Comment by exabrial

I think both sides are wrong. In no particular order:

US does not buy weapons that self-regulate generally. The US can and has purchased weapons with stipulations on how they should be used. For instance, and I'm making this up, they might purchase cluster munitions for smashing up an airfields, but with a stipulation they may not be used where humans are present or something. The munition doesn't check GPS and refuse to detonate if GPS doesn't indicate it's over some Russian airfield. Nor does an M4 fail to fire if it's on US Soil. Anthropic tried to build safeguards and out-regulate the government. Everyone here should know that such limitations would (can and have, see some famous IFF spoofing incidents) be exploited by an enemy, which is generally why they aren't acceptable in a military context. Without seeing the contract signed, one possibility is Anthropic tried to push regulations onto the government, and Anthropic gets to ride away on a high horse.

The other side: The Supply Chain Risk feels like an abuse. It's likely a valid designation and likely has its historical uses. If this was a contract issue, that would have been the correct way to litigate. Instead, again without seeing the contract, it feels like this is way to try and stifle their uptake in defense sector; basically attempting to strong arm them by choking a business segment off. Again, if there is a in fact a legitimate breach of contract here, it should be litigated as such. The alternative is there is no such breach, and Anthropic built limitations into the contract and the Pentagon just has buyers remorse. Honestly this wouldn't surprise me, the federal government generally incinerates tax dollars, and with the massive marketing hullabaloo pushed by AI companies, its completely likely a giant contract was signed without reading the fine print.

Honestly both sides of this annoy me.