So it's extremely important that they get an injunction that allows the cloud compute companies to continue to work them. I think they probably will, but it's really crazy that the government is actively trying to kill them off over this.
I do not want a TikTok hoovering up our personal info sending it to China
I do not want a Anthropic becoming essential to warfare then questioning when the their AI is used to bring an enemy to justice
I do not want Nvidia sending their latest and greatest to China
I do not want a ASML moving their super advanced photolithography machines to China
I do not want a DJI selling their drones in the US and then exporting all the meta-data back to China
I do not want a Huawei hacking through American IT companies and then getting a free pass on selling their devices based on stolen IP in the US
Is neither unusual nor extraordinary. The 2022 TikTok ban on government devices—enacted under the Biden administration—carried the same viral-as-in-GPL terms.
This dispute challenges the executive's action, not the underlying law (10 USC 3252). Anthropic does make some constitutional claims regarding the 1st and 5th amendments, but they also advance procedural challenges under the Administrative Procedures Act and statutory arguments about whether the law authorized the action.
Key differentiator though is Palantir’s suit was based primarily on Congressional acts and explicit clauses of the FAR. This absolutely does not seem to be the case for Anthropic, who could easily do the same, but chooses another ideological battle. I can’t imagine their legal counsel would recommend this route (actually asking Claude it doesn’t either!) which would imply this is Anthropic leadership’s move.
I’d gamble they’ve already given up on actual business with the government/military and that this is more of a PR move to further distance themselves and maintain a high road image.
Anthropic is trying to sell to the government while simultaneously dictating terms on how AI is used in the war department.
When you sell to the War department, or the IC, you can be certain that they are going to use it for planning operations and for executing operations.
The supply chain risk statute grants broad, largely unreviewable national security discretion and doesn't require the threat to originate from a foreign adversary.
Finally, the First Amendment claim faces the problem that the government was responding not to abstract speech but to a concrete refusal to provide services on the military's terms, which courts are unlikely to treat as protected expression warranting judicial override of procurement choices.
> The government has near-absolute discretion over whom it contracts with,
Not at all the case, procurement is dictated by a maze of Congressional acts and the FAR.
> and no company has a constitutional right to be a federal vendor.
Not constitutional but federal law actually dictates they do. Many companies actually have _more_ of a right to contracts than primes.
> Courts treat military technology decisions as core Commander-in-Chief functions subject to minimal judicial review,
Not at all the case there have been many disputes and it’s not uncommon to see a protest filed against procurement decisions in even innocuous cases. Many companies (eg Palantir) have sued the government on procurement and won.
> and the political question doctrine may bar second-guessing what the Secretary deems a security risk.
Sure, lowercase security risk, but uppercase Supply Chain Risk designation is an actual action subject to administrative procedure. There are many laws (eg Administrative Procedure Act) that allow judges to overturn this. The current basis of their suit is largely ideological but if they instead argued the designation was arbitrary the APA could very possibly be used to overturn it.
Their front-line complaint (Count 1 in the brief linked elsewhere in this thread) invokes the APA.
It goes much further than the "refusal to provide services" speech. By blacklisting them, they are blocked from doing any future business, which is prior restraint. Courts aren't very friendly to that.
This would hand the federal govt to OpenAI and Google but would certainly be head-turning. Hard to say if it would pay off positively for them though.
You can't have someone in your supply chain that claims a veto on military action.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.46...
It aligns with Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer who said "I need someone who’s not going to wig out in the middle"
Both statements give the impression Anthropic is looking to be directly inserted into the kill chain command structure which as far as I understand is not accurate.
I assume it's for political reasons because they dislike the current US administration, as all of the government's claims that I've seen have been completely reasonable, and their actions justified.
Resist everything the Trump government does, whether it's good, bad, reasonable, or indifferent, is just a viewpoint that I find shortsighted.
you must not be seeing what I'm seeing
refusing to renew Anthropic's contract because Anthropic doesn't want to comply with their terms, would have been reasonable; retaliating by designating them a SCR is not
Or, when Anthropic re-iterates “no murder without human approval, no domestic mass surveillance”, why should the government not only change suppliers (free-market), but label Anthropic a “supply-chain risk”?
If you listen to the government officials explain the situation:
All this began after the Maduro raid, when executives from Anthropic allegedly called an intermediary vendor, Palantir, seeking specifics of how their software was used. Because this is classified information, Palantir refused to disclose it, which led to Anthropic threatening to shut off service to Palantir. Palantir reported this to the pentagon who then contacted Anthropic directly.
Obviously, the military can’t have Palantir’s services suddenly stop working mid-operation because one of their suppliers objects to it. So they can’t risk having Claude anywhere in the supply chain.
Assuming the government isn't lying, then the designation is completely and entirely appropriate. You can substitute out any other vendor, and they'd receive the same treatment.
Now the main constraint on executive power seems to be due process and habeas corpus.
So it's not just that there's be a transfer of power to the executive (there is), there's also straight up executive overreach.
