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Notes -
Anthropic declared a "Supply-Chain Risk to National Security" by SecWar Hegseth via tweet, because that's the universe we live in.
For those not following along:
Anthropic has had a contract with the Pentagon - valued at up to $200 million - since July 2024, making it the only AI company with models deployed on the USG's classified networks. Over several months, negotiations broke down over two specific safeguards Anthropic wanted built into any agreement: a prohibition on using Claude for mass domestic surveillance of Americans, and a prohibition on using it to power fully autonomous weapons systems. I stress fully autonomous, and the only reason Yudkowsky isn't spinning in his grave is that he's still alive. I'm not sure he enjoys it.
The Pentagon's position was that it has its own internal policies and legal standards, that mass surveillance and autonomous weapons are already regulated by law, and that it shouldn't have to negotiate individual use cases with a private company. It demanded that all AI firms make their models available for "all lawful purposes," full stop.
The Pentagon set a hard deadline of 5:01 PM Friday for Anthropic to drop its two exceptions. Amodei publicly refused to budge on either point. The deadline passed without agreement.
Shortly after, Hegseth declared Anthropic a "supply chain risk to national security," announcing that effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner doing business with the U.S. military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic. CBS News article for those not fond of Twitter
Around the same time, Trump ordered every federal agency to immediately cease using Anthropic's technology, while allowing a six-month phase-out period for agencies like the DOW already using it.
Declaring a company a supply chain risk is typically reserved for businesses operating out of adversarial countries, Huawei for example. As far as I can tell, Anthropic is correct it in describing it as an unprecedented action when applied to an American companies. Especially one that, as far as I can see, hasn't done anything wrong except refuse to jump when asked.
Anthropic says it will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court, calling the move "legally unsound" and warning it would set a "dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government." Anthropic's press statement.
They also argue that under federal law, the designation can only apply to the use of Claude as part of Pentagon contracts, and cannot affect how contractors use Claude to serve other customers.
Not one to let an opportunity or a still-warm corpse go, Altman announced that OAI had struck a deal with the Pentagon. Using speech so smarmy that I'm not sure if there's anything there at all, Altman claims the deal preserved the same core principles Anthropic had fought for: prohibitions on domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons. I am unsure why the USG would find this any more acceptable than when Anthropic did it, except they (quite reasonably) expect Altman to be more "morally flexible".
There's a petition circulating where hundreds of Google and OAI employees publicly ask their respective corporate overlords to stand with Anthropic. Apparently all signatures are validated.
Meanwhile, Scott, mild-mannered to a fault, and very loathe to dip his toes into political waters, is losing it on Twitter . And I agree with him. If the DOW finds Anthropic's terms so unbearable, that should have been considered before signing the contract. If they changed their mind, they ought to have canceled and accepted whatever penalties that involved, instead of using the full weight of the state for what can only be described as bullying. If domestic mass surveillance and fully automated weaponry are legally off the table, then why all the fuss over that in a legal document?
Goddammit. It's only February. I'm tired, boss. I just find it very funny that:
It's going to be so sick when the Newsom Administration designates both Palantir and Anduril as supply chain risks and puts them right out of business.
Kind of a side bar, but it's really interesting watching Democrats openly promise vengeance on all companies who did business with the Trump administration. That seems like a risky tactic.
FYI, the wikipedia page doesn't contain the quote you're referencing.
We have all read Scott; we all know the quote. That's the point of a shared literary canon; you can allude to it without having to quote the whole thing. And, in any case, the Wikipedia page does include the story:
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I don't think it's really that risky, given that tech has been against them no matter how hard the D's bounce on it; and people are really starting to HATE hate tech companies.
Despite the feelings about it people have, business in general and tech specifically is pro republican as a rule.
They have DEI programs and pride socks and what have you because +-70% of anyone who is worth anything as an employee has libertarian views on social issues; as someone in such a field one autistic trans hypergeniuse who can't make a phone call but can recite every instruction ever processed by a RISC chip is worth any amount of chud bonafides, and most of the human capital pilled conservatives either grit their teeth or don't actually give enough of a shit to not work at eg lockheed. The people that have explicitly anti-libertarian views and mean it are disproportionately dysgenic low IQ types who are worth pissing off to secure talent.
So, you have your pride socks and DEI program and stump for Republicans because despite all the bloviating and selffelation, RFK is never actually going to cut into Nestle's bottom line and they (R's) will crush unions, allow you to employ illegal labor, de-regulate, lower taxes, and also increase government spending on contractors and lower interest rates and fuck a debt ceiling if the numbers don't look good.
They know which side the bread is buttered by, if you will.
I have no idea what fantasy you have right now but tech is woke as af. I was there.
Employees who get uppity and threaten profits are obviously beaten down or fired, but for everything else, maximum woke it is.
Tech LABOR is woke, tech OWNERSHIP is chud.
The people who use their big brains to do stuff are disproportionately woke across the population; the people that use their big bank accounts to run shit are disproportionately chud across the population.
You are observing the interpersonal relations of the prole class, not the economic motivations of the owning class.
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I think it's a specific kind of woke. Flattening it is a huge mistake.
Of course you can't have tech without the autistic MtFs and the ACE chicks, and so there's a very predictable LGBT contingent. And the companies are all extremely woke on BLM/DEI side and all that. But they are not "capitalism is systemic plunder of the poor" wokes or "we stand with Iran" wokes.
"Capitalism is systemic plunder of the poor" is not wokeness, it's good old fashioned communism. One of the main criticism the old left has of wokeness is that it leaves corporations intact as long as an appropriate fraction of CEOs are queer women of color. See rainbow capitalism, /r/stupidpol, Freddie deBoer's nightmare scenario, etc.
I deeply appreciate you fighting this fight. I've tried, but the vernacular of our society (and thus, this website) is wildly unable to separate the woke from the old left.
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By this standard the Democrats are pro-Republican.
Both parties contain factions …
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Not being a literal communist is not the same thing as being "pro Republican".
No. Might make you an anti-woke Democrat though.
But the original claim was that tech was pro-republican.
And anyway, not really. Being pro-DEI, but anti-"capitalism is systemic plunder of the poor" doesn't make you anti-woke.
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Certainly not. The libertarians got purged, converted, or driven to silence during earlier phases of the Culture War; the woke DEI-and-pride supporter are as anti=libertarian as any given member of the Moral Majority in its heyday.
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Or "God bless America" for short.
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I don't think they can. Pretty much all major tech companies have been cozy with Trump. Giving him millions of dollars, awards, eating dinner with him. Democrats can't go against all tech simultaneously. They can seek vengeance on Musk. But not also Google and Meta and Amazon, etc.
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