Comment by inkysigma
5 hours ago
I think this was discussed ad nauseum last time so I am wondering if somehow this has changed but the biggest part of the issue last time was the retaliation. You seem to suggest that this was due to the government not wanting restrictions on their actions. I feel this severely downplays how unusual this designation is considering, like Anthropic says, this has not been applied to domestic companies.
Why couldn't excluding Anthropic be done a different mechanism than a supply chain risk. Why wouldn't this be a standard part of an agreement or a request and simply refuse to renew or cancel a contract rather than being designated a supply chain risk. If some third party contractor for an unrelated non military reason wanted to use Claude as part of their process, it seems perfectly allowable.
If this was a remotely standard way of operation, why did a fair amount of corporate America sign briefs concerned with the retaliatory aspect.
Parts of the action seemed wholly retaliatory as well since Pentagon officials certainly used it as a threat. Why can't a US company have views contrary to the policies of the US government? Certainly the US government is free to not do business with them, but this designation affects everybody doing any kind of indirect business with the US government which is a rather long chain. If this becomes a legitimate mechanism, how might we distinguish caring about a secure supply chain and simply wiping out a company that disagreed with a pro war attitude? If a machining shop had a policy against manufacturing weapons at all, could they be blocked from making server racks for Microsoft or perhaps light fixtures for the Department of Labor? There are plenty of areas that are, again, non military? I don't think it's credible to claim that Anthropic will deliberately sabotage operations.
>Anthropic opposing the US government
Is it not possible that this would change the risk profile of depending on them. It makes sense to work with people who support you than oppose you for things which are critical.
- Having principles and sticking to them is not opposing.
- Just because you don't do everything someone wants you to do does not make you a supply chain risk.
My point is did everyone know all of those principals and how committed Anthropic was to them from the beginning or did new information come in and now they need to adjust. Just because something is a term in a contract that doesn't mean it's necessarily strongly held belief that will never change.
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Who runs the government changes every 2 to 4 years… are you suggesting we completely swap every vendor in the US government to align with whatever political party is in office?
There’s nothing indicating Anthropic was not keeping their end of the contract. If they had, there would have been other recourse.
>are you suggesting we completely swap every vendor
I think American companies should be supporting the government as much as possible. Even when it switches.
>There’s nothing indicating Anthropic was not keeping their end of the contract.
Which is why we are talking about risk and not breach of contract.