Then the pen manufacturer hears about this and says “Our pens are not made of graphite and are not suitable to be used in nuclear reactors”, to which the reactor owner says “it’s fine, they fit in the graphite rod holes, and we’re just using until the next generation of pens come out which will do an even better job”, and then the pen manufacturer says “I’m not going to sell you any pens until you agree that they will be used only writing.”
I can see how I might reasonably refuse to deal with that pen manufacturer. The pen manufacturer is unreasonably pushy and they're going to be massive trouble to deal with because they're all up in my business in a paranoid way and disrupting my use of their product. Companies have made my never-again list for far smaller slights.
The intent and framing matters a lot here. Refusal to remove safety features is a LOT different than deliberately building mechanisms to sabotage would-be operations.
It's to ensure that companies that the DoW relies on don't build on top of a product that isn't fit for DoW work.
You seem to be agreeing with this designation in a way. The DoW essentially said "Pen company won't let us use their pens as neutron-flux regulator rods, so anyone building power plants for us isn't allowed to use these pens as neutron-flux regulator rods".
What is the problem you have with that?
(and yeah, there might be a completely legitimate reason to stop your subcontractors from using HuaweiSpyPens, but determining that ACME Pens is just as dangerous because they refused your neutron flux regulator order looks like a punitive measure, not practical risk reduction)
Mind you, that is not the DoW’s charter. How would a restriction on that be “unfit” as you say?
The DoW is perfectly within their rights not to purchase anthropic products. That’s different than labeling them a supply chain risk.
That's not how it works.
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
> No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.
Example chosen specifically for its unambiguous unconstitutionality.
> Me: That's not how it works.
> You: It actually is
Moreover, regardless of what the courts do, the military still shouldn't execute a law like that, because they too have the ability to refuse to violate the constitution even if Congress tells them to.
It literally is a textbook definition, signed into US law:
“Supply chain risk,” means the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of a covered system so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise degrade the function, use, or operation of such system (see 10 U.S.C. 3252).
To add onto what another commenter said, the pen analogy would be more like the manufacturer designing pens that stopped working when used to sign strike orders they disagreed with.
A vendor with particularly poor QA might be a risk in your supply chain but isn't a "supply chain risk" according to this designation and neither would Anthropic be.
Antrophic merely said they don't allow their tools to be used for autonomous killing.
A very specific case.
So where is the danger making it necessary preventing all suppliers from using Claude at all? That only concerns those who work directly on autonomous killing and only they will have to go to Altman or Musk.
So none of that is any threat to the military - so it was just black mailing to make them do the governments will - which is something usually dictatorships do, not democratic systems.
How does Android and iPhone meet the grade given apps have pretty consistently leaked locations, base layouts etc?
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-cybersecurity-ad-tr...
> The U.S. military has disabled advertising tracking tools in government-issued phones, computers and other devices, officials recently told Congress.
> The different military branches confirmed they had done so, some only this summer, following reporting that commercially available data taken from these devices and sold freely by data brokers, was being used by Iran and other adversaries to track and in some cases target American bases and personnel.
https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/26-104... see page 30
China, Russia, Iran, come to mind.
Those are (arguably) adversaries but the actor here is Anthropic, which is not an adversary.
https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/26-104...
> Whatever paradigmatic examples individual members of Congress may have had in mind, the statutory definition is not limited to “adversar[ies],” 10 U.S.C. § 3252(d)(4), and instead covers “any person,”
Anthropic's actions were not sabotage, malicious, or subversive. That seems to be a requirement of the definition.
there's section 4713 which is roughly "Secretary of War can pull the nat.sec. card, bye"
That fails to accord with the claim:
>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
However, that's not what a supply chain risk is. It's not an order to "don't buy these products if they don't work the way we want them to", its designating Anthropic as a national security threat because they might intentionally sabotage US military operations.
Yes, this is why the DoW won’t use them.
No it isn’t see above
DoD. Gulf of Mexico. Lake Ontario.
I don't think it's reasonable to fear that Anthropic would change the deal after contractually agreeing to terms of use. The government is using that as an excuse because they know that Anthropic hasn't actually met the definition of a supply-chain risk.
They didn't "reasonably" fear anything. There is absolutely no evidence to support these allegations. Anthropic has the right to impose licensing terms. Merely disagreeing with the government is not evidence of wrongdoing.
If Anthropic wasn't allowed to say what they said, how would they be allowed to object to their government's illegal use of their products at all? It sounds to me like their only choices were "shut up" or "be punished", which is a clear-cut violation of their rights.
Which means the exact use limitations WOULD NOT BE DELINEATED IN WRITING in advance.
Claude terms here: ANTHROPIC EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
Like most so-called AI, the Claude program is inherently unreliable. I doubt Anthropic would ever agree to "function as contracted".
This is a designation reserved for terrorists and the link.
Actively handicapping a product that's otherwise capable qualifies.
No, it doesn't. The military doesn't have a right to force product requirements and terms of use on companies they contract with.
If they don't like the contract terms, they can simply not sign a contract and not do business with a company. Trying to get them designated a supply-chain risk is just political retribution.
How is that not what they're saying here by banning it in the supply chain?
How else do you prevent any dod purchases or contracts from 'having contact' with a software you don't trust?
But they're not actively handicapping it. They're saying it would be wildly irresponsible to assume it's "otherwise capable".
And very critically: they have taken zero steps to "actively handicap" it in any way.
The converse does not qualify. If I advertise a chemical with an admixture that prevents it from being used to make explosives, the military has absolutely no right to demand that I produce a version of that chemical without the admixture. Selling a product which can't do what the DoD wants does not make me a supply chain risk, no matter how easy it would be for me to make a different product that's fit for their purpose.
Say everyone had something to sell and DOD wanted to buy it. But some people wouldn't make the product changes DOD demanded. Now, they are the adversary of the DOD?
I hear Trumplandia is nice this time of year.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/endi...
Same goes for Anthropic: they would only consider offering a version of their product for military use that had certain restrictions. The government is free to accept that version or reject it. Rejecting it and designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk is just political intimidation and retribution for not playing ball.
it would be like the pen manufacturer who ships pens with an automatic point retractor, AND a video livestream to the manufacturer from the pen AND remote control of the point retractor.
anthropic and contractors monitor the livestream remotely to make sure the pen is not signing drone strike orders and may choose to activate the retractor.
I might be mistaken, but in the case of national security deployments the models are airgapped and Anthropic doesn't actually have access to telemetry/logging from them.
again, anthropic is snooping, section F specifically: [https://www.anthropic.com/legal/service-specific-terms].
"Then prove the other ai companies don't."
xAI zdr is not snooping, section 3.4: [https://x.ai/legal/terms-of-service-enterprise]
openai azure zdr is not snooping: [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/foundry/openai/conce...]
gcp zdr is not snooping: [https://docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platfo...]
only anthropic.
"Then prove that the service they offered to the US government didn't have spying disabled."
the service they offered did have spying disabled. the security risk is from anthropic updating the claude and covertly bricking or degrading it.
quote: "In such an ongoing relationship where the vendor [...] “continuously update[s] and tune[s] the product,” the Department must establish and maintain confidence that the vendor will not add limitations that interfere with the Department’s use of the product." (p26)
"the Department relies on [petitioner] to provide regular updates to Claude" (p27)
[https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.42...]
But also they quite clearly have no idea how classified information systems work: air gapping is step 1 of that process, and no one from Anthropic would be working on those systems without a security clearance.
bedrock IL5, nvidia, palantir and booz allen have all blocked fable.
anthropic is demanding that they rat out their customers on anything better than opus 5.
see: [thein.fo/4dekujW]
also, bedrock govcloud does both log and review customer data. specifically, they log and review customer data when it is flagged by their csam classifier.
It's pretty common for software licenses to state that it's prohibited from being used in medical devices, life support systems, nuclear facilities, etc. Will software with those licenses also be designated supply-chain risks?
The analogy would be: “A customer agreed to a contract, and after running into a clause of the contract they no longer wanted to follow…canceled the contract unilaterally…which also violated the contract.”
It seems like absurdly bad faith starting at breaking the contract (over "you have to follow the law", no less!) and then to retaliate after that with trying to destroy the company's reputation and ability to do business. The boot licking going on here justifying the government operating in bad faith is both disappointing and short sighted. I didn't think the leopards would eat MY face!
I don't know how anyone can look at the situation and see anything but an abuse of power. The government could have just as easily contacted with another provider. This whole thing is vindictive
It’s clearly a punitive measure and has nothing to do with national security.
If a supplier uses Anthropic to develop a product, how does that pose a risk to the DoD or national security? The DoD can specify that a third party system can’t rely on Anthropic for DoD use without designating the company a supply risk. It was very clear that the administration was punishing the company for saying “no”.
Any dependency on a company that thinks they have that moral authority and has the technical means to enforce it is absolutely a risk to the supply chain.
If you want to blame someone or something for this, we should start with Dario and “effective altruism”.
Not at all. They want their product kept out of specific decisions because it's not capable.
Herein lies the DoW’s point. Anthropic can’t dictate how the DoW conducts business.
Just because you disagree with a power of the government does not mean the government does not have that power.
> Just because you disagree with a power of the government does not mean the government does not have that power.
Ultimately whether Anthropic is a true supply chain risk for the United States military is a question of fact, and the courts will have to decide. That the President or Secretary of Defense doesn't like a company doesn't make them a supply chain risk.
That distinction is academic, of course, because when the courts decide a certain way, then of course that's how things will play out.
Well, except when the Trump admin ignores court orders.
Yes they are free to do that. You have to blame Congress for giving them that authority under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act and specifically 41 U.S.C. § 4713.
But Claude’s ToS didn’t prohibit use of Claude for sensitive military operation but it was coded to do so. It was part of the government’s evidence
Ultimately this is for the courts to decide, and the current decision is not final. And while the two Trump-nominated judges agreed with you, the other judge agrees with me - so at least we can say that neither my nor your position is legally absurd.
Sure they can. The DoD is bound by terms of use and contract terms for any product from any company that they use. They don't get a special pass just because they're the military.
It doesn't seem any different to me than Dominos pizza offering to deliver pizzas to the Pentagon but not to the strait of Hormuz. If that somehow makes the military subordinate to Dominos Pizza, just because Dominos is able to dictate the terms of their own delivery service, then sure, ban anyone in the military supply chain from being able to order pizzas. It would make the same amount of sense.
Declaring Anthropic a supply chain risk means that Boeing can't use Claude to draft a poster informing people about the board meeting.
This isn't the Pentagon saying "I need pizzas to the front lines and Dominos won't do it; someone call Pizza Hut ASAP!". It's the Pentagon threatening to cut off Domino's ability to do business with a significant part of their customer base in order to compel them to deliver pizza way beyond their contractually-agreed service area.
The DoD is perfectly free to say "no one in the DoD can use Anthropic products because we believe their products are not fit for our needs". That would 100% solve the problem.
Designating them a supply-chain risk is just political retribution for not caving to the DoD's contract negotiation demands. That's all. It's not necessary to ensure the integrity of the US military's goals and objectives. It's just punitive, elementary school grade bullying.
There was no such demand from Anthropic. Why are you making things up?
EDIT: Honestly, the rest of your comment is even stranger. You're starting from a false premise, a strange belief about what the designation is meant for, but you do end up providing a wonderful demonstration of your opening sentence for yourself at least. You definitely don't know what you're talking about.
> It's not necessarily punitive, the government is just covering their tracks so that if somewhere in their supply chain Anthropic exists, they want to remove them.
This reminds me of an old comment here where some idiot claimed that suicide is illegal so police are allowed to stop people from killing themselves. No, if Anthropic doesn't want their systems involved in war (that's a thing you made up, again, just to be clear) then they do not need to be designated a supply chain risk to "protect them" or whatever drivel you come up with next.
The correct response from the DOD would be to terminate contracts with Anthropic, and that's it. Then Anthropic would be responsible for ensuring that any contracts with other parties keep them out of war (again, not a thing they said they want, just your fiction). This is how it works for all other software systems where people don't want their work involved in wars or used by the police or whatever.
Designating them a supply chain risk was punitive. Only fools think otherwise.
> I feel like in this thread no one is understanding what supply chain risk designation is.
I wouldn't say "no one" understands, but you certainly don't.
It doesn't need to say if you do any business with Anthropic (for other customers, internal tools or processes), you lose all your contracts with us.
Why did you make up false claims about Anthropic not wanting their systems to be used for war? They're clearly fine with it, but they wanted human-in-the-loop on decision making. They never asked to not have their systems used for war.
> Again with the lack of understanding why it matters.
It's cool that you were able to open this with at least one sentence containing some useful wisdom. A lack of understanding does, in fact, matter.
> The DoD does not want Anthropic anywhere near any system they'd use!
Nah, the DOD is punishing Anthropic for not agreeing to change the terms of the contract and allow them to use Anthropic's systems to determine, without a human-in-the-loop, who to kill or what to target and to use their systems for mass surveillance.
> Because it's, well, a risk to their supply chain if Anthropic were to somehow find out and then e.g. crash a rocket if the DoD was using a third party rocket provider that used Anthropic models.
What the fuck man. You went from (in your first comment) the DOD is helping Anthropic out by designating them a supply chain risk because it'll keep them out of war (again, a fiction, that isn't what the dispute was over), to now the DOD is worried that Anthropic might throw a tantrum and start crashing rockets if they find out.
Again, Anthropic does not mind their systems being used for war. They sold their systems to be used for war. They have specific, already existing (not changed later) contractual statements about how they can be used for war. That's it. That's the fucking dispute.
> This is the correct response by the DoD, they simply do not want Anthropic in their supply chain.
No. Just like Anthropic wanted (or were fine with) their systems being used to conduct war, the DOD actually does want Anthropic's systems in their supply chain. But they want it without restrictions. Stop making shit up.
> The DoD don't care what Anthropic comes up as reasoning, they want to maintain control of their systems without any (even potential) meddling.
Now this is a true sentence. The DOD does not care as long as they can access the systems without restrictions. I can't believe you wrote that sentence and the one before, though. They are entirely incompatible. It cannot be the case that DOD does not want Anthropic in their supply chain and that they do want it in their supply chain.
> Why did you make up false claims about Anthropic not wanting their systems to be used for war? They're clearly fine with it, but they wanted human-in-the-loop on decision making. They never asked to not have their systems used for war.
That's what I meant, as I left out the "human in the loop" part as that was well understood in the context of the argument, but perhaps not. Anthropic does not want to be used in autonomous systems and thus the DoD agrees that they will not be, in their own supply chain. This is was all quite clear from my point but you felt the need to quote every single sentence and then ask the same question each time because you were starting from a faulty supposition, just wasting your time and mine.
There are a lot of twits on this site (and to your credit, so far you don't seem to be one of them) who will edit their comments so that replies like mine (if I had left out the quotes) turn into non sequiturs, or worse appear unhinged and detached from anything going on in the discussion. Again, to your credit you have not yet edited your original comments. But I have learned to not trust even long time commenters on this site. Even some very high karma commenters will behave like that.
If it annoys you, then that's fine. I'm not terribly bothered.
> That's what I meant
But that's not what you wrote. You wrote:
>>> They are complying with Anthropic's demands to not be used in war
If you had meant what I wrote, then you couldn't have gotten much further away from it with your original comment. You wrote too broadly about what Anthropic wanted and created a fiction instead. You shouldn't be surprised to be called out for it when you do something like that.
> because you were starting from a faulty supposition
No, I started with your words. If you wanted me to start with something else, I could have, like you, imagined other words to reply to. But I chose to reply to what you wrote, not what you apparently want people to imagine you wrote.
(Hey! I didn't quote every sentence, is this less annoying for you?)
1. the linux kernel has patches created by and security vulnerabilities identified by Claude/Anthropic;
2. same with other software like SQLite and rsync.
The DoD's response was to ban anthropic from all DoD facing activity and supply chains, whether or not there is a human in the loop. This does in fact run into exactly GP's issue. (or as I suggest elsewhere, can Boeing use Claude Code for software development?)
[1] https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/26-104...
The DoD responded not by saying "alright, we will use OpenAI for our kill-chain uses" but by saying "Boeing is no longer allowed to use Claude Code".
It’s a risk that persons may otherwise manipulate the operation of a covered technology to deny or disrupt its function. The statute allows the DoW to do this.
Thus, it cannot be a supply chain risk.
That's exactly what they're doing. It turns out the DoD is a really big bureaucracy and has process to make sure they thoroughly exclude a vendor and transitive dependencies on that same vendor.
And companies absolutely have the right to dictate terms. The idea that the DoD has the unilateral authority to do whatever it wants is literal textbook fascism. It's never been the law in the US and it should not be now.
Seems very straight forward.
Anthropic said "don't use our products for targetting decisions in military ops". The DoD could have easily said "actually then, we won't use your products at all". Instead, the DoD said "either you let us use your products in targeting decisions, or we won't let you sell to anyone who sells to us for any purpose, using a law that only applies to adversaries of the USA".
I am pretty receptive to the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, but we are taking a big leap from pen to llms/artificial intelligence. I am sympathetic to some of your other points, but I simply must reject this analogy.
The moral and ethical scale of the issue makes this far different than someone buying a pen.
If Lockheed could brick its planes if the US planned to use them for military action it disagreed with (and showed some indication they couldn't be trusted not to do it), would they be a supply chain risk?
It is not the role of a defense contractors to have oversight and control power over the military they're supplying.
Purposes Anthropic already spelled out in contract form.
They don’t buy the product, and the product can’t be used in the things they do buy.
Anthropic isn’t a supply chain risk since they easy found someone else
In other words: the same outcome could easily be accomplished without being punitive to Anthropic.
Our military must also not be dependent on a private company that believes it has the moral prerogative to control our military’s decisions, and would have the technical capability to do so.
They could’ve just negotiate a new contract with OpenAI, without banning it from every government agency. But I’m sure that would’ve triggered some kind of extra clause and cost money…
Your entire statement lacks any type of fact.
If the military wants to use AI to autonomously kill people, they can - Anthropic is not stopping them - thy just can't with Anthropic's services.
The government retaliating by then claiming that any use of Anthropic is risk is an obvious farce. How would Anthropic be any less of a risk if they let Claude autonomously kill people?
I, as a person, can decide I won't do business with a company that uses Anthropic models for whatever reason. I can even decide I won't do business with a company that relies on suppliers that use Anthropic.
This right applies to private companies too. Like Walmart could set contract terms that their suppliers aren't allowed to use AWS. The suppliers are free to accept those terms or not.
Our military is simply choosing not to do business with them, or anyone that depends on them.
If you believed in democracy, you wouldn’t be supporting the EA-infected corporation that tried to make our democratic institutions subordinate to their corporate decision making.
Let me ask you this, if Anthropic did allow them to use it for surveillance… do you think it would stop at the Pentagon?
If I sold steel to the Pentagon but then tried to say they they couldn't use it for ships and tanks but they are free to use for warehouses they would react the same way as they are doing now.
Edit add: What is targeting? What is surveillance?
If someone in the intelligence analysis department uses AI to generate a report, then someone else uses that report for targeting did they just break the terms? Where is that line?
Much easier for the Pentagon to say no.
They sure as hell shouldn't! Selling steel for any use except ships and tanks is a little odd but it's not a risk.
(I'm ignoring the "but then" because this was about future sales not previous ones.)
This is like the change order from hell.
Nothing was stopping the DOD from just entering into a new contract with OpenAI…
That’s going to make it rather risky for anyone to sign licenses with the DoD. In fact, it renders the licenses pointless since you just have to do anything the licensee says.
So Amazon and Microsoft don't enforce cloud licensing agreements with the USG? If the government wants to add 3,000 Windows users to support their mission Microsoft is shit out of luck in getting paid for them?
No, they want to have rules on how the military used Anthropic AI.
Military would still be free to use OpenAI for the nasty stuff
similarly the pen owner doesnt want to make a variation where the pen also doubles as a knife
Edit: I was wrong, the statement I linked is extremely dishonest and I was misled. The contract language lower down makes it clear that there are no "red lines", and OpenAI products can in fact be used for mass domestic surveillance, autonomous weapons, and social credit systems as long as they are considered legal.
No it doesn't. Specifically OpenAI had a "all lawful purposes" clause (which plausibly includes the existing mass surveillance apparatus), but Anthropic did not.
OpenAI, xAI, and Google happily agreed to DoW contracts which allow both of those use cases.
Look at it pragmatically. What does the DoD use every single procurement for? Hint: military use.
OpenAI just said no surveillance of U.S. persons.
Anthropic could have gone further; I think it's likely they did.
> No use of OpenAI technology for mass domestic surveillance.
> No use of OpenAI technology to direct autonomous weapons systems.
> No use of OpenAI technology for high-stakes automated decisions (e.g. systems such as “social credit”).
These are stronger than Anthropic's restrictions (https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war), as OpenAI says themselves: "We think our agreement has more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropic’s. [...] Based on what we know, we believe our contract provides better guarantees and more responsible safeguards than earlier agreements, including Anthropic’s original contract."
Edit: I was wrong, see my original comment. Sorry.
The other stuff...there's zero citations or quotes. Meaning that OpenAI could be having their cake and eating it too, winning a public victory, with no validation on the actual language, consequences, or enforcement.
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.
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.
- Just because you don't do everything someone wants you to do does not make you a supply chain risk.
Only it turns out that with sufficient corruption, you do.
There’s nothing indicating Anthropic was not keeping their end of the contract. If they had, there would have been other recourse.
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.
I suppose we're supposed to be satisfied that the letter of the law supports this steamroller? Because that's what matters?
The legal apparatus is one of the tools the death machine uses to get what it wants.
Anthropic offered a contract, with certain conditions, as do all contracts everywhere; that's their purpose. The military did not want to agree to those conditions. If they had stopped there, and refused to sign the contract, all would be good. (It's actually worse, they did sign such a contract, and then decided they wanted the contract to say something different than it actually did. "Pray I don't alter it any further.")
> >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 [emphasis mine]
That is speculation, and you can't call it a "textbook designation" without discussing whether there's a basis for that "reasonable fear". Again, that argument also works for declaring you have a reasonable fear that giving money to Anthropic will support pedophilia. We do not know the specifics, but I at least have heard of zero evidence that Anthropic would sabotage something they signed a legal contract for, and yet I have an abundance of evidence that this administration will use whatever contortions are necessary to pressure and punish those who interfere with it getting what it wants. It all hinges on the word "reasonable", and based on the evidence that is public, this specific fear seems more ridiculous than reasonable to me.
If the government somehow had a way to force Anthropic to sign a contract that it did not want to sign, then this fear might become more reasonable. The twist is that this supply chain risk designation is exactly that. If Anthropic now capitulated, the accusation of supply chain risk (eg from Anthropic employees acting alone) would be justified. So the only way Anthropic can reasonably be considered a supply chain risk is because it is accused of being a supply chain risk.
This is a textbook example, yes, but it's a textbook example of corruption and judicial capture.
> 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.
And if they signed a contract permitting fully autonomous killbots, then using the whitelist mechanism would be a contract violation. I have some degree of faith that we'd know if such a contract were signed, because half the staff would quit. (As opposed to half the Google staff quitting after signing such a contract, which has been proven to be an incorrect expectation -- such a contract was signed, and I've heard of exactly one person quitting over it. There may be more, I don't know.)
How can it be a textbook designation when designating a US company as a supply chain risk is unprecedented? So many actions under the Trump administration are unprecedented it starts to feel like the norm.
No other administration (Republican or Democrat) would do this. The DoD didn’t have a problem using Anthropic’s models during the raid on Venezuela and early on in the war with Iran.
Anthropic says to the former Fox News host it doesn’t want its models used for domestic surveillance or in kill situations without a human in the loop; all of a sudden they're a supply chain risk?
Seems obviously political.
Lol, do as we say not as we do!
>In addition to monitoring activists in the vicinity of Anthropic executives and keeping tabs on protests near physical Anthropic assets, the firm is also implementing a “pre-crime” approach, attempting to predict incidents before they happen.
https://prospect.org/2026/09/09/anthropic-artificial-intelli...
and trump admin originally went WAY further.
they originally said the pen, paper, table etc suppliers cant use anthropic even for products and subsidiaries that have nothing to do with their govt work; far beyond the supply chain of the pen (bomb). Mega Corp Pepsi Co Taco Bell Inc. LLC -> Staples > Pen Co. Sure pen co might be reasonabale. But telling taco bell they cant have claude help expand the baja-blast-radius is way too far. that would be just like secondary sanctions.
iirc there are 2 court cases. one ruled the original order was too broad and i think that still stands? so at least it's narrowed slightly to just the immediate supply chain?
but ianal
I.e. Anthrophic cannot be trusted to honour a contract.
Who'd have guessed?
Remember, the Anthropic red line was "no war crimes and no mass surveillance of the US population." You may think that war crimes are cool, and that mass surveillance of the US population by the department of defense would be fine, but consider the natural consequences, both for democracy and for any adversary's conduct in future wars.
It's really rich to say this after calling me disingenuous.
I don't think it's cool that Anthropic gets to set military policy. I don't care how much I agree or disagree with the policy. Wario is not the president. And Anthropic does not strike me as "obviously patriotic," not that I think it's better if the private company bossing the military around is patriotic. It has no relevance.
"Warcrimes" is the new "racist," too. It gets thrown around willy nilly about every military action.
Hi, just informing you of the typo.
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/tariff-exemptions-are-bi...
https://www.warren.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/media/doc/l...
The correct mental model for the U.S. federal government right now is not an omnipotent democratic overseer for economic activity, but rather as just one firm that negotiates directly with other major firms for legitimization and legal protection. Their power is likely to decline further, as is the value of "legitimization", as technological developments erode the military's monopoly on physical force. Interesting times ahead - historically tech transitions like this lead to a splintering of state legitimacy and then a reorganization under new forms of governance.
however anthropic also believes it is some kind of entity unto itself so it is not at all reliable.
Army: "OK, we will make sure not to use your AIs"
Antropic: "How dare you! We are suing! We intended for you to keep using it but do only what we want!"
Army: "..."
No, they were against using it to kill people without oversight. I hope nobody thinks that there's a difference between murdering American citizens and murdering people.
Anthropic: "We'll sell you access to our AI as long as you don't use it for war crimes or mass surveillance."
DoD: "Ok, deal."
...time passes...
DoD: "Wait, no, we want to be able to use it for war crimes too."
Anthropic: "Too late, you agreed already, and we won't sign a contract for that. You can keep using it for everything we agreed to."
DoD: "Change the terms or we will destroy your business."
Anthropic: "No."
DoD then signs contracts with OpenAI and Google that permit them to commit war crimes and mass surveillance as long as they get legal cover, and proceeds to apply as much leverage as it can to destroy Anthropic's business.
----
And for the record, Anthropic agreed to all "yucky Army things" usage that was an extension of past yucky Army things, they just did not agree to a new class of yucky Army things: namely, fully autonomous killbots. Even there, it was only "not yet, it's not ready". Your whole comment is a gross mischaracterization.
I quit using ChatGPT entirely over this incident, and that's not because I find Anthropic's position to be saintly. They agreed to a contract where the DoD could and in practice is using their AI for committing war crimes.
Hardly. I invite you to [read the opinion][1], particularly the great pains the majority spends on wrangling the definition of the word "manipulate."
Basically, [FASCSA][2] says to denote a company is a "supply chain risk," the govt has to meet the law's rigorous definition of what a "significant" risk actually is. That definition contains a catch-all "or otherwise manipulate the function" of the thing at hand (in this case, Claude) at the very end.
The govt's whole argument is "Well Anthropic has admitted that it can technically "manipulate" the response, therefore its a significant risk, therefore we designate it as such."
The dissent gives an analogy:
> A library might post a sign saying, “Do not shout, loudly talk on the phone, play music, or otherwise disturb others.” The common understanding would be that the rule bans bringing a boom-box into the reading room with the volume turned on high but not listening to music with headphones set at a modest sound level—even though both constitute “playing music.”
It is as if the govt argued "ah ah, Anthropic played music on their headphones, they broke the rules! We therefore have the authority to ban them" and the majority insanely agrees. It is clear to anyone with basic reading comprehension that the "manipulate" clause is supposed to continue the idea of malicious or subversive manipulation that the whole section entails. The hand-waving the majority uses gives the whole game away.
[1]: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=000001a0-d91e-d276-aff6-f97f3...