Posted by klausa 6 hours ago
Anthropic has vowed to fight this designation in court.
Without weighing in on the constitutionality or legality of the move, I think it's obvious that this kind of retaliation power is unmatched by any private business that has a contractual dispute.
If a private business doesn't like Anthropic's terms, it can walk away from the deal, but it can't conduct coordinated retaliation with other companies before ending up in antitrust territory or potentially violating the Sherman Act.
Now for my editorializing: The fact that Pete Hegseth is willing to apply this type of designation against a U.S. company simply because he doesn't like its terms is pretty chilling. It's all the more scary once you consider which terms he objects to.
There's a lot of backchanneling going on between Emil and Dario because everyone's in the same circles but it's all for naught.
In fact adding onto it, IIRC this is the reason why google and amazon have to divest essentially from Anthropic if they want Govt. contracts
Hope this helps though a lawyer's input will definitely be more credible. So its good for them to respond as well.
In practice I would suspect companies with such contracts would play it safe by outright banning the use of Anthtropic products, even if they could technically be used for work on contracts with other parties.
[1] https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-comments-secretary-...
I canceled my ChatGPT subscription a couple of days ago. In my opinion the Trump administration has become far too much of an "imperial Presidency" in its acts of war and its attempts to bully companies. It is also corrupt on a massive scale. I distrust anyone who thinks "yes, I'd like to work with this administration".
Is this about locating the right target for a sortie for example?
The reports about Venezuela and Iran seem to suggest it's primary role was processing bulk intel.
But also that it was being used in planning and target selection.
Presumably what spooked Anthropic was that these tools were about to be directed internally.
But it's not clear if this is a point of principle that the government wants no holds barred with it's tools?
The whole point is that the use-case does not matter; either you allow the government to do everything they want, either you don’t.
More generally, are there any comparable contract requirements in the field of defense, for a company in the same position as Anthropic? I'm curious.
I suppose the USA's frenemies will jump on the occasion and use the incredible opportunity offered to them in a silver platter.