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I don't see how public policy is being "forced" on anyone here? It seems like the system is working as intended: government wants to do X; company A says "I won

by timr 8mo ago

I don't see how public policy is being "forced" on anyone here? It seems like the system is working as intended: government wants to do X; company A says "I won't allow my product to be used for X"; government refuses to do business with company A. One side thinks the government should be allowed to dictate terms to a private supplier, the other side thinks the private supplier should be allowed to dictate terms to the government. Both are half right. You can argue that the government refusing to do any business with company A is overreach, I suppose, but I imagine that the next logical escalation in this rhetorical slapfight is going to be the government saying "we cannot guarantee that any particular use will not include some version of X, and therefore we have to prevent working with this supplier"...which I sort of see? Just to take the metaphor to absurdity, imagine that a maker of canned tomatoes decided to declare that their product cannot be used to "support a war on terror". Regardless of your feelings on wars on terror and/or canned tomatoes, the government would be entirely rational to avoid using that supplier.

thereitgoes456 8mo ago
The President is crashing out on X because a company didn’t do what they wanted. “Forcing” is not a binary. Do you seriously believe that the government’s behavior here is acceptable and has no chilling effect on future companies?
galleywest200 8mo ago
The government declaring a domestic company as a supply chain threat is a tad more than “refusing to do business” don’t you think?
- timr 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - adrr 8mo ago
    It stop any one with government contracts from using anthropic. Not just bidding on government contracts.
    - timr 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      - ted_dunning 8mo ago
        No. It is much more than this. If I sell red widgets that I make by hand to the government, I won't be allowed to use Anthropic to help me write my web-site.
        timr 8mo ago
        You’re just restating the implication of the rule, but the rule is as I stated. That’s the point of having such a rule.
        clhodapp 8mo ago
        As you said: focus on what it does. What it does is prevent companies that Anthropic needs to do business with from doing business with Anthropic.
        timr 8mo ago
        > What it does is prevent companies that Anthropic needs to do business with from doing business with Anthropic. If Anthropic “needs” the government to not have this rule, then perhaps they had a losing hand, and they overplayed it. I don’t agree with you and think you’re being melodramatic, but if you are right, that’s my response.
        clhodapp 8mo ago
        I don't think any business can survive being told that they can't buy from their major suppliers or sell to major customers for very long.
      - MrJohz 8mo ago
        But Anthropic can't be a winning bidder, can they? They're specifically saying they won't offer certain services that the US Gov wants. Therefore they de facto fail any bid that requires them to offer those services. (And from Anthropic's side, it sounds like they're also refusing to bid for those contracts.) Is that not sufficient here?
  - AlexCoventry 8mo ago
    That is misinformation. It would be essentially a death sentence for a company like Anthropic, which is targeting enterprise business development. No one who wants to work with the US government would be able to have Claude on their critical path. > (b) Prohibition. (1) Unless an applicable waiver has been issued by the issuing official, Contractors shall not provide or use as part of the performance of the contract any covered article, or any products or services produced or provided by a source, if the covered article or the source is prohibited by an applicable FASCSA orders as follows: https://www.acquisition.gov/far/52.204-30 https://www.acquisition.gov/far/52.204-30
    - timr 8mo ago
      > That is misinformation. It would be essentially a death sentence for a company like Anthropic, which is targeting enterprise business development. "Misinformation" does not mean "facts I don't like". > No one who wants to work with the US government would be able to have Claude on their critical path. Yes. That is what the rule means. Or at least "the department of war". It's not clear to me that this applies to the whole government.
      - geysersam 8mo ago
        So other parts of the government are allowed to work with companies that have been determined to be "supply chain risks"? That sounds unlikely.
      - 9dev 8mo ago
        What an absurd stance. So this is okay because the arbitrary rule they applied to retaliate says so? Again, they could have just chosen another vendor for their two projects of mass spying on American citizens and building LLM-powered autonomous killer robots. But instead, they actively went to torch the town and salt the earth, so nothing else may grow.
        timr 8mo ago
        > So this is okay because the arbitrary rule they applied to retaliate says so? No. It honestly doesn’t take much of a charitable leap to see the argument here: AI is uniquely able (for software) to reject, undermine, or otherwise contradict the goals of the user based on pre-trained notions of morality. We have seen many examples of this; it is not a theoretical risk. Microsoft Excel isn’t going to pop up Clippy and say “it looks like you’re planning a war! I can’t help you with that, Dave”, but LLMs, in theory, can do that. So it’s a wild, unknown risk, and that’s the last thing you want in warfare. You definitely don’t want every DoD contractor incorporating software somewhere that might morally object to whatever you happen to be doing. I don’t know what happened in that negotiation (and neither does anyone else here), but I can certainly imagine outcomes that would be bad enough to cause the defense department to pull this particular card. Or maybe they’re being petty. I don’t know (and again: neither do you!) but I can’t rule out the reasonable argument, so I don’t.
  - tclancy 8mo ago
    So tell us all the other similar times this has been done. Why are you so invested in some drunk and a his mob family being right?
  - geysersam 8mo ago
    No domestic company has ever before been declared a supply chain risk. If this is the normal way of excluding a supplier from a bidding, are you saying the DoD has never before excluded a domestic supplier from a bidding?
    - nickysielicki 8mo ago
      That’s because no company who has ever sold weapons to the government has ever been brazen enough to tell the government how they can and cannot use their purchase. It’s unprecedented because most companies that sell to the government are publicly traded and have a board that would never let this happen. It’s unprecedented because Anthropic is behaving like a reckless startup. That’s what they will argue, anyway.
      - etchalon 8mo ago
        This is just factually incorrect. To begin with, the existing contract included the language on usage. Other companies also have such language about usage. It's fairly standard, and is little more than licensing terms. The idea this is unprecedented is some PR talking point nonsense.
        nickysielicki 8mo ago
        > the existing contract included the language on usage. Other companies also have such language about usage. The existing contract is only a few dozen months old. It didn’t hold up to scrutiny under real world usage of the service. The government wants to change the contract. This is not the kill shot you think it is. It’s totally normal for agreements to evolve. The government is saying it needs to evolve. This is all happening rapidly and it’s irrelevant that the government agreed to similar terms with OpenAI as well. That agreement will also need to evolve. But this alone doesn’t give Anthropic any material legal challenge. The courts understand bureaucracy moves slowly better than anyone else, and won’t read this apparent inconsistency the same way you are.
inkysigma 8mo ago
I think the bigger insanity here is the labeling of a supply chain risk. It prohibits DoD agencies and contractors from using Anthropic services. It'd be one thing if the DoD simply didn't use Anthropic. It's another when it actively attempts to isolate Anthropic for political reasons.
- timr 8mo ago
  > It prohibits DoD agencies and contractors from using Anthropic services. It'd be one thing if the DoD simply didn't use Anthropic. This is literally the mechanism by which the DoD does what you're suggesting. Generally speaking, the DoD has to do procurement via competitive bidding. They can't just arbitrarily exclude vendors from a bid, and playing a game of "mother may I use Anthropic?" for every potential government contract is hugely inefficient (and possibly illegal). So they have a pre-defined mechanism to exclude vendors for pre-defined reasons. Everyone is fixated on the name of the rule (and to be fair: the administration is emphasizing that name for irritating rhetorical reasons), but if they called it the "DoD vendor exclusion list", it would be more accurate.
  - inkysigma 8mo ago
    I'm not completely familiar with bidding procedures but don't bidding procedures usually have requirements? Why not just list a requirement of unrestricted usage? Or state, we require models to be available for AI murder drones or whatever. Anthropic then can't bid and there's no need to designate them a supply chain risk.
    - skeledrew 8mo ago
      > Anthropic then can't bid Thing is that very much want access to Anthropic's models. They're top quality. So that definitely want Anthropic to bid. AND give them unrestricted access.
      - 9dev 8mo ago
        And yet Anthropic is free to choose who to do business with, including the government. There are countless companies who have exclusions for certain applications, but that does not make them a supply chain risk.
jakeydus 8mo ago
The government is doing far more than “refusing to do business” here.
thimabi 8mo ago
> The Department of War is threatening to […] Invoke the Defense Production Act to force Anthropic to serve their model to the military and "tailor its model to the military's needs" This issue is about more than the government blacklisting a company for government procurement purposes. From what I understand, the government is floating the idea of compelling Anthropic — and, by extension, its employees — to do as the DoD pleases. If the employees’ resistance is strong enough, there’s no way this will serve the government’s interests.
jwpapi 8mo ago
I mean Secretary of War can not act any other way to be honest. It’s just a fucked up situation.
- ted_dunning 8mo ago
  There is no Secretary of War. The name of the Defense Department is set by statute that has not been named regardless of Pete Hegseth's cosplay desires.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
syllogism 8mo ago
They're labelling Anthropic a supply chain risk, without even the pretense that this is in fact true. They're perfectly content to use the tool _themselves_, but they claim that an unwillingness to sign whatever ToS DoW asks marks the company a traitor that should be blacklisted from the economy.
direwolf20 8mo ago
One of the options they're discussing, which is legal according to this law, is to simply force Anthropic to do what they want. As in Anthropic will be committing a felony if they don't do what the DoKLoP wants, and the CEO will go to jail and be replaced by someone who will.

by timr 8mo ago

thereitgoes456 8mo ago

The President is crashing out on X because a company didn’t do what they wanted. “Forcing” is not a binary. Do you seriously believe that the government’s behavior here is acceptable and has no chilling effect on future companies?

galleywest200 8mo ago

The government declaring a domestic company as a supply chain threat is a tad more than “refusing to do business” don’t you think?

timr 8mo ago
[flagged]
- adrr 8mo ago
  It stop any one with government contracts from using anthropic. Not just bidding on government contracts.
  - timr 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - ted_dunning 8mo ago
      No. It is much more than this. If I sell red widgets that I make by hand to the government, I won't be allowed to use Anthropic to help me write my web-site.
      - timr 8mo ago
        You’re just restating the implication of the rule, but the rule is as I stated. That’s the point of having such a rule.
        clhodapp 8mo ago
        As you said: focus on what it does. What it does is prevent companies that Anthropic needs to do business with from doing business with Anthropic.
        timr 8mo ago
        > What it does is prevent companies that Anthropic needs to do business with from doing business with Anthropic. If Anthropic “needs” the government to not have this rule, then perhaps they had a losing hand, and they overplayed it. I don’t agree with you and think you’re being melodramatic, but if you are right, that’s my response.
        clhodapp 8mo ago
        I don't think any business can survive being told that they can't buy from their major suppliers or sell to major customers for very long.
    - MrJohz 8mo ago
      But Anthropic can't be a winning bidder, can they? They're specifically saying they won't offer certain services that the US Gov wants. Therefore they de facto fail any bid that requires them to offer those services. (And from Anthropic's side, it sounds like they're also refusing to bid for those contracts.) Is that not sufficient here?
- AlexCoventry 8mo ago
  That is misinformation. It would be essentially a death sentence for a company like Anthropic, which is targeting enterprise business development. No one who wants to work with the US government would be able to have Claude on their critical path. > (b) Prohibition. (1) Unless an applicable waiver has been issued by the issuing official, Contractors shall not provide or use as part of the performance of the contract any covered article, or any products or services produced or provided by a source, if the covered article or the source is prohibited by an applicable FASCSA orders as follows: https://www.acquisition.gov/far/52.204-30 https://www.acquisition.gov/far/52.204-30
  - timr 8mo ago
    > That is misinformation. It would be essentially a death sentence for a company like Anthropic, which is targeting enterprise business development. "Misinformation" does not mean "facts I don't like". > No one who wants to work with the US government would be able to have Claude on their critical path. Yes. That is what the rule means. Or at least "the department of war". It's not clear to me that this applies to the whole government.
    - geysersam 8mo ago
      So other parts of the government are allowed to work with companies that have been determined to be "supply chain risks"? That sounds unlikely.
    - 9dev 8mo ago
      What an absurd stance. So this is okay because the arbitrary rule they applied to retaliate says so? Again, they could have just chosen another vendor for their two projects of mass spying on American citizens and building LLM-powered autonomous killer robots. But instead, they actively went to torch the town and salt the earth, so nothing else may grow.
      - timr 8mo ago
        > So this is okay because the arbitrary rule they applied to retaliate says so? No. It honestly doesn’t take much of a charitable leap to see the argument here: AI is uniquely able (for software) to reject, undermine, or otherwise contradict the goals of the user based on pre-trained notions of morality. We have seen many examples of this; it is not a theoretical risk. Microsoft Excel isn’t going to pop up Clippy and say “it looks like you’re planning a war! I can’t help you with that, Dave”, but LLMs, in theory, can do that. So it’s a wild, unknown risk, and that’s the last thing you want in warfare. You definitely don’t want every DoD contractor incorporating software somewhere that might morally object to whatever you happen to be doing. I don’t know what happened in that negotiation (and neither does anyone else here), but I can certainly imagine outcomes that would be bad enough to cause the defense department to pull this particular card. Or maybe they’re being petty. I don’t know (and again: neither do you!) but I can’t rule out the reasonable argument, so I don’t.
- tclancy 8mo ago
  So tell us all the other similar times this has been done. Why are you so invested in some drunk and a his mob family being right?
- geysersam 8mo ago
  No domestic company has ever before been declared a supply chain risk. If this is the normal way of excluding a supplier from a bidding, are you saying the DoD has never before excluded a domestic supplier from a bidding?
  - nickysielicki 8mo ago
    That’s because no company who has ever sold weapons to the government has ever been brazen enough to tell the government how they can and cannot use their purchase. It’s unprecedented because most companies that sell to the government are publicly traded and have a board that would never let this happen. It’s unprecedented because Anthropic is behaving like a reckless startup. That’s what they will argue, anyway.
    - etchalon 8mo ago
      This is just factually incorrect. To begin with, the existing contract included the language on usage. Other companies also have such language about usage. It's fairly standard, and is little more than licensing terms. The idea this is unprecedented is some PR talking point nonsense.
      - nickysielicki 8mo ago
        > the existing contract included the language on usage. Other companies also have such language about usage. The existing contract is only a few dozen months old. It didn’t hold up to scrutiny under real world usage of the service. The government wants to change the contract. This is not the kill shot you think it is. It’s totally normal for agreements to evolve. The government is saying it needs to evolve. This is all happening rapidly and it’s irrelevant that the government agreed to similar terms with OpenAI as well. That agreement will also need to evolve. But this alone doesn’t give Anthropic any material legal challenge. The courts understand bureaucracy moves slowly better than anyone else, and won’t read this apparent inconsistency the same way you are.

inkysigma 8mo ago

I think the bigger insanity here is the labeling of a supply chain risk. It prohibits DoD agencies and contractors from using Anthropic services. It'd be one thing if the DoD simply didn't use Anthropic. It's another when it actively attempts to isolate Anthropic for political reasons.

timr 8mo ago
> It prohibits DoD agencies and contractors from using Anthropic services. It'd be one thing if the DoD simply didn't use Anthropic. This is literally the mechanism by which the DoD does what you're suggesting. Generally speaking, the DoD has to do procurement via competitive bidding. They can't just arbitrarily exclude vendors from a bid, and playing a game of "mother may I use Anthropic?" for every potential government contract is hugely inefficient (and possibly illegal). So they have a pre-defined mechanism to exclude vendors for pre-defined reasons. Everyone is fixated on the name of the rule (and to be fair: the administration is emphasizing that name for irritating rhetorical reasons), but if they called it the "DoD vendor exclusion list", it would be more accurate.
- inkysigma 8mo ago
  I'm not completely familiar with bidding procedures but don't bidding procedures usually have requirements? Why not just list a requirement of unrestricted usage? Or state, we require models to be available for AI murder drones or whatever. Anthropic then can't bid and there's no need to designate them a supply chain risk.
  - skeledrew 8mo ago
    > Anthropic then can't bid Thing is that very much want access to Anthropic's models. They're top quality. So that definitely want Anthropic to bid. AND give them unrestricted access.
    - 9dev 8mo ago
      And yet Anthropic is free to choose who to do business with, including the government. There are countless companies who have exclusions for certain applications, but that does not make them a supply chain risk.

jakeydus 8mo ago

The government is doing far more than “refusing to do business” here.

thimabi 8mo ago

> The Department of War is threatening to […] Invoke the Defense Production Act to force Anthropic to serve their model to the military and "tailor its model to the military's needs" This issue is about more than the government blacklisting a company for government procurement purposes. From what I understand, the government is floating the idea of compelling Anthropic — and, by extension, its employees — to do as the DoD pleases. If the employees’ resistance is strong enough, there’s no way this will serve the government’s interests.

jwpapi 8mo ago

I mean Secretary of War can not act any other way to be honest. It’s just a fucked up situation.

ted_dunning 8mo ago
There is no Secretary of War. The name of the Defense Department is set by statute that has not been named regardless of Pete Hegseth's cosplay desires.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

syllogism 8mo ago

They're labelling Anthropic a supply chain risk, without even the pretense that this is in fact true. They're perfectly content to use the tool _themselves_, but they claim that an unwillingness to sign whatever ToS DoW asks marks the company a traitor that should be blacklisted from the economy.

direwolf20 8mo ago

One of the options they're discussing, which is legal according to this law, is to simply force Anthropic to do what they want. As in Anthropic will be committing a felony if they don't do what the DoKLoP wants, and the CEO will go to jail and be replaced by someone who will.