Comment by Filligree
5 hours ago
In American law, companies have the choice of whether or not to do business with the government, outside of a few corner cases. There’s a process for forcing them, but it can’t just be because the leader says so.
In this particular case Anthropic had a contract stating what the military could and could not use their models for. The military broke that contract. Anthropic declined to sign a revised one.
This is within their rights, and more to the point, the government should absolutely not be allowed to unilaterally alter contracts they’ve already signed!
Predictability is the whole point. Undermining it is how you destroy your own economy.
That is allegedly not what happened. Anthropic’s CEO was happy to grant waivers on a case by case basis.
The problem is the branches of the government that Anthropic was doing business with found it infeasible to do this.
They had another problem. If one of their contractors used Claude to engineer solutions contrary to Anthropic’s “manifesto” would Claude poison pill the code?
Basically Anthropic wanted the angels halo and the devils horns and the govt said pick one.
> That is allegedly not what happened. Anthropic’s CEO was happy to grant waivers on a case by case basis. The problem is the branches of the government that Anthropic was doing business with found it infeasible to do this.
That's not what the presidential announcement blacklisting Anthropic said. It said they're being punished for trying to require that the military follow their terms of service.
That’s the other pov (from the govt angle) - https://www.businessinsider.com/pentagon-official-details-ho...
The media is usually flush with defending Anthropic. And yes - the supply chain risk label is too broad. But there is another side to the story and Anthropic isn’t an “innocent” as made out to be.
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Sure, they have a "choice", except that no one turns done the kind of money the government has to offer, and if the company is public they are legally obligated to increase shareholder value.