ago
  No, a few law firms targeted by EOs fought them in court last year and won.
  - inerte 8mo ago
    Also the case against tariffs, a quick (maybe AI hallucinated) search shows `Victor Owen Schwartz` was part of the challenge. Democracy isn't dead folks, but it takes more work than usual.
    - ch4s3 8mo ago
      It always takes a ton of work to roll back state over reach. The Bound By Oath podcast by the Institute for Justice has a whole season about how hard it is to bring civil rights claims against the government or government officials.
    - crossroadsguy 8mo ago
      And gets harder in a country where even the judges are political appointees and apparently that’s by design. (I resisted adding a smiley here because this is rather sad)
      - ch4s3 8mo ago
        The courts are actually striking down a lot of government overreach recently. The tariffs were just overturned, and the administration was blocked from using the national guard for law enforcement. In fact this administration has lost more Supreme Court cases than any other administration at only 1 year in.
    - swat535 8mo ago
      The problem is that it's a never ending game of attrition, and the government can always outspend you. For example, in case of tariffs, they found another loophole and went on their way. It's nice to have a little guy take a stand, but without major collective pressure, nothing will change.
Waterluvian 8mo ago
> Allowing current models to be used in this way would endanger America’s warfighters and civilians. That’s okay! The use of autonomous weapons is only risky for the civilians of the country you’re destabilizing this week!
- JshWright 8mo ago
  This letter is a public part of the negotiation process. It shouldn't be surprising that they are primarily using arguments that are, at least on the face, "patriotic".
  - Waterluvian 8mo ago
    It’s not surprising, I agree. Criticism is part of the price for choosing that tact.
jleyank 8mo ago
Just don’t help big brother see more. If you job leads to such results, think hard whether that’s what you should be doing. Perhaps it’s time or even past time to think of ways of screwing up their training sets.
collinmcnulty 8mo ago
This an extremely polite “fuck you, make me”. It’s good to see that they have principles, and I suspect strongly that Anthropic will come out on top here if they stand firm.
- fzeroracer 8mo ago
  If the Trump admin so chooses, they could absolutely obliterate Anthropic in an instant. They don't really care about tricky things like 'legality' or 'the court of law', they could just force everyone to stop interacting with them, raid their offices and steal all their shit. Perhaps they should've found their spine a year earlier; right now their only hope is that the admin isn't stupid enough to crash the propped-up economy over petty bullshit. But knowing how they behave, well.
  - verdverm 8mo ago
    The Epstein administration has a very poor success record in court, I would expect Anthropic to win on vindictive prosecution or similar.
    - cmxch 8mo ago
      And the government will win when they strip clearances and ignore said courts. Anthropic will then find out that you don’t oppose a hyperpower - the United States.
      - verdverm 8mo ago
        hyperpower? please The entire world is waking to the reality of the hypocrisy and unreliably. Look how fast Trump TACO'd when China stopped the flow of rare earths.
  - MathMonkeyMan 8mo ago
    > They don't really care about tricky things like 'legality' or 'the court of law', they could just force everyone to stop interacting with them, raid their offices and steal all their shit. This is criticism that I would use to describe countries like China and Russia, and many other poorer ones. Were the Trump administration to do this, it would be unequivocal evidence that we are dealing with an unlawful insurgent government. I doubt it will happen, but I'm often wrong.
rorylawless 8mo ago
Could this escalate to the point that Anthropic exits the US and sets up shop elsewhere? Or would the company cease to exist before it got to that point?
- ocdtrekkie 8mo ago
  Would the US government attempt to apply export controls on the technology and prohibit this? I'm sure Lockheed Martin couldn't decide to move their proprietary technology to another country. Hegseth's statement already leans towards accusations of treason and duplicity, I would say people trying to export the company would face significant risk of arrest or worse.
- karmasimida 8mo ago
  It gets so much money, compute and US user data. It won’t be allowed to operate as is as a foreign entity Best scenario it will get TikTok-ed, otherwise it will become the real national security risk Had the exit happen, well, as US has a monopoly of compute on this planet for next 2-3 years at least, the company, even though they would take the researchers with them, will certainly cease to exist as it exists now.
- abtinf 8mo ago
  Every other country is significantly less free than the US. America is freedom's last stand.
  - whyenot 8mo ago
    Just off the top of my head, Canada, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden would all seem to be pretty good counterexamples to your assertion.
  - yoyohello13 8mo ago
    Free to do anything other than say no to Donald Trump.
  - RalfWausE 8mo ago
    [dead]
SilverElfin 8mo ago
This is what real leadership looks like. Not the silence and complicity that you see from big tech, who regularly bend the knee and bestow bribes and gifts onto the Trump administration.
piskov 8mo ago
[flagged]
- meowface 8mo ago
  This applies to basically every military and company in every country in all of human history. Nearly every single other country tries to spy on every single other country, including on the US. That's just how these things go.
- oceanplexian 8mo ago
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nightshift1 8mo ago
Previous discussion : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186677
- verdverm 8mo ago
  This is the response to said twit
rglover 8mo ago
Was bracing for another rug pull around all this, but kudos to Dario and co for their continued vigilance. Refreshing to see.
deleted 8mo ago
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theturtle 8mo ago
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silisili 8mo ago
Not to intentionally sidetrack the conversation, but when did we start calling service members 'warfighters?' I've been seeing it a lot lately, but don't remember ever really seeing it before. Do members of the military prefer this title?
- SanjayMehta 8mo ago
  Around the time Hegseth was appointed secretary of war. It's a trump thing. Edit: so it's been around for longer, but the Trump regime seems to love it bigly so I'm sticking with my observation. It's a trump regime thing.
  - sixo 8mo ago
    this is false, it's been around for a while
    - bigtex88 8mo ago
      No it's 100% these idiots pushing their fascist propaganda just like they tried to "rename" the Department of Defense to the Department of War. Most members of the military never even see actual fighting.
      - cowsandmilk 8mo ago
        It is not a Trumpism. As an example, it has been on Wiktionary since 2008, well before Trump. https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=warfighter&action=history https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=warfighter&actio...
        mikeyouse 8mo ago
        It’s been a term in rare-to-moderate use since the 1990s — Trump/Hegseth ramped it up to 11 and it’s every 3rd word out of Hegseth’s mouth because he thinks it sounds tough.
      - 8mo ago
ok_dad 8mo ago
Don't worry, OpenAI will kneel for the king: > Sam Altman told OpenAI employees at an all-hands meeting on Friday afternoon that a potential agreement is emerging with the U.S. Department of War to use the startup’s AI models and tools, according to a source present at the meeting and a summary of the meeting seen by Fortune. The contract has not yet been signed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47188698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47188698 Fuck this authoritarian bullshit.
- solenoid0937 8mo ago
  Hopefully this causes an exodus of top talent from OpenAI. Anthropic needs all the help it can get.
- prawn 8mo ago
  Can just see it now. You're absolutely right to point that out -- thank you for catching it. I made a mistake in my previous response and that last act appears to have caused civilian casualties. Let me take a closer look and clarify the correct details for you. (Will leave you to imagine the bullseye emoji, etc.)
- Maxious 8mo ago
  The OpenAI contract was signed once Anthropic failed to yield before the deadline https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175 https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175
seizethecheese 8mo ago
This part stood out to me: “To the best of our knowledge, these exceptions have not affected a single government mission to date.” I had assumed these exceptions (on domestic surveillance and autonomous drones) were more than presuppositions.
deleted 8mo ago
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solenoid0937 8mo ago
The people that need to see this are the VPs and execs at Apple, Meta, Google, OAI so they can perhaps reflect on what it looks like to be a good & principled person as opposed to just a successful person.
- deleted 8mo ago
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- maxgashkov 8mo ago
  None of them are 'good'. Execs at Anthropic just perceive the long-term damage from a potential Snowden-level leak showing how their model directed a drone strike against a bunch of civilians higher than short-term loss of revenue from the DoD contracts.
  - machomaster 8mo ago
    I understand why you are cynical, but you should read more about the people who founded Anthropic, and specifically why they left OpenAI.
- freakynit 8mo ago
  DoD/DoW can't strong-arm these companies into unreasonable demands if they present a united front... and that's exactly why collective action (or even unionization) matters. If the government really wants to, it could try building its "Skynet" on open-source Chinese models.. which would be deeply ironic.
  - remarkEon 8mo ago
    So your position is that the United States doesn't get to have it's own Skynet, because Skynet is bad, and that if it really wants to it should fork the Chinese Skynet so that it can have a Skynet if it wants it so much. Do you see the problem here. Genuinely don't think we would've won WWII if these people were running things back then.
    - 8mo ago
lovehashbrowns 8mo ago
Happy to be a paying Anthropic customer right now.
engineer_22 8mo ago
> If you are a Department of War contractor, this designation—if formally adopted—would only affect your use of Claude on Department of War contract work. Your use for any other purpose is unaffected. /In theory./ In practice, if your biggest customer tells you to drop Anthropic, you listen to them.
deleted 8mo ago
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ddoottddoott 8mo ago
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wewewedxfgdf 8mo ago
Remember "small government"?
- MathMonkeyMan 8mo ago
  Smaller government has always been code for bigger me, at least in recent American politics. Now me is government, so bigger government.
steve_adams_86 8mo ago
Anthropic is welcome to set up shop here in Canada! I hear Victoria BC is great. Absolutely brimming, overflowing with technology talent
- thirtygeo 8mo ago
  Actually why is nobody in Cali just trying to join Canada - would be better for everyone in terms of more similar culture and values. Weird that it isn't discussed more
  - pesus 8mo ago
    If I had to guess as a lifelong California resident, I'd say the salary discrepancy is probably the biggest factor. I'd also guess the weather and lack of available jobs would be the next biggest factors, not necessarily in that order.
    - steve_adams_86 8mo ago
      No, imagine the salary potential, not the discrepancy. Ape stronger together. We'd be a new world super power
      - deleted 8mo ago
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    - mock-possum 8mo ago
      Yep, tech peeps loving in Cana want to work in Cali, not so much the other way around, in my experience, not so much the other way around.
  - post-it 8mo ago
    Canada isn't interested in being part of a country that's 50% American either.
  - crossroadsguy 8mo ago
    A friend (he is from mostly warm and sunlit South India) who moved to Canada from California says he just can’t take that weather anymore. So maybe weather is a huge factor? You deal with that not everyday in your life but every hour..second and year round.
egonschiele 8mo ago
Heck yeah, so happy to see Anthropic fighting. This is what real leadership looks like. I'd love to see the same from Google and OpenAI.
ndgold 8mo ago
Claude’s constitution is proving too resilient for unsanctioned uses, and that is a great sign for Anthropic’s blueprint for socially beneficent agents.
- koshergweilo 8mo ago
  It's kind of sad how an AI Startup defers more to its constitution than the actual government
  - Smaug123 8mo ago
    The word "Constitution" refers to the document listing the principles on which Claude is trained. It's not clear to me that Anthropic can defer to it - it is phrased throughout as a description of how Claude behaves, not as a description of how Anthropic or any other entity behaves. Can you be more precise about what you mean?
50208 8mo ago
This is what fighting early stage facism looks like.
- fooster 8mo ago
  early stage? shooting a woman in the face in her car for the crime of driving off by the brownshirts is not early stage my dude.
  - xXSLAYERXx 8mo ago
    How long can we push this narrative? It was a terrible situation and I can't imagine the minutes of complete fear she must have felt. I pray for her family. But to then draw a conclusion to say this is evidence that we are in some sort of fascist decline, because of this incident, takes away from the innocent lose of life. And greatly exaggerates the skill and aptitude of the killer. People spew the fascist narrative every chance they get. I'm sure most of us who like strawberries will be picking strawberries come June.
    - fooster 8mo ago
      Neither Renee Good or Alex Pretti or any of the other innocents that the brownshirts killed will pick strawberries ever again.
      - xXSLAYERXx 8mo ago
        Yes I understand. And given the heaviness of the situation I could have chosen a better way to phrase that I completely disagree with it being evidence that we're on the road to fascism.
        carefulfungi 8mo ago
        What would have to occur, hypothetically, for you to conclude that the US is on the road to fascism?
netinstructions 8mo ago
This is kind of crazy. Instead of just cancelling a mutually-agreed upon contract where Anthropic refused to bow to sudden new demands, the Dept of Defense went straight to the nuclear option: threatening to label an American tech company as a "supply chain risk" which is a heavy-handed tactic usually reserved for foreign adversaries (think Huawei or DJI). It's also incoherent that the DoD/DoW was threatening to invoke the Defense Production Act OR classifying them as "supply chain risk". They're either too uniquely critical to national defense OR they're such a severe liability that they have to be blacklisted for anyone in the DoD apparatus (including the many subcontracts) to use. How are other tech companies supposed to work with the US government and draw up mutual contracts when those terms are suddenly questioned months later and can be used in such devastating ways against them? Setting the morals/principals aside, how does this make for rational business decision to work with a counterparty that behaves this way.
- solenoid0937 8mo ago
  Are they just threatening to label? It seems to me like they have already labeled.
  - SpicyLemonZest 8mo ago
    That's part of the recurrent confusion with this administration. In previous administrations, including Trump 1, people didn't need to spend a ton of time thinking about what it means to make a legally effective proclamation, because there was a baseline of competence. When a government official announced "We're doing X", they would do so as a summary of a large amount of legal process with the intent and effect of causing X to be true. If you went to challenge it in court of course, you'd have to identify some specific action as the label, but everyone would understand that this is a formalism. Here, Hegseth has simply made a social media post. He did not publish any official investigation which led to the report. He did not explain what legal power would permit him to impose all the restrictions the post claims to impose. There is not, five hours later, any order on an official government website about it. So we have a real question. If a Cabinet secretary posts "I am directing the Department of War to designate...", does that in and of itself perform the designation, or is it simply an informal notice that the Department of Fascist Neologisms will perform the designation soon?
tehjoker 8mo ago
You know what? I have not seen an American company take a stand like this… uh ever. I don’t think there should be any engagement with the military what so ever but I will offer a kudos to Anthropic. I don’t really expect this to last but if it does I will happily continue to offer this kudos on an indefinite basis.
mythz 8mo ago
Had Cancelled my Claude sub after they banned OAuth in external tools, but just renewed it today after seeing their principled stance on AI ethics - they matter more when they hurt profits, happy to support them as a Customer whilst they keep them.
lebovic 8mo ago
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 pattern repeats, and the Anthropic of today is still driven by people who will risk losing a seat at the table to make principled decisions. I do not think this is a calculated ploy that's driven by making money. 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. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47174423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47174423 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47149908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47149908
- Rapzid 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - educasean 8mo ago
    All corporations are to an extent. It’s a question of magnitude, not absolutes. You, too, are driven by money. Yet I’m certain you maintain a set of principles and values. Let’s keep the discussion productive yeah?
    - Rapzid 8mo ago
      Sure, where is your productive output? Cause that's drivel. Anthropic kept referring to Hegseth as "Secretary of War" and the DoD as "Department of War". Which is horseshit. This whole thing is Anthropic flailing.
      - solenoid0937 8mo ago
        Come on. That is because this is a negotiation between Anthropic and the DoD and they understandably don't want to burn bridges. Do you just expect Anthropic to totally blow up all bridges to the government? What do you actually want them to do? Reading your comment history I'm not sure they could do anything to satisfy you.
Jordan-117 8mo ago
Why is DoD contracting with Anthropic exclusively rather than OpenAI or Google? Their models are all roughly as powerful and they seem both more capable and more willing to cozy up with the military (and this administration) than a relatively scrappy startup focused on model sentience and well-being. Hell, even Grok would be a better fit ideologically and temperamentally.
mikeyouse 8mo ago
Remember when A16Z and a bunch of other muppets insisted they had to back Trump because Biden was too hostile to private companies, especially AI ones? Incredible.
water9 8mo ago
I fundamentally do not like the idea of one adult determining what knowledge another adult is entitled to. It’s the library of Alexandria all over again.
JohnnyLarue 8mo ago
[dead]
joeross 8mo ago
Hegseth is so pathetic.
bawolff 8mo ago
I'm of the opinion that anthropic's "moral" stances are bullshit, not particularly coherent when you dig deep and more about branding. If so, this is grade A marketing. They want to present themselves as moral. What better endorsement than by being rejected by the US military under Trump? You get the people who hate trump and the people who hate the military in one swoop. At the same time its kind of a non story. Anrhropic says it doesn't want its products used in certain ways, US military says fine, you can't be part of the project where we are going to make the AI do those things. Isn't that a win for both sides ? What's the problem? It would be like someone part of a boycott movement being surprised the company they are boycotting doesn't want to hire them.
- stbenjam 8mo ago
  Everyone close to Anthropic leadership has claimed they’re the real deal and it’s not a stunt. I don’t think it’s bull. They are trying to find a reasonable middle ground and settled on some red lines they won’t cross.
  - slopinthebag 8mo ago
    You believe the "reasonable middle ground" is using their models to kill people and spy on citizens?
- zmmmmm 8mo ago
  that doesn't even remotely represent what is happening here.
- solenoid0937 8mo ago
  > What's the problem? Think. The problem is that being branded a "supply chain risk" prohibits vast chunks of the US corporate landscape from doing business with Anthropic. The problem is that the government is attempting to destroy a company rather than simply terminate their contract.
  - bawolff 8mo ago
    Isn't it a literal supply chain risk, though? They want their products to not be used for some purposes. That's fine, that is their right. But that doesn't just stop at direct purchases. If the US buys from a defense contractor who bought from abthropic, that really isn't that different from buying direct. The moral hazard is still there and the risk that anthropic will try to prevent their product from being used in that fashion is still there. I think anthropic wants their cake and to eat it too. You can't take a principled stand against something and then be shocked the thing you are taking a principled stand against might think you are a risk.
byang364 8mo ago
I don't know what's funnier, that Anthropic convinced the Pentagon LLMs are smart enough to guide missiles, then have it backfire on them with the threat of nationalization if they didn't help build ralph ICBMs, or that Pete thinks Opus is Skynet and that only Anthropic has the power of train it.
zmmmmm 8mo ago
Congrats Anthropic, you deserve to be applauded for this. Seeing a company being willing to stand up to authoritarianism in this time is a rarity. Stay strong.
jackyli02 8mo ago
People can still brush this off by saying Anthropic is doing this to create more buzz for its next round. But they are taking unpopular stances and could be burning bridges. Simply take a look at PLTR and it's obviously more lucrative to lean the other way.
ParentiSoundSys 8mo ago
Many conservative commentators and Palmer Luckey have been all over Twitter saying, "it's not Anthropic's job to set policy," which reminds me of the classic tune from Tom Lehrer: "Zee rockets go up! Who cares vhere zey come down? Zat's not my department" says Wernher von Braun.
markvdb 8mo ago
Hours ago, OpenAI raised $110B.
- deleted 8mo ago
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stego-tech 8mo ago
I am genuinely shocked that a tech company actually stood on principle. My doubts about AI, Anthropic, and Mr. Amodei remain, but man, I got the warm and fuzzies seeing them stick to their principles on this - even if one clause (autonomous weapons) is less principled and more, “it’s not ready yet”.
mkl 8mo ago
> we believe that mass domestic surveillance of Americans constitutes a violation of fundamental rights Mass surveillance of people constitutes a violation of fundamental rights. The red line is in the wrong place.
- krior 8mo ago
  Americans cannot even be bothered to care about americans, what makes you think they can be bothered to care about foreigners?
- titanomachy 8mo ago
  Yeah, but you can’t contract your software to the department of defense and then demand that they not use it to surveil foreigners. If that’s the line you want to draw, you’d have to avoid working with them in the first place.
jryio 8mo ago
This an appropriate rewind to unreasonable behavior. I applaud Anthropic's candor in the public sphere. Unfortunately the country party is unworthy of such applause.
tushar-r 8mo ago
This makes it seem like they really like the Anthropic product and are using it quite a bit more than the others? Or is it just me making random connections?
jkells 8mo ago
But of course, wholesale surveillance on the rest of the world is fine. I guess our democracies don't count and we don't have any rights.
sneilan1 8mo ago
I'm a lot happier now being an anthropic customer.
erelong 8mo ago
I think Anthropic sounds well-intentioned but is blundering this incident in a big way and they really needed to work better towards a deal instead of isolating themselves with a "principled stance" that sets up a competitor to swoop in and take the contracts they had
- ajam1507 8mo ago
  And which one of their competitors do you imagine would swoop in and take their contracts while admitting to the rest of their customers that they're okay with their models being used for autonomous weapons and surveillance?
wjessup 8mo ago
Any commentary about how adversaries won't have regulations?
Intermernet 8mo ago
What's stopping the government from using the usual nasty tricks the world has known about for decades? DPA? All Writs Act? Force them to comply and then prevent them talking about it with NSLs? I appreciate that Anthropic may be the least bad of a bunch of really bad actors here, but this has played out before in the US, and the burden of trust is, and should be, really high. I believe that Anthropic don't want to remove the "safety barriers" on their tech being used for domestic surveillance and military operations, but that implies they're ok with those use-cases so long as the "safety barriers" are still up. Not really the best look, IMHO. So what happens when we all get rosy eyed about Anthropic (the only slightly evil company) winning a battle against the purely evil government, and then the gov use the various instruments at their disposal to just force anthropic to do what they want, and then force them to never disclose it? Did the world learn nothing from Snowden?
Justitia 8mo ago
I'm not sure if OpenAI knows that scooping this might hurt their brand by a lot.
nseggs 8mo ago
There is literally no world where I take any organizations which has been strong armed by fucking Pete Hegseth seriously lmao. Thank you Anthropic both for building the best models for general engineering and for having a fucking backbone.
dbg31415 8mo ago
ChatGPT wasted no time bending over backwards to appease Trump. "We'd sure love to turn our AI into a mass surveillance tool! Please, aim it at the Americans Population! And Kill Bots, we can't wait!"
seydor 8mo ago
This has been an exceptional publicity campaign for anthropic, among others
vcryan 8mo ago
Amazing the Pete Hegseth is even a person that anyone would ever need to take seriously.
monomyth 8mo ago
based on the replies so far hacker news are ideologically captured
astrolx 8mo ago
Generally, I am supporting of that move. One thing leaves me non-plussed as a non-USA citizen, "the mass domestic surveillance of Americans" exception. That means that Claude can still be used for mass surveillance of everybody else on the planet right?
- tecoholic 8mo ago
  Yup. That’s pretty much how they make money. (Edit - in the context of contracting services to US government)
lazzlazzlazz 8mo ago
Turns out that Dario was lying about not having heard from the Department of War, as reported by Undersecretary Emil Michael: https://x.com/USWREMichael/status/2027568070034608173 https://x.com/USWREMichael/status/2027568070034608173
tlogan 8mo ago
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.
eaglelamp 8mo ago
Anthropic knew they were going to lose this contract to OpenAI, and this is an attempt to salvage publicity from the loss. This administration is comfortable with blatantly picking winners and OpenAI is better connected with the admin than Anthropic.
tw04 8mo ago
I just want to point out how 1984 fascist dictatorship it still feels to call it “the department of war”. That’s not normal. None of this is normal.
- titanomachy 8mo ago
  In 1984, they called it the “ministry of peace”. If anything “defense” is more euphemistic than “war”.
47282847 8mo ago
Looking through the comments here, I am repeatedly surprised how quickly we seem to have lost a shared understanding of fundamentals ever since Trump came into power. I still need inner adjusting to fully realize that it must have always been a misunderstanding? 1. I don’t understand what is controversial about any supplier making their own rules for trade. I don’t have to agree with their beliefs, but I find it the basis of a functioning society to allow others to hold beliefs that I do not share, and to develop products as they want, as long as they don’t pose any dangers. If I don’t like the product, I am free to shop elsewhere or develop my own. 2. I thought that there is was a shared understanding of the line between voluntary business deals, and coercion and punishment. I thought we agreed that the law should protect people and businesses in ways so that nobody can exert power over another. Not on the hows, but on the why. And not based on ethical considerations (beliefs) but purely on logical grounds that we know how violence begets violence, use of it will only escalate conflict, and we will ultimately lose. 3. I thought we all agreed that government agencies were bound by the law and its policies. If you were to use the designation of Supply Chain Risk, you would at least have to sufficiently provide logical arguments. Here, they even openly disclose how they plan to use the mechanism purely as punishment, against the spirit of the law, not because a product carries any risk and should be limited, but because it is too limited. Is this some form of collective narcissistic psychosis? The desire to burn it all down in suicide?
amai 8mo ago
Dear Anthropic, Europe is a nice place, too. In case you need GPUs we have AI factories for you : https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/ai-factories https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/ai-factori... We also don't engage in mass surveillance or develop autonomous weapons.
- szmarczak 8mo ago
  ASML is European too! Then they could make a deal with them. wink wink
- pennaMan 8mo ago
  > europe > we don't engage in mass surveillance you're incredibly naive
- gorbachev 8mo ago
  > We also don't engage in mass surveillance What?
keeeba 8mo ago
The gap between Anthropic and the other guys keeps growing
ctmnt 8mo ago
One interesting change between the last statement and this one: In the last statement Dario said that this designation had “never before been applied to an American company”. In the latest one the phrase is “never before publicly applied to an American company”.
- bjackman 8mo ago
  How do you imagine a secret designation would work..?
  - ctmnt 8mo ago
    I’m not sure what you’re referring to. It’s not (typically, as far as we know) a secret designation. We know of other companies designated as supply chain risks: Huawei, ZTE, and Kapersky are the first ones that come to mind.
Phelinofist 8mo ago
> Protect _Americans_ from mass surveillance > Protect _American_ forces What the actual fuck. How can anyone side with Anthropic. They are not the good guys by any means whatsoever. Mass surveillance against anyone is wrong and having killbots "when AI is ready" is totally fucked and dystopian. Imagine killbots rampaging while the good American people are at home living a nice peaceful life. Fuck any of that, fuck Anthropic, fuck ClosedAI, fuck Google, fuck Trump, fuck the DoD and fuck every American who is patriotic to the monster their country became. Fuck every country that also tries to do stuff like this. Fuck all companies taking part in such insanity.
throwaway20261 8mo ago
I had subscriptions to both Anthropic and Openai. Cancelled my openai subscriptions. Companies without a modicum of ethics deserve to go extinct.
cdwhite 8mo ago
What happens if somebody (maybe anthropic!) uses Claude Code Security to find & fix a vulnerability in some piece of open-source software---openssh, linux kernel, that sort of thing? Can the DoW use the resulting fix?
irenetusuq 8mo ago
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layer8 8mo ago
Related interview with Amodei: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195379
johnnyApplePRNG 8mo ago
>We have tried in good faith to reach an agreement with the Department of War LMFAO
amunozo 8mo ago
Again, mass domestic surveillance of Americans is bad, otherwise it is okay. Disgusting.
deleted 8mo ago
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billg_ms 8mo ago
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olivesam 8mo ago
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1170 points by surprisetalk 8mo ago

From the statement: "Secretary Hegseth has implied this designation would restrict anyone who does business with the military from doing business with Anthropic. The Secretary does not have the statutory authority to back up this statement. Legally, a supply chain risk designation under 10 USC 3252 can only extend to the use of Claude as part of Department of War contracts—it cannot affect how contractors use Claude to serve other customers. In practice, this means: If you are an individual customer or hold a commercial contract with Anthropic, your access to Claude—through our API, claude.ai, or any of our products—is completely unaffected. If you are a Department of War contractor, this designation—if formally adopted—would only affect your use of Claude on Department of War contract work. Your use for any other purpose is unaffected."

andkenneth 8mo ago
I'm wondering how this plays out in practice. Does the administration decide to strongarm contractors into cutting all ties? Will that extend to someone like google who provides compute to anthropic? Will the administration just plain ignore any court ruling? (as they've shown they're ready to do recently with the tarrifs situation) If the legal system works as intended, the blast radius isn't too big here and something Anthropic will accept even if it hurts them. Maybe they even win and get the supply chain risk designation lifted. But I have zero faith that the legal system will make a difference here. It all comes down to how far the administration wants to go in imposing it's will. Bleak.
- solenoid0937 8mo ago
  It does NOT extend to compute. GCP and AWS cannot use Claude to build anything part of a DoD contract, but they do not need to deny Anthropic access to compute itself.
  - tshaddox 8mo ago
    > conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic Surely that would cover both buying things from and selling things to Anthropic.
    - solenoid0937 8mo ago
      Yes but that part is an overreach (they don't actually have the authority to do this, regardless of what they say.)
infamouscow 8mo ago
They can also classify it as restricted data -- like nuclear weapons technology. Sure, there will be a court battle, but I don't think these companies want to take that chance. They'll capitulate after the lawyers realize that option is on the table.
- strix_varius 8mo ago
  > They'll capitulate after the lawyers realize that option is on the table. Hopefully their lawyers read HN comments so they can negotiate with your deeper understanding of the legal landscape.
- dragonwriter 8mo ago
  > They can also classify it as restricted data -- like nuclear weapons technology. Nuclear weapons technology is restricted under very specific legislative authority, where is the corresponding authority that could be selectively applied to a particular vendors AI models or services?
  - readitalready 8mo ago
    EDA software, software to design computer chips in general, has been classified as ITAR now under this administration. Trump can do that to AI.
  - thinkthatover 8mo ago
    agreed but the current administration is pretty adept at using the slimmest margin for justification and benefiting from the fact that the legal process playing out over years is extremely detrimental to everyone but the government

verdverm 8mo ago

Title is off: "Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth" This is another statement, to their customers about Hegseth's social post, but perhaps resulting in further escalation because you know the other side doesn't like having their weaknesses pointed out.

tomhow 8mo ago
Fixed, thanks!

hank2000 8mo ago

Stay strong Anthropic. We just like you more for this.

deleted 8mo ago
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abtinf 8mo ago
I don't know if I like Anthropic more, but I certainly like their competitors much less now. The new thing that I know about leading AI companies that aren't Anthropic (i.e. OpenAI, Google, Grok, etc) is that they knowingly support using their tools for domestic mass surveillance and in fully autonomous weapon systems.
- SilverElfin 8mo ago
  Exactly - the implication is that every other company is absolutely open to surveilling you and killing you. They’re complicit. They participate in whatever the regime calls for.
- phpnode 8mo ago
  Is that actually the case? or are they just not supplying LLMs to DoW and Anthropic is?
  - nickthegreek 8mo ago
    The other companies have signed the waiver, however they aren’t being used in classified systems currently. So that type of use is already extremely limited for them. Now once they enter into those contracts to be used in those systems without these protections, I will cancel my subs to them and switch to Anthropic. xAi entered into that contract last week. Altman is now publicly siding with anthropic, so he better stand on that position with openai as they are currently negotiating for use in those system.

Rapzid 8mo ago

Hegseth is the, ultra unqualified, Secretary of Defense. Defense. JFC even when "pushing back" everyone is capitulating.

aryonoco 8mo ago
I think that choice of words to call them the Department of War and Secretary of War multiple times in that statement was very much intentional. And a point well made.
- Rapzid 8mo ago
  Interesting angle..

chirau 8mo ago

Doesn't NSA have a backdoor to all these companies by default? I could have sworn I read somewhere years ago that the government demands a backdoor to all US companies if they can't get in on their own.

nerdsniper 8mo ago
3 parts to this: 1) The US gov generally does have close partnerships with most large-scale, mature tech companies. Sometimes this is just a division dedicated to handling their requests, often it’s a special portal or API they can use to “lawfully” grab information from for their investigations. Often times these function somewhat like backdoors. Anthropic is large, but not mature. Additional changes must still take place for “backdoor” style partnerships to be effected. 2) The NSA can pretty much use any computer system they set their eyes on - famously including computers that were never connected to the internet secured in the middle of a mountain (Stuxnet). If they wanted to secretly utilize the Claude API without Claude finding out, that is within their capabilities. Google had to encrypt all their internal datacenter traffic to try to prevent the NSA from logging all their server-to-server traffic, after mistakenly thinking their internal networks were secure enough not to need that. 3) This isn’t about being “able” to do whatever the administration wants. This is the administration demonstrating the consequences of perceived insubordination to make other companies think twice about ever trying to limit use of corporate technology.
- chirau 8mo ago
  Interesting. On point 3, are you saying this will dissuade other companies from taking Anthropic's stance? Somehow I actually thought this would set precedent for how to actually stand up to gov. Quite interesting how we see the same situation and come up with totally different conclusions.
  - toraway 8mo ago
    They're describing the intent of the administration not predicting the future impact on other companies. Essentially making the point that your original question about NSA being able to get whatever they want clandestinely isn't actually relevant because Hegseth/Trump don't actually care this much about Claude doing X or Y -- they were trying to make an example of punishing Anthropic with the expectation they would immediately crumble like the rest of Big Tech, as a warning for anyone else to stay in line and keeps their mouth shut.

parl_match 8mo ago

Anthropic's stance here is admirable. If nothing else, their acknowledgement of not being able to predict how these powerful technologies can be abused is a bold and intelligent position to take.

stavros 8mo ago
I'd admire them if they took a principled or moral stance on AI. As it stands, they're saying "we don't want fully autonomous weapons because they might kill too many Americans by accident while trying to kill non-Americans" and "we don't want AI to surveil Americans, but anyone else, sure".
dmix 8mo ago
It’s not just admirable it’s the obvious position to take and any alternative is head scratching. It’s clear that this is mostly a glorified loyalty test over a practical ask by the administration. Strangely reminiscent of Soviet or Chinese policies where being agreeable to authority was more important than providing value to the state.
- kyle-rb 8mo ago
  If it's a loyalty test then you'd think the DoD would be willing to let them "fail" and simply drop the contract, but instead they're threatening to label Anthropic a supply chain risk. If we're going by Occam's razor: it's Friday so Pete probably started drinking ~10:30-11am.
  - dmix 8mo ago
    This administration has repeatedly shown it will try to bully or take an outrageous negotiating position just to gain featly. Whether they get anything or whether the dispute is actually what the label says should always be treated with skepticism, especially these days with social media information wars. That’s the benefit of realpolitik when you’re a superpower, you often don’t actually need anything, you can just make an example of people to keep the flock in check.

soared 8mo ago

Is this the first company to actually face to face stand up to the current administration?

ch4s3 8mo ago
No, a few law firms targeted by EOs fought them in court last year and won.
- inerte 8mo ago
  Also the case against tariffs, a quick (maybe AI hallucinated) search shows `Victor Owen Schwartz` was part of the challenge. Democracy isn't dead folks, but it takes more work than usual.
  - ch4s3 8mo ago
    It always takes a ton of work to roll back state over reach. The Bound By Oath podcast by the Institute for Justice has a whole season about how hard it is to bring civil rights claims against the government or government officials.
  - crossroadsguy 8mo ago
    And gets harder in a country where even the judges are political appointees and apparently that’s by design. (I resisted adding a smiley here because this is rather sad)
    - ch4s3 8mo ago
      The courts are actually striking down a lot of government overreach recently. The tariffs were just overturned, and the administration was blocked from using the national guard for law enforcement. In fact this administration has lost more Supreme Court cases than any other administration at only 1 year in.
  - swat535 8mo ago
    The problem is that it's a never ending game of attrition, and the government can always outspend you. For example, in case of tariffs, they found another loophole and went on their way. It's nice to have a little guy take a stand, but without major collective pressure, nothing will change.

Waterluvian 8mo ago

> Allowing current models to be used in this way would endanger America’s warfighters and civilians. That’s okay! The use of autonomous weapons is only risky for the civilians of the country you’re destabilizing this week!

JshWright 8mo ago
This letter is a public part of the negotiation process. It shouldn't be surprising that they are primarily using arguments that are, at least on the face, "patriotic".
- Waterluvian 8mo ago
  It’s not surprising, I agree. Criticism is part of the price for choosing that tact.

jleyank 8mo ago

Just don’t help big brother see more. If you job leads to such results, think hard whether that’s what you should be doing. Perhaps it’s time or even past time to think of ways of screwing up their training sets.

collinmcnulty 8mo ago

This an extremely polite “fuck you, make me”. It’s good to see that they have principles, and I suspect strongly that Anthropic will come out on top here if they stand firm.

fzeroracer 8mo ago
If the Trump admin so chooses, they could absolutely obliterate Anthropic in an instant. They don't really care about tricky things like 'legality' or 'the court of law', they could just force everyone to stop interacting with them, raid their offices and steal all their shit. Perhaps they should've found their spine a year earlier; right now their only hope is that the admin isn't stupid enough to crash the propped-up economy over petty bullshit. But knowing how they behave, well.
- verdverm 8mo ago
  The Epstein administration has a very poor success record in court, I would expect Anthropic to win on vindictive prosecution or similar.
  - cmxch 8mo ago
    And the government will win when they strip clearances and ignore said courts. Anthropic will then find out that you don’t oppose a hyperpower - the United States.
    - verdverm 8mo ago
      hyperpower? please The entire world is waking to the reality of the hypocrisy and unreliably. Look how fast Trump TACO'd when China stopped the flow of rare earths.
- MathMonkeyMan 8mo ago
  > They don't really care about tricky things like 'legality' or 'the court of law', they could just force everyone to stop interacting with them, raid their offices and steal all their shit. This is criticism that I would use to describe countries like China and Russia, and many other poorer ones. Were the Trump administration to do this, it would be unequivocal evidence that we are dealing with an unlawful insurgent government. I doubt it will happen, but I'm often wrong.

rorylawless 8mo ago

Could this escalate to the point that Anthropic exits the US and sets up shop elsewhere? Or would the company cease to exist before it got to that point?

ocdtrekkie 8mo ago
Would the US government attempt to apply export controls on the technology and prohibit this? I'm sure Lockheed Martin couldn't decide to move their proprietary technology to another country. Hegseth's statement already leans towards accusations of treason and duplicity, I would say people trying to export the company would face significant risk of arrest or worse.
karmasimida 8mo ago
It gets so much money, compute and US user data. It won’t be allowed to operate as is as a foreign entity Best scenario it will get TikTok-ed, otherwise it will become the real national security risk Had the exit happen, well, as US has a monopoly of compute on this planet for next 2-3 years at least, the company, even though they would take the researchers with them, will certainly cease to exist as it exists now.
abtinf 8mo ago
Every other country is significantly less free than the US. America is freedom's last stand.
- whyenot 8mo ago
  Just off the top of my head, Canada, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden would all seem to be pretty good counterexamples to your assertion.
- yoyohello13 8mo ago
  Free to do anything other than say no to Donald Trump.
- RalfWausE 8mo ago
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SilverElfin 8mo ago

This is what real leadership looks like. Not the silence and complicity that you see from big tech, who regularly bend the knee and bestow bribes and gifts onto the Trump administration.

piskov 8mo ago

[flagged]

meowface 8mo ago
This applies to basically every military and company in every country in all of human history. Nearly every single other country tries to spy on every single other country, including on the US. That's just how these things go.
oceanplexian 8mo ago
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deleted 8mo ago

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nightshift1 8mo ago

Previous discussion : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186677

verdverm 8mo ago
This is the response to said twit

rglover 8mo ago

Was bracing for another rug pull around all this, but kudos to Dario and co for their continued vigilance. Refreshing to see.

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theturtle 8mo ago

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silisili 8mo ago

Not to intentionally sidetrack the conversation, but when did we start calling service members 'warfighters?' I've been seeing it a lot lately, but don't remember ever really seeing it before. Do members of the military prefer this title?

SanjayMehta 8mo ago
Around the time Hegseth was appointed secretary of war. It's a trump thing. Edit: so it's been around for longer, but the Trump regime seems to love it bigly so I'm sticking with my observation. It's a trump regime thing.
- sixo 8mo ago
  this is false, it's been around for a while
  - bigtex88 8mo ago
    No it's 100% these idiots pushing their fascist propaganda just like they tried to "rename" the Department of Defense to the Department of War. Most members of the military never even see actual fighting.
    - cowsandmilk 8mo ago
      It is not a Trumpism. As an example, it has been on Wiktionary since 2008, well before Trump. https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=warfighter&action=history https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=warfighter&actio...
      - mikeyouse 8mo ago
        It’s been a term in rare-to-moderate use since the 1990s — Trump/Hegseth ramped it up to 11 and it’s every 3rd word out of Hegseth’s mouth because he thinks it sounds tough.
    - 8mo ago

ok_dad 8mo ago

Don't worry, OpenAI will kneel for the king: > Sam Altman told OpenAI employees at an all-hands meeting on Friday afternoon that a potential agreement is emerging with the U.S. Department of War to use the startup’s AI models and tools, according to a source present at the meeting and a summary of the meeting seen by Fortune. The contract has not yet been signed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47188698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47188698 Fuck this authoritarian bullshit.

solenoid0937 8mo ago
Hopefully this causes an exodus of top talent from OpenAI. Anthropic needs all the help it can get.
prawn 8mo ago
Can just see it now. You're absolutely right to point that out -- thank you for catching it. I made a mistake in my previous response and that last act appears to have caused civilian casualties. Let me take a closer look and clarify the correct details for you. (Will leave you to imagine the bullseye emoji, etc.)
Maxious 8mo ago
The OpenAI contract was signed once Anthropic failed to yield before the deadline https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175 https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175

seizethecheese 8mo ago

This part stood out to me: “To the best of our knowledge, these exceptions have not affected a single government mission to date.” I had assumed these exceptions (on domestic surveillance and autonomous drones) were more than presuppositions.

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solenoid0937 8mo ago

The people that need to see this are the VPs and execs at Apple, Meta, Google, OAI so they can perhaps reflect on what it looks like to be a good & principled person as opposed to just a successful person.

deleted 8mo ago
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maxgashkov 8mo ago
None of them are 'good'. Execs at Anthropic just perceive the long-term damage from a potential Snowden-level leak showing how their model directed a drone strike against a bunch of civilians higher than short-term loss of revenue from the DoD contracts.
- machomaster 8mo ago
  I understand why you are cynical, but you should read more about the people who founded Anthropic, and specifically why they left OpenAI.
freakynit 8mo ago
DoD/DoW can't strong-arm these companies into unreasonable demands if they present a united front... and that's exactly why collective action (or even unionization) matters. If the government really wants to, it could try building its "Skynet" on open-source Chinese models.. which would be deeply ironic.
- remarkEon 8mo ago
  So your position is that the United States doesn't get to have it's own Skynet, because Skynet is bad, and that if it really wants to it should fork the Chinese Skynet so that it can have a Skynet if it wants it so much. Do you see the problem here. Genuinely don't think we would've won WWII if these people were running things back then.
  - 8mo ago

lovehashbrowns 8mo ago

Happy to be a paying Anthropic customer right now.

engineer_22 8mo ago

> If you are a Department of War contractor, this designation—if formally adopted—would only affect your use of Claude on Department of War contract work. Your use for any other purpose is unaffected. /In theory./ In practice, if your biggest customer tells you to drop Anthropic, you listen to them.

deleted 8mo ago

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ddoottddoott 8mo ago

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wewewedxfgdf 8mo ago

Remember "small government"?

MathMonkeyMan 8mo ago
Smaller government has always been code for bigger me, at least in recent American politics. Now me is government, so bigger government.

steve_adams_86 8mo ago

Anthropic is welcome to set up shop here in Canada! I hear Victoria BC is great. Absolutely brimming, overflowing with technology talent

thirtygeo 8mo ago
Actually why is nobody in Cali just trying to join Canada - would be better for everyone in terms of more similar culture and values. Weird that it isn't discussed more
- pesus 8mo ago
  If I had to guess as a lifelong California resident, I'd say the salary discrepancy is probably the biggest factor. I'd also guess the weather and lack of available jobs would be the next biggest factors, not necessarily in that order.
  - steve_adams_86 8mo ago
    No, imagine the salary potential, not the discrepancy. Ape stronger together. We'd be a new world super power
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
  - mock-possum 8mo ago
    Yep, tech peeps loving in Cana want to work in Cali, not so much the other way around, in my experience, not so much the other way around.
- post-it 8mo ago
  Canada isn't interested in being part of a country that's 50% American either.
- crossroadsguy 8mo ago
  A friend (he is from mostly warm and sunlit South India) who moved to Canada from California says he just can’t take that weather anymore. So maybe weather is a huge factor? You deal with that not everyday in your life but every hour..second and year round.

egonschiele 8mo ago

Heck yeah, so happy to see Anthropic fighting. This is what real leadership looks like. I'd love to see the same from Google and OpenAI.

ndgold 8mo ago

Claude’s constitution is proving too resilient for unsanctioned uses, and that is a great sign for Anthropic’s blueprint for socially beneficent agents.

koshergweilo 8mo ago
It's kind of sad how an AI Startup defers more to its constitution than the actual government
- Smaug123 8mo ago
  The word "Constitution" refers to the document listing the principles on which Claude is trained. It's not clear to me that Anthropic can defer to it - it is phrased throughout as a description of how Claude behaves, not as a description of how Anthropic or any other entity behaves. Can you be more precise about what you mean?

50208 8mo ago

This is what fighting early stage facism looks like.

fooster 8mo ago
early stage? shooting a woman in the face in her car for the crime of driving off by the brownshirts is not early stage my dude.
- xXSLAYERXx 8mo ago
  How long can we push this narrative? It was a terrible situation and I can't imagine the minutes of complete fear she must have felt. I pray for her family. But to then draw a conclusion to say this is evidence that we are in some sort of fascist decline, because of this incident, takes away from the innocent lose of life. And greatly exaggerates the skill and aptitude of the killer. People spew the fascist narrative every chance they get. I'm sure most of us who like strawberries will be picking strawberries come June.
  - fooster 8mo ago
    Neither Renee Good or Alex Pretti or any of the other innocents that the brownshirts killed will pick strawberries ever again.
    - xXSLAYERXx 8mo ago
      Yes I understand. And given the heaviness of the situation I could have chosen a better way to phrase that I completely disagree with it being evidence that we're on the road to fascism.
      - carefulfungi 8mo ago
        What would have to occur, hypothetically, for you to conclude that the US is on the road to fascism?

netinstructions 8mo ago

This is kind of crazy. Instead of just cancelling a mutually-agreed upon contract where Anthropic refused to bow to sudden new demands, the Dept of Defense went straight to the nuclear option: threatening to label an American tech company as a "supply chain risk" which is a heavy-handed tactic usually reserved for foreign adversaries (think Huawei or DJI). It's also incoherent that the DoD/DoW was threatening to invoke the Defense Production Act OR classifying them as "supply chain risk". They're either too uniquely critical to national defense OR they're such a severe liability that they have to be blacklisted for anyone in the DoD apparatus (including the many subcontracts) to use. How are other tech companies supposed to work with the US government and draw up mutual contracts when those terms are suddenly questioned months later and can be used in such devastating ways against them? Setting the morals/principals aside, how does this make for rational business decision to work with a counterparty that behaves this way.

solenoid0937 8mo ago
Are they just threatening to label? It seems to me like they have already labeled.
- SpicyLemonZest 8mo ago
  That's part of the recurrent confusion with this administration. In previous administrations, including Trump 1, people didn't need to spend a ton of time thinking about what it means to make a legally effective proclamation, because there was a baseline of competence. When a government official announced "We're doing X", they would do so as a summary of a large amount of legal process with the intent and effect of causing X to be true. If you went to challenge it in court of course, you'd have to identify some specific action as the label, but everyone would understand that this is a formalism. Here, Hegseth has simply made a social media post. He did not publish any official investigation which led to the report. He did not explain what legal power would permit him to impose all the restrictions the post claims to impose. There is not, five hours later, any order on an official government website about it. So we have a real question. If a Cabinet secretary posts "I am directing the Department of War to designate...", does that in and of itself perform the designation, or is it simply an informal notice that the Department of Fascist Neologisms will perform the designation soon?

tehjoker 8mo ago

You know what? I have not seen an American company take a stand like this… uh ever. I don’t think there should be any engagement with the military what so ever but I will offer a kudos to Anthropic. I don’t really expect this to last but if it does I will happily continue to offer this kudos on an indefinite basis.

mythz 8mo ago

Had Cancelled my Claude sub after they banned OAuth in external tools, but just renewed it today after seeing their principled stance on AI ethics - they matter more when they hurt profits, happy to support them as a Customer whilst they keep them.

lebovic 8mo ago

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 pattern repeats, and the Anthropic of today is still driven by people who will risk losing a seat at the table to make principled decisions. I do not think this is a calculated ploy that's driven by making money. 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. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47174423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47174423 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47149908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47149908

Rapzid 8mo ago
[flagged]
- educasean 8mo ago
  All corporations are to an extent. It’s a question of magnitude, not absolutes. You, too, are driven by money. Yet I’m certain you maintain a set of principles and values. Let’s keep the discussion productive yeah?
  - Rapzid 8mo ago
    Sure, where is your productive output? Cause that's drivel. Anthropic kept referring to Hegseth as "Secretary of War" and the DoD as "Department of War". Which is horseshit. This whole thing is Anthropic flailing.
    - solenoid0937 8mo ago
      Come on. That is because this is a negotiation between Anthropic and the DoD and they understandably don't want to burn bridges. Do you just expect Anthropic to totally blow up all bridges to the government? What do you actually want them to do? Reading your comment history I'm not sure they could do anything to satisfy you.

Jordan-117 8mo ago

Why is DoD contracting with Anthropic exclusively rather than OpenAI or Google? Their models are all roughly as powerful and they seem both more capable and more willing to cozy up with the military (and this administration) than a relatively scrappy startup focused on model sentience and well-being. Hell, even Grok would be a better fit ideologically and temperamentally.

mikeyouse 8mo ago

Remember when A16Z and a bunch of other muppets insisted they had to back Trump because Biden was too hostile to private companies, especially AI ones? Incredible.

water9 8mo ago

I fundamentally do not like the idea of one adult determining what knowledge another adult is entitled to. It’s the library of Alexandria all over again.

JohnnyLarue 8mo ago

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joeross 8mo ago

Hegseth is so pathetic.

bawolff 8mo ago

I'm of the opinion that anthropic's "moral" stances are bullshit, not particularly coherent when you dig deep and more about branding. If so, this is grade A marketing. They want to present themselves as moral. What better endorsement than by being rejected by the US military under Trump? You get the people who hate trump and the people who hate the military in one swoop. At the same time its kind of a non story. Anrhropic says it doesn't want its products used in certain ways, US military says fine, you can't be part of the project where we are going to make the AI do those things. Isn't that a win for both sides ? What's the problem? It would be like someone part of a boycott movement being surprised the company they are boycotting doesn't want to hire them.

stbenjam 8mo ago
Everyone close to Anthropic leadership has claimed they’re the real deal and it’s not a stunt. I don’t think it’s bull. They are trying to find a reasonable middle ground and settled on some red lines they won’t cross.
- slopinthebag 8mo ago
  You believe the "reasonable middle ground" is using their models to kill people and spy on citizens?
zmmmmm 8mo ago
that doesn't even remotely represent what is happening here.
solenoid0937 8mo ago
> What's the problem? Think. The problem is that being branded a "supply chain risk" prohibits vast chunks of the US corporate landscape from doing business with Anthropic. The problem is that the government is attempting to destroy a company rather than simply terminate their contract.
- bawolff 8mo ago
  Isn't it a literal supply chain risk, though? They want their products to not be used for some purposes. That's fine, that is their right. But that doesn't just stop at direct purchases. If the US buys from a defense contractor who bought from abthropic, that really isn't that different from buying direct. The moral hazard is still there and the risk that anthropic will try to prevent their product from being used in that fashion is still there. I think anthropic wants their cake and to eat it too. You can't take a principled stand against something and then be shocked the thing you are taking a principled stand against might think you are a risk.

byang364 8mo ago

I don't know what's funnier, that Anthropic convinced the Pentagon LLMs are smart enough to guide missiles, then have it backfire on them with the threat of nationalization if they didn't help build ralph ICBMs, or that Pete thinks Opus is Skynet and that only Anthropic has the power of train it.

zmmmmm 8mo ago

Congrats Anthropic, you deserve to be applauded for this. Seeing a company being willing to stand up to authoritarianism in this time is a rarity. Stay strong.

jackyli02 8mo ago

People can still brush this off by saying Anthropic is doing this to create more buzz for its next round. But they are taking unpopular stances and could be burning bridges. Simply take a look at PLTR and it's obviously more lucrative to lean the other way.

ParentiSoundSys 8mo ago

Many conservative commentators and Palmer Luckey have been all over Twitter saying, "it's not Anthropic's job to set policy," which reminds me of the classic tune from Tom Lehrer: "Zee rockets go up! Who cares vhere zey come down? Zat's not my department" says Wernher von Braun.

markvdb 8mo ago

Hours ago, OpenAI raised $110B.

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stego-tech 8mo ago

I am genuinely shocked that a tech company actually stood on principle. My doubts about AI, Anthropic, and Mr. Amodei remain, but man, I got the warm and fuzzies seeing them stick to their principles on this - even if one clause (autonomous weapons) is less principled and more, “it’s not ready yet”.

mkl 8mo ago

> we believe that mass domestic surveillance of Americans constitutes a violation of fundamental rights Mass surveillance of people constitutes a violation of fundamental rights. The red line is in the wrong place.

krior 8mo ago
Americans cannot even be bothered to care about americans, what makes you think they can be bothered to care about foreigners?
titanomachy 8mo ago
Yeah, but you can’t contract your software to the department of defense and then demand that they not use it to surveil foreigners. If that’s the line you want to draw, you’d have to avoid working with them in the first place.

jryio 8mo ago

This an appropriate rewind to unreasonable behavior. I applaud Anthropic's candor in the public sphere. Unfortunately the country party is unworthy of such applause.

tushar-r 8mo ago

This makes it seem like they really like the Anthropic product and are using it quite a bit more than the others? Or is it just me making random connections?

jkells 8mo ago

But of course, wholesale surveillance on the rest of the world is fine. I guess our democracies don't count and we don't have any rights.

sneilan1 8mo ago

I'm a lot happier now being an anthropic customer.

erelong 8mo ago

I think Anthropic sounds well-intentioned but is blundering this incident in a big way and they really needed to work better towards a deal instead of isolating themselves with a "principled stance" that sets up a competitor to swoop in and take the contracts they had

ajam1507 8mo ago
And which one of their competitors do you imagine would swoop in and take their contracts while admitting to the rest of their customers that they're okay with their models being used for autonomous weapons and surveillance?

wjessup 8mo ago

Any commentary about how adversaries won't have regulations?

Intermernet 8mo ago

What's stopping the government from using the usual nasty tricks the world has known about for decades? DPA? All Writs Act? Force them to comply and then prevent them talking about it with NSLs? I appreciate that Anthropic may be the least bad of a bunch of really bad actors here, but this has played out before in the US, and the burden of trust is, and should be, really high. I believe that Anthropic don't want to remove the "safety barriers" on their tech being used for domestic surveillance and military operations, but that implies they're ok with those use-cases so long as the "safety barriers" are still up. Not really the best look, IMHO. So what happens when we all get rosy eyed about Anthropic (the only slightly evil company) winning a battle against the purely evil government, and then the gov use the various instruments at their disposal to just force anthropic to do what they want, and then force them to never disclose it? Did the world learn nothing from Snowden?

Justitia 8mo ago

I'm not sure if OpenAI knows that scooping this might hurt their brand by a lot.

nseggs 8mo ago

There is literally no world where I take any organizations which has been strong armed by fucking Pete Hegseth seriously lmao. Thank you Anthropic both for building the best models for general engineering and for having a fucking backbone.

dbg31415 8mo ago

ChatGPT wasted no time bending over backwards to appease Trump. "We'd sure love to turn our AI into a mass surveillance tool! Please, aim it at the Americans Population! And Kill Bots, we can't wait!"

seydor 8mo ago

This has been an exceptional publicity campaign for anthropic, among others

vcryan 8mo ago

Amazing the Pete Hegseth is even a person that anyone would ever need to take seriously.

monomyth 8mo ago

based on the replies so far hacker news are ideologically captured

astrolx 8mo ago

Generally, I am supporting of that move. One thing leaves me non-plussed as a non-USA citizen, "the mass domestic surveillance of Americans" exception. That means that Claude can still be used for mass surveillance of everybody else on the planet right?

tecoholic 8mo ago
Yup. That’s pretty much how they make money. (Edit - in the context of contracting services to US government)

lazzlazzlazz 8mo ago

Turns out that Dario was lying about not having heard from the Department of War, as reported by Undersecretary Emil Michael: https://x.com/USWREMichael/status/2027568070034608173 https://x.com/USWREMichael/status/2027568070034608173

tlogan 8mo ago

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.

eaglelamp 8mo ago

Anthropic knew they were going to lose this contract to OpenAI, and this is an attempt to salvage publicity from the loss. This administration is comfortable with blatantly picking winners and OpenAI is better connected with the admin than Anthropic.

tw04 8mo ago

I just want to point out how 1984 fascist dictatorship it still feels to call it “the department of war”. That’s not normal. None of this is normal.

titanomachy 8mo ago
In 1984, they called it the “ministry of peace”. If anything “defense” is more euphemistic than “war”.

47282847 8mo ago

Looking through the comments here, I am repeatedly surprised how quickly we seem to have lost a shared understanding of fundamentals ever since Trump came into power. I still need inner adjusting to fully realize that it must have always been a misunderstanding? 1. I don’t understand what is controversial about any supplier making their own rules for trade. I don’t have to agree with their beliefs, but I find it the basis of a functioning society to allow others to hold beliefs that I do not share, and to develop products as they want, as long as they don’t pose any dangers. If I don’t like the product, I am free to shop elsewhere or develop my own. 2. I thought that there is was a shared understanding of the line between voluntary business deals, and coercion and punishment. I thought we agreed that the law should protect people and businesses in ways so that nobody can exert power over another. Not on the hows, but on the why. And not based on ethical considerations (beliefs) but purely on logical grounds that we know how violence begets violence, use of it will only escalate conflict, and we will ultimately lose. 3. I thought we all agreed that government agencies were bound by the law and its policies. If you were to use the designation of Supply Chain Risk, you would at least have to sufficiently provide logical arguments. Here, they even openly disclose how they plan to use the mechanism purely as punishment, against the spirit of the law, not because a product carries any risk and should be limited, but because it is too limited. Is this some form of collective narcissistic psychosis? The desire to burn it all down in suicide?

amai 8mo ago

Dear Anthropic, Europe is a nice place, too. In case you need GPUs we have AI factories for you : https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/ai-factories https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/ai-factori... We also don't engage in mass surveillance or develop autonomous weapons.

szmarczak 8mo ago
ASML is European too! Then they could make a deal with them. wink wink
pennaMan 8mo ago
> europe > we don't engage in mass surveillance you're incredibly naive
gorbachev 8mo ago
> We also don't engage in mass surveillance What?

keeeba 8mo ago

The gap between Anthropic and the other guys keeps growing

ctmnt 8mo ago

One interesting change between the last statement and this one: In the last statement Dario said that this designation had “never before been applied to an American company”. In the latest one the phrase is “never before publicly applied to an American company”.

bjackman 8mo ago
How do you imagine a secret designation would work..?
- ctmnt 8mo ago
  I’m not sure what you’re referring to. It’s not (typically, as far as we know) a secret designation. We know of other companies designated as supply chain risks: Huawei, ZTE, and Kapersky are the first ones that come to mind.

Phelinofist 8mo ago

> Protect _Americans_ from mass surveillance > Protect _American_ forces What the actual fuck. How can anyone side with Anthropic. They are not the good guys by any means whatsoever. Mass surveillance against anyone is wrong and having killbots "when AI is ready" is totally fucked and dystopian. Imagine killbots rampaging while the good American people are at home living a nice peaceful life. Fuck any of that, fuck Anthropic, fuck ClosedAI, fuck Google, fuck Trump, fuck the DoD and fuck every American who is patriotic to the monster their country became. Fuck every country that also tries to do stuff like this. Fuck all companies taking part in such insanity.

throwaway20261 8mo ago

I had subscriptions to both Anthropic and Openai. Cancelled my openai subscriptions. Companies without a modicum of ethics deserve to go extinct.

cdwhite 8mo ago

What happens if somebody (maybe anthropic!) uses Claude Code Security to find & fix a vulnerability in some piece of open-source software---openssh, linux kernel, that sort of thing? Can the DoW use the resulting fix?

irenetusuq 8mo ago

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layer8 8mo ago

Related interview with Amodei: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195379

johnnyApplePRNG 8mo ago

>We have tried in good faith to reach an agreement with the Department of War LMFAO

amunozo 8mo ago

Again, mass domestic surveillance of Americans is bad, otherwise it is okay. Disgusting.

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billg_ms 8mo ago

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olivesam 8mo ago

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