Comment by nerdsniper
12 hours ago
> The part that gets me about anthropic red lines is "of Americans", okay so the rest of the civilized world is up for grabs then? It's okay to destabalize allies with sabotaged tests (in machine learning) and data exfiltration outside America?
Regardless of Anthropic's "moral" position (inasmuch as a corporation can even have morals) against spying on non-Americans, they would have no way to enforce that limitation against the government because non-citizens outside of the USA have no protections from the intrusions of the US government.
They can include these limitations in a contract which can be enforced like any contract.
FISA Section 702 (50 U.S.C. § 1881a) or CLOUD Act could be used to override any contractual terms that US government agencies may have agreed to. Those clauses would be unenforceable / unexecutable.
More generally it would be overpowered by the Sovereign Acts Doctrine.
The facts aren’t identical to the 2008 Yahoo FISCR case but that case sets the tone for how any clauses like this would just be brushed under the rug.
I don't think they can, at least if they are making an argument for why the Defense Production Act should not apply to them. Their original argument is that they will not help with anything that is unconstitutional, such as the unlawful spying on American citizens, without a warrant.
I don’t think Defense Production Act lets the government takeover what you produce, just that if you sell something you have to prioritize selling to the Feds. There is also precedent that code is speech and the government cannot compel speech (this came up during the debacle where FBI wanted a backdoor to unlock iPhones and Apple said no, we’re not building that)
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