4 ms·

No one is forcing the DoD to contract with a company.

nickysielicki 7mo ago
DoD would like to use Palantir. DoD also believes Anthropic is pursuing posttraining in future models that will limit the effectiveness of Palantir tooling, if used by Palantir, for the purposes of DoDs mission. What other legal mechanism do they have to prevent Palantir from specifically not subcontracting out to Anthropic, other than a supply chain risk designation? Note that directly asking Palantir to prefer Google or OpenAI over Anthropic is a violation of procurement law and highly illegal. What other mechanism do they have?
- dathery 7mo ago
  They can say "sorry Palantir, we will only sign a contract with you if you commit not to use Claude to provide services" and then Palantir is free to decide if they want to accept the terms of the contract or not. This is how business works.
  - nickysielicki 7mo ago
    That would be illegal and ripe for corruption. It would also require the DoD to renegotiate the thousands of existing defense contract it has outstanding. That’s the entire reason this law exists, because what you’re suggesting is impractical. The department has to confidentially document its rationale for marking a company as a supply chain risk. It’s in the confidential record of this very court case. That’s the legal way to do this.
    - etchalon 7mo ago
      Yes, it turns out our laws make it hard for the government to do a lot of things because making it easy for them to do things leads to some deeply authoritarian bullshit.
      - nickysielicki 7mo ago
        What a beautiful/horrifying inversion of logic. The government does it the legal way, through an existing law, and you’re short circuiting and pattern matching to “the government is trying to work around the law”. The DoD is not trying to sneak its way out of behaving legally. On the contrary, they’re doing it the legal way and you’re suggesting that they could just do it the illegal way.
        etchalon 7mo ago
        The DOD is labeling a domestic company a supply chain risk - label generally reserved for hostile foreign powers and their cooperators - because that domestic company didn't agree to its contract terms. Judge Lin's order finds that it do so specifically to harm that company, without due process and without the remedies Congress specifically requested be used when it drafted the law. The DOD was, in essence, using a law illegally. The version of events you present does not seem to be tethered to reality.
        thereticent 7mo ago
        Again, you of undue certainty: the government attempted this potentially legal avenue, and it was adjudicated as impermissible. Meaning what they tried didn't work. Why are you acting like no one else here understands what has happened? Probability dictates that you are almost certainly not the smartest person in the room.
        nickysielicki 7mo ago
        It wasn’t “adjudicated as impermissible”. You’re misunderstanding what a preliminary injunction represents. It’s right there in the name: preliminary. It’s preliminary because it precedes the actual real adjudication. > Why are you acting like no one else here understands what has happened? Because you clearly don’t? Because nobody who has a remote understanding of the legal system would be stupid enough to suggest that a San Francisco district court judge preliminary injunction decision would carry enough weight to dictate DoD procurement during an active hot war.
    - dathery 7mo ago
      Again, did you read the order? The judge's order explicitly said this would be legal and cites the law permitting it, then goes on to explain why this action did not satisfy it: > Covered procurement actions include “[t]he decision to withhold consent for a contractor to subcontract with a particular source or to direct a contractor . . . to exclude a particular source from consideration for a subcontract.” 10 U.S.C. § 3252(d)(2)(C). I strongly suggest reading the order. I have included the link again: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.465515/gov.uscourts.cand.465515.96.0_3.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.46...
      - nickysielicki 7mo ago
        You can’t be serious… Covered procurement actions are the things the Secretary can do after making a supply chain risk designation under 3252. The designation is a prerequisite. You can’t direct a contractor to exclude a subcontractor under (d)(2)(C) without first going through the 3252 determination process. You’re literally posting evidence for why this is the only legal avenue for DoD. Yes, I’ve read everything on courtlistener. I trust you have as well, but did you understand any of it?! This site keeps getting dumber and dumber.
- brookst 7mo ago
  Why are they entitled to have a mechanism to force a private company to deal in weapons and surveillance?
  - nickysielicki 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - etchalon 7mo ago
      No, Anthropic is suing for the right to not be labeled a supply chain risk for a failed contract negotiation. Nothing in their suit, or this ruling, says the DoD has to buy things from them.
      - nickysielicki 7mo ago
        Whose supply chain? A supply chain risk to whom? If they are comfortable without being in that supply chain, whoever’s supply chain that is (exercise to the reader), why are they suing?
    - thereticent 7mo ago
      You can say this person is an idiot all you want, but the fact of the matter is that if DoD does not want to deal with Anthropic through Palantir, their only legal recourse at this point is to drop Palantir. They shot their shot with this legal gamble to remove Anthropic from the supply chain, and they failed. That's it. Curtains or deal with it.
      - nickysielicki 7mo ago
        You really think the world works that way? One judge with two years on the bench makes a determination after two weeks of consideration and the case is closed forever? This injunction doesn’t take effect for a week, precisely so that the Department has time to appeal this to the 9th circuit. And even if the 9th circuit doesn’t stay it, SCOTUS will. This court has stayed district court injunctions against the executive on national security grounds multiple times. They are not going to let a single district judge in San Francisco dictate military procurement during an active war. Obviously. OBVIOUSLY. Lin didn’t drop Palantir from the defense supply chain unilaterally. The world does not work that way. Obviously. She issued a preliminary injunction that will be appealed before it takes effect. The DoD has not “shot their shot.” This lawsuit hasn’t even started yet.
- dragonwriter 7mo ago
  > DoD would like to use Palantir. DoD also believes Anthropic is pursuing posttraining in future models that will limit the effectiveness of Palantir tooling, if used by Palantir, for the purposes of DoDs mission. > What other legal mechanism do they have to prevent Palantir from specifically not subcontracting out to Anthropic, other than a supply chain risk designation? Even assuming the stated concern was justifiable, and even assuming that there was no alternative mechanism, that does not: (1) Justify them failing to what is explicit required for the supply chain risk designation, (2) Create an exception to the 5th Amendment Due Process Clause, which (for reasons stated in the ruling) merely meeting the facial standards in the statute for the supply chain risk designation does not do when the supplier is (contrary to the motivating justification for the statutory provision) a domestic supplier where the government has no special evidence that it can demonstrate for exigency, (3) Justify the other challenged actions covered by the injunction (like the Hegseth Directive ordering a much broader ban than is imposed by the supply chain risk designation, or the earlier Presidential Directive ordering an even broader ban than the Hegseth Directive.) (4) Really, do anything at all legally, because it is not a principal of US law that the government, if it has a good motive, is free to act outside of the law merely because there is no provision inside the law which meets its desires.
  - nickysielicki 7mo ago
    The court hasn’t found anything. A preliminary injunction is a finding of likelihood of success on the merits, not a ruling on the merits. The designation is still in place and will remain in place until the appellate courts weigh in. On the substance: nothing in 3252 limits ‘adversary’ to foreign actors. Congress used ‘foreign adversary’ in other statutes when it meant foreign adversary. It didn’t here. That’s a problem for you. The government’s brief cites three dictionaries defining adversary as ‘an opponent in a contest, conflict, or dispute.’ A vendor that questions active military operations through intermediaries and demands an approval role in the operational decision chain is an opponent in a dispute. That’s the plain text. Originalist judges will see it that way. I don’t really follow what you’re saying in point 1, the supply chain risk rationale is in the confidential record of this court case. There’s no way for us to know what’s in there, but it’s safe to assume the government covered their bases. On point 2, I also don’t understand what you’re saying. They are in court right now. How have they been denied due process? Point 3 is less interesting to me. Twitter posts by Hegseth obviously don’t really hold water. Anthropic should win here. But that’s not really what this case is about or why it’s interesting. Your point 4 assumes the government acted outside the law. I’m not convinced of that. That’s the very question being litigated. The government’s position is that it acted within 3252. One San Francisco district judge disagreed at the preliminary injunction stage. That’s not a final answer. Not even close.
- zmmmmm 7mo ago
  I think the whole entire point of this is they shouldn't be excluding Anthropic as an entity, they should be excluding all suppliers on equal terms on the basis of whether they satisfy requirements or not. If it is a requirement that they be able to conduct mass domestic surveillance then they should put that into their contract with Palantir, not "You can't use Anthropic". So I agree with you, it ought to be illegal for them to tell a supplier what other suppliers to use. But that is exactly the larger point here in the first place that they should not be doing that at all.
  - nickysielicki 7mo ago
    The government cannot conduct massive domestic surveillance in any case, that’s illegal. Other vendors are mature and serious enough to understand that the government is subject to American law and must operate under American law. They’re mature and serious enough to understand that it is the exclusive right of the judicial branch to make determinations around whether the law has been violated or not. They’re mature and serious enough to understand that the DoD has a mandate to pursue its mission to the fullest extent allowable by the law, and it is the sole responsibility of the DoD legal team to determine whether they are operating safely within the bounds of the law. Anthropic is uniquely interested in introducing itself as an external enforcer of US law, a sort of belt-and-suspenders approach, where the Department is not only subject to operate under the constitution and the laws from the legislative branch, but also subject to anthropics interpretation of whether they are operating under the constitution and the laws from the legislative branch. The department of defense does not want to engage in massive domestic surveillance beyond what the law allows them to do. They have signed agreements with OpenAI and other vendors which reiterate that they do not wish to use AI systems for massive domestic surveillance. These terms were unsatisfactory for Anthropic, for whatever reason. The problem is not the terms of the agreement. It’s the people and the way they conduct business. It’s the fact that they’ve expressed a willingness to hold their product (or future products) hostage, at the cost of DoD operational excellence. It’s the fact that they’re training a specific model variant for government usage with extra guardrails and limitations and values. Above all else, it’s the fact that they want to leverage their position as a leading AI company to influence government policy. This is not how a serious reliable partner of the government behaves. The problem from the DoDs perspective is the company itself and the people in charge of it.

DoD would like to use Palantir. DoD also believes Anthropic is pursuing posttraining in future models that will limit the effectiveness of Palantir tooling, if used by Palantir, for the purposes of DoDs mission. What other legal mechanism do they have to prevent Palantir from specifically not subcontracting out to Anthropic, other than a supply chain risk designation? Note that directly asking Palantir to prefer Google or OpenAI over Anthropic is a violation of procurement law and highly illegal. What other mechanism do they have?

dathery 7mo ago
They can say "sorry Palantir, we will only sign a contract with you if you commit not to use Claude to provide services" and then Palantir is free to decide if they want to accept the terms of the contract or not. This is how business works.
- nickysielicki 7mo ago
  That would be illegal and ripe for corruption. It would also require the DoD to renegotiate the thousands of existing defense contract it has outstanding. That’s the entire reason this law exists, because what you’re suggesting is impractical. The department has to confidentially document its rationale for marking a company as a supply chain risk. It’s in the confidential record of this very court case. That’s the legal way to do this.
  - etchalon 7mo ago
    Yes, it turns out our laws make it hard for the government to do a lot of things because making it easy for them to do things leads to some deeply authoritarian bullshit.
    - nickysielicki 7mo ago
      What a beautiful/horrifying inversion of logic. The government does it the legal way, through an existing law, and you’re short circuiting and pattern matching to “the government is trying to work around the law”. The DoD is not trying to sneak its way out of behaving legally. On the contrary, they’re doing it the legal way and you’re suggesting that they could just do it the illegal way.
      - etchalon 7mo ago
        The DOD is labeling a domestic company a supply chain risk - label generally reserved for hostile foreign powers and their cooperators - because that domestic company didn't agree to its contract terms. Judge Lin's order finds that it do so specifically to harm that company, without due process and without the remedies Congress specifically requested be used when it drafted the law. The DOD was, in essence, using a law illegally. The version of events you present does not seem to be tethered to reality.
      - thereticent 7mo ago
        Again, you of undue certainty: the government attempted this potentially legal avenue, and it was adjudicated as impermissible. Meaning what they tried didn't work. Why are you acting like no one else here understands what has happened? Probability dictates that you are almost certainly not the smartest person in the room.
        nickysielicki 7mo ago
        It wasn’t “adjudicated as impermissible”. You’re misunderstanding what a preliminary injunction represents. It’s right there in the name: preliminary. It’s preliminary because it precedes the actual real adjudication. > Why are you acting like no one else here understands what has happened? Because you clearly don’t? Because nobody who has a remote understanding of the legal system would be stupid enough to suggest that a San Francisco district court judge preliminary injunction decision would carry enough weight to dictate DoD procurement during an active hot war.
  - dathery 7mo ago
    Again, did you read the order? The judge's order explicitly said this would be legal and cites the law permitting it, then goes on to explain why this action did not satisfy it: > Covered procurement actions include “[t]he decision to withhold consent for a contractor to subcontract with a particular source or to direct a contractor . . . to exclude a particular source from consideration for a subcontract.” 10 U.S.C. § 3252(d)(2)(C). I strongly suggest reading the order. I have included the link again: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.465515/gov.uscourts.cand.465515.96.0_3.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.46...
    - nickysielicki 7mo ago
      You can’t be serious… Covered procurement actions are the things the Secretary can do after making a supply chain risk designation under 3252. The designation is a prerequisite. You can’t direct a contractor to exclude a subcontractor under (d)(2)(C) without first going through the 3252 determination process. You’re literally posting evidence for why this is the only legal avenue for DoD. Yes, I’ve read everything on courtlistener. I trust you have as well, but did you understand any of it?! This site keeps getting dumber and dumber.
brookst 7mo ago
Why are they entitled to have a mechanism to force a private company to deal in weapons and surveillance?
- nickysielicki 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - etchalon 7mo ago
    No, Anthropic is suing for the right to not be labeled a supply chain risk for a failed contract negotiation. Nothing in their suit, or this ruling, says the DoD has to buy things from them.
    - nickysielicki 7mo ago
      Whose supply chain? A supply chain risk to whom? If they are comfortable without being in that supply chain, whoever’s supply chain that is (exercise to the reader), why are they suing?
  - thereticent 7mo ago
    You can say this person is an idiot all you want, but the fact of the matter is that if DoD does not want to deal with Anthropic through Palantir, their only legal recourse at this point is to drop Palantir. They shot their shot with this legal gamble to remove Anthropic from the supply chain, and they failed. That's it. Curtains or deal with it.
    - nickysielicki 7mo ago
      You really think the world works that way? One judge with two years on the bench makes a determination after two weeks of consideration and the case is closed forever? This injunction doesn’t take effect for a week, precisely so that the Department has time to appeal this to the 9th circuit. And even if the 9th circuit doesn’t stay it, SCOTUS will. This court has stayed district court injunctions against the executive on national security grounds multiple times. They are not going to let a single district judge in San Francisco dictate military procurement during an active war. Obviously. OBVIOUSLY. Lin didn’t drop Palantir from the defense supply chain unilaterally. The world does not work that way. Obviously. She issued a preliminary injunction that will be appealed before it takes effect. The DoD has not “shot their shot.” This lawsuit hasn’t even started yet.
dragonwriter 7mo ago
> DoD would like to use Palantir. DoD also believes Anthropic is pursuing posttraining in future models that will limit the effectiveness of Palantir tooling, if used by Palantir, for the purposes of DoDs mission. > What other legal mechanism do they have to prevent Palantir from specifically not subcontracting out to Anthropic, other than a supply chain risk designation? Even assuming the stated concern was justifiable, and even assuming that there was no alternative mechanism, that does not: (1) Justify them failing to what is explicit required for the supply chain risk designation, (2) Create an exception to the 5th Amendment Due Process Clause, which (for reasons stated in the ruling) merely meeting the facial standards in the statute for the supply chain risk designation does not do when the supplier is (contrary to the motivating justification for the statutory provision) a domestic supplier where the government has no special evidence that it can demonstrate for exigency, (3) Justify the other challenged actions covered by the injunction (like the Hegseth Directive ordering a much broader ban than is imposed by the supply chain risk designation, or the earlier Presidential Directive ordering an even broader ban than the Hegseth Directive.) (4) Really, do anything at all legally, because it is not a principal of US law that the government, if it has a good motive, is free to act outside of the law merely because there is no provision inside the law which meets its desires.
- nickysielicki 7mo ago
  The court hasn’t found anything. A preliminary injunction is a finding of likelihood of success on the merits, not a ruling on the merits. The designation is still in place and will remain in place until the appellate courts weigh in. On the substance: nothing in 3252 limits ‘adversary’ to foreign actors. Congress used ‘foreign adversary’ in other statutes when it meant foreign adversary. It didn’t here. That’s a problem for you. The government’s brief cites three dictionaries defining adversary as ‘an opponent in a contest, conflict, or dispute.’ A vendor that questions active military operations through intermediaries and demands an approval role in the operational decision chain is an opponent in a dispute. That’s the plain text. Originalist judges will see it that way. I don’t really follow what you’re saying in point 1, the supply chain risk rationale is in the confidential record of this court case. There’s no way for us to know what’s in there, but it’s safe to assume the government covered their bases. On point 2, I also don’t understand what you’re saying. They are in court right now. How have they been denied due process? Point 3 is less interesting to me. Twitter posts by Hegseth obviously don’t really hold water. Anthropic should win here. But that’s not really what this case is about or why it’s interesting. Your point 4 assumes the government acted outside the law. I’m not convinced of that. That’s the very question being litigated. The government’s position is that it acted within 3252. One San Francisco district judge disagreed at the preliminary injunction stage. That’s not a final answer. Not even close.
zmmmmm 7mo ago
I think the whole entire point of this is they shouldn't be excluding Anthropic as an entity, they should be excluding all suppliers on equal terms on the basis of whether they satisfy requirements or not. If it is a requirement that they be able to conduct mass domestic surveillance then they should put that into their contract with Palantir, not "You can't use Anthropic". So I agree with you, it ought to be illegal for them to tell a supplier what other suppliers to use. But that is exactly the larger point here in the first place that they should not be doing that at all.
- nickysielicki 7mo ago
  The government cannot conduct massive domestic surveillance in any case, that’s illegal. Other vendors are mature and serious enough to understand that the government is subject to American law and must operate under American law. They’re mature and serious enough to understand that it is the exclusive right of the judicial branch to make determinations around whether the law has been violated or not. They’re mature and serious enough to understand that the DoD has a mandate to pursue its mission to the fullest extent allowable by the law, and it is the sole responsibility of the DoD legal team to determine whether they are operating safely within the bounds of the law. Anthropic is uniquely interested in introducing itself as an external enforcer of US law, a sort of belt-and-suspenders approach, where the Department is not only subject to operate under the constitution and the laws from the legislative branch, but also subject to anthropics interpretation of whether they are operating under the constitution and the laws from the legislative branch. The department of defense does not want to engage in massive domestic surveillance beyond what the law allows them to do. They have signed agreements with OpenAI and other vendors which reiterate that they do not wish to use AI systems for massive domestic surveillance. These terms were unsatisfactory for Anthropic, for whatever reason. The problem is not the terms of the agreement. It’s the people and the way they conduct business. It’s the fact that they’ve expressed a willingness to hold their product (or future products) hostage, at the cost of DoD operational excellence. It’s the fact that they’re training a specific model variant for government usage with extra guardrails and limitations and values. Above all else, it’s the fact that they want to leverage their position as a leading AI company to influence government policy. This is not how a serious reliable partner of the government behaves. The problem from the DoDs perspective is the company itself and the people in charge of it.