Comment by tgma
1 day ago
What are you suggesting here? US government breaching the contract already signed? I am not aware of that happening here.
> Anthropic's terms were laid out in the contract the Pentagon signed, which they want to forcibly amend.
It's called negotiation in business. I am sure both sides are clear-eyed on what the consequences were and Anthropic made a calculated bet (probably correctly) that some segment of their employee/customer base would get wet by hearing this news and it more than offsets the lots business, thus is worth it.
It appears that when it comes to Jesse Jackson you're entirely capable of understanding how a shakedown works: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47046514
Yes, I am entirely capable of doing that. Your point?
I'm providing information for other readers to evaluate your good faith, or lack thereof.
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> I am not aware
People have noticed.
> It's called negotiation in business.
The bad faith in this statement alone is almost equal to the sum of it in the rest of your comments.
I'm just curious, do you understand that the DoD isn't saying it won't do business with Anthropic. Its saying it will also ban any company that does business with the DoD (so 90% of large enterprises?) from doing business from Anthropic. Are you aware of this?
Yes, I am aware. That is not entirely unreasonable if it touches the actual Supply Chain tree. I do fully sympathize that the extent of legality of that rule should be clarified/restricted if say, Claude is used by a separate division unrelated to DoD business. I think courts will resolve this, likely fairly quickly via an injunction.
Hegseth managed to get through art of the deal? Maybe he made a drinking game out of it, a shot per page.
You seem really unaware of the timeline of this issue and what has actually happened, I think you should update your info before posting so confidently wrongly.
The contract, including Anthropic's redlines, was signed more than a year ago and has been humming along with no objections from anybody. Hegseth abruptly got a bug up his ass about it last week, and demanded Anthropic sign a revised version under threat of punishment. Anthropic is simply saying "no, we will not be forced into signing a new version, you can either keep going with the original terms we all agreed to, or stop using us". The Pentagon can simply stop using Anthropic if they don't like the terms anymore (which, again, are the terms Pentagon agreed to in the first place). But what the DoW wants is to strong-arm Anthropic, using the DPA, into new terms because they abruptly changed their mind. That's not "negotiation" in any sense, that's Mafia behavior.
How you characterize the behavior, Mafia or not, is of course your opinion, and I am sure if you are a voter/stakeholder you'd consider that in your political activity, but I'd appreciate if you clarify what you mean but your story and timeline, so I ask again, are you suggesting the US government has breached the contract they already signed?
I don't know why you keep bringing up breach of contract, it is not relevant to this discussion at all. No, the government did not breach the contract AFAIK, they just decided they didn't like it anymore, and instead of either withdrawing or entering into a negotiation about it, they decided to use threats to try and get their terms at metaphorical gunpoint.
The actual terms of the contract aren't even relevant, this is purely a matter of tort law and whether you can bully someone into a new contact because you woke up one day and decided you didn't like the one you agreed to.
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The comment you replied to is pretty clear: Yes, the US government seeks to void the contract they already signed.
That said, many government contracts include some variant of "we can cancel at any time for any reason".
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