Comment by HarHarVeryFunny
6 hours ago
Supply chain risk seems a massive over-reaction, but understandable that the government doesn't want to commit to Anthropic controlled software for any critical military application if they can't 100% rely on Anthropic support in being able to use it as they see fit.
Anthropic has no control over their deployed models in classified environments. That is managed by Palantir and government clouds. https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/04/01/claude-codes...
This is not an abstract disagreement at all. The red lines that the Department of War wanted to cross were made extremely clear: They want to build Skynet with Claude, and build a mass domestic surveillance system. Now they will have to make do with building those two systems with Gemini and ChatGPT.
> 100% rely on
that's the mobster-loyalty mentality, and it's not how successful (read: desirable for the most people) governments function
Every government on Earth has legislation that allows it to force companies (and citizens) to do its bidding under certain circumstances. That’s pretty much the definition of a government.
The point is this not being the first tool in the toolbox. Other competitors have shown they are more than willing to build weapons of death (OpenAI) so as the government you put them as the preferred contractor.
What the orange turd is going is rather petty bullshit in a market where many options exist.
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Then the government should have invoked that legislation.
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yes, but anthropic really is an exception.
it is a bizarre company which also inherits the authoritarian infrastructure of cloud services.
that is: remote control of the software, spying on customers, etc.
remote control of the software, spying on customers, etc.
The military ran Anthropic models on their own infrastructure; Anthropic had no access to it. "They might disable Claude in the middle of an emergency" was never a possibility.
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> understandable that the government doesn't want to commit to Anthropic controlled software
But that's not at issue here. Obviously everyone agrees that the Pentagon can issue RFQ's to whatever specifications it wants. They can buy whatever they want, for the same reason that you or I are free to sell whatever we want.
The subject at hand is an attempt to use national security regulatory power to coerce Anthropic into selling a product it doesn't want to sell.
> The subject at hand is an attempt to use national security regulatory power to coerce Anthropic into selling a product it doesn't want to sell.
It would be naive to think that a private company could deny the government access to any tech if they want it for military or surveillance etc usage. In this case the government isn't forcing Anthropic to do it, they have alternatives and are perhaps making an example of Anthropic for refusing.
You could even make a case that the "supply chain risk" designation DOES make sense. If Anthropic are opposed to certain uses of their software, then doesn't that potentially impact companies that are part of the supply chain as well?
There are plenty of companies that are opposed to certain operations of the US military and refuse to sell to the US military on those grounds. None of them are considered a supply chain risk because that's not what a supply chain risk is.
A supply chain risk is specifically an entity that is likely to maliciously sabotage the US military's operations, such as Chinese companies that are controlled by the CCP. It is not simply a decision to "not buy from this company", but rather a wide-ranging decision that this particular company is a national security threat.
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How is this coersion?
Is it coersion when people refuse to buy anything but free range chicken eggs?
DoD just refuses to buy a product. Anthropic just lost a customer because their product didn't fit the requirements of the customer.
They're saying no one who works with them can eat non free range chickens too, no?
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> DoD just refuses to buy a product.
That's not what happened. DOD bought a product, with terms precluding specific applications of the product. DOD decided to change the terms, vendor said no. DOD threw a hissyfit (well, Hegseth did) and said, "No one can use it if they do business with us!"
If they had just terminated their contracts with Anthropic, then there would likely be no issue beyond having to pay out any penalties for terminating a contract early. They could then go to Grok (as they did) and OpenAI and used them instead. Or even kept the contract with Anthropic and its limitations, and just used the others for the cases where Anthropic was not permitted.