Comment by NewsaHackO
13 hours ago
No, in your example, if the dodgy Chinese company is a supply chain risk due to sabotage, why would they invoke an act to force production of the bolts from the same company for use for national defense preparedness, which would be clearly a national security risk?
The OP specifically mentions this in the context of "systems" (a vague, poorly-defined term) and "classified networks" in which Anthropic products are already present. Without more details on what "systems" these are or the terms of the contracts under which these were produced it's difficult to make a definitive judgement, but broadly speaking it's not a good thing if the government is relying on a product which Anthropic has designed to arbitrarily refuse orders by its own judgement.
I really don't see how anybody could think a private defense contractor should be entitled to countermand the military by leveraging the control it has over products it has already sold. Maybe the terms of their contract entitled them to some discretion over what orders the product will carry out, but there's no such claim in the OP.
>I really don't see how anybody could think a private defense contractor should be entitled to countermand the military by leveraging the control it has over products it has already sold. Maybe the terms of their contract entitled them to some discretion over what orders the product will carry out, but there's no such claim in the OP.
I don't think that is what is happening. What most likely is happening is that they want Anthropic to produce new systems due to the success of the previous ones, but they are refusing to do so because the new systems are against their mission. What seems like the DoD is attempting to do, on one hand, is call them a supply chain risk to limit Anthropic's business opportunities with other companies, and then, on the other hand, simultaneously invoke DPA so that they can compel them to make the new system. But why would the government want to compel a company to make a system for them due to a need for national prepareness that they designated as such a supply chain risk that they forbid other companies that provide government services from doing business with due to the national security risk of having a sabotaged supply chain? It doesn't really make sense, other than from a pure coercion perspective.
>limit Anthropic's business opportunities with other companies
Does it necessarily prevent other companies from doing business with them or does it prevent other companies from subcontracting them on government projects? The term "supply chain" leads me to think it's the latter.
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