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- Hacker News
- 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.
- 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.
by exabrial - This debate seems to be missng the bigger picture regarding dual-use technology. If the precedent is set that any 'terms of use' which restrict military app can be deemed a 'supply chain risk,' does that effectively mean no commercial software vendor can ever legaly impose safety gurdrails on their products if, they wantto sell to government contractors? How does this impact the future of open-source components that are widely used in defense software?by mdaiWorks
- Admittedly I still need to do some reading on the current ruling, but how this isn't seen as an open and shut case of vindictive prosecution (if that's even a thing for this branch of law?) is astounding. The administration couldn't have made it more obvious there was no merit to their designation of Anthropic.by ctippett
- This smells like corruption to me.
OpenAI has hacked several prominent entities and is allowed to do business as usual but Anthropic putting guardrails on the military's usage of AI is the national security threat while Pentagon itself said that over reliance on AI lead to that attack on school in Minab.
I have also learned that OpenAI's president is a big maga donor and now I am thinking of cancelling my OpenAI membership todau and signing up with Anthropic again.
Edit - i am not a OAI hater and i don't hate anyone. I am just saying Anthropic is kinda getting bullied and OAI is not being punished enough for their actions. It is time for me to support Anthropic (with my $$$) instead of OAI.
- I still don't fully understand what this was about. It sounds like the DoD said they wanted unrestricted access to Anthropic's models, Anthropic refused, so the Pentagon declared that they wouldn't use them at all.
Isn't this basically what Anthropic wanted?
by petcat - I wonder if this is going start being abused soon.
If I was Palantir or any other GOP aligned company, I would be completely against this. What's to stop a Democratic president from doing the same thing and destroying them?
by iamdelirium - I know everyone says this is political but it actually seems like a textbook designation. Anthropic wanted to have rules on how the military used AI, the military said no and therefore doesn't want anthropic used anywhere in their supply line.
This is like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike orders, now the military needs to have a special box of pens that don't have stipulations attached. With AI usage it would be the same thing except applied to entire product chains. It seems like it would just add more complexity to operations.
You can agree with the rules anthropic wanted, but having rules set by a private company at all that apply to the military does seem fair for the military to object to.
>The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary
Though they'd probably put the DoD on the cybersecurity whitelist today, the very idea of the claude whitelists for certain functionality already exists and is being used by them today.