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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   20970 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026

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So? You're pointing out a distinction I'm aware of. I do not see an argument in favor of domestic companies being coerced into doing things that are supposedly illegal.

I was replying to:

A toolmaker should have no say in how his tools are used once bought

And as far as I'm aware, these are examples of toolmakers with opinions on how their tools are used.

If you're are of the distinction, then why proffer the examples?

Why bring up US and Germany? They aren't the toolmakers. They are the owners.

Germany makes the Leopard 2. The US makes ATACMS. In both examples, they are the toolmakers - they manufactured the hardware, transferred it, and retained conditions on its use post-transfer.

I can already see the objection forming: "those countries contracted out manufacturing to Rheinmetall and Lockheed Martin, so they're owners, not toolmakers." Okay, but Rheinmetall and Lockheed Martin are themselves private companies that build weapons under contracts laden with export controls, end-user agreements, and usage restrictions that survive the sale. So now we have a chain where the sub-contracted toolmaker is also bound by usage restrictions, the nation-as-toolmaker is also bound by usage restrictions, and somewhere in this entire supply chain nobody seems to have gotten the memo that toolmakers have no say in how their tools are used once bought. On the mere B2C side of things, Apple disapproves if you use iTunes or Garage Band for nuclear weapons development.

At some point "but they're a sovereign nation" has to cash out as an actual argument rather than a category distinction. What is it about sovereignty that grants the right to attach strings to hardware transfers? If it's something like "they have the legitimate authority to set terms on things they produced or own," then congratulations, we've just reinvented the concept of a contract, which is exactly what Anthropic had with the DOW.

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