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The Anthropic C-suite needs to rewatch Oppenheimer.
More details are emerging regarding the US Government's decision to impose defense export controls on Claude Fable. There are lots of similarities between this kerfuffle and the February Supply Chain Risk designation. Somehow, Anthropic executives still don't understand the language of power and government. It's not hard. All they need to do is watch Oppenheimer (and pay attention this time). If they still can't figure it out, here is my cheat sheet:
If you are working on sufficiently powerful technology with dual-use applications, then you work for the War Department. There is no option for you to continue your preferred work while licensing only peaceful civilian applications of your product.
If you piss off the wrong person, you're screwed. Some people will see defeating you as a stepping stone to greater power and influence. Some people will work to destroy you simply out of spite.
Anthropic has scientific geniuses, Anthropic has an Oppenheimer, but does Anthropic have a General Groves? How far do you think Oppenheimer would have gotten without General Groves?
If you are trying to convince the government that you are not a security risk, do not hire people like this and present them as neutral experts. (No seriously, what the actual fuck were they thinking?)
You don't get to decide what counts as a security risk and what doesn't. That is the job of the government and the political process.
The president does not care about your ethical concerns. You think you know how much he doesn't care, but he actually cares much less than that.
If you aren't okay with the government using your technology, then don't build it. Isidor Rabi said no. You can say no too.
I would prefer a world where there are deeper motivations than mere politics determining international arms export controls or national security compliance. That kinda flew the coop in the 90s, and by the point Defense Distributed first came out, it was a punchline.
But I'm also still confused about what, exactly, is going the fuck on. "Recent cyber directive" is either someone's ERP or this executive order, and it focuses on 44 U.S.C. 3552(b)(6)(A), which is about restrictions on providers to the US government and specifically disavows permitting or licensing: "Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize the creation of a mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance, or permitting requirement for the development, publication, release, or distribution of new AI models, including frontier models."
ITAR is my first guess, given the 'local employees that aren't citizens can't touch' bit, and it's the most dangerous threat -- not only does it prohibit unlicensed export of specific technologies, it can restrict training, which is a serious and common concern for ITAR-covered imaging technologies and has some hilarious ramifications if you think LLMs can independently rediscover technology. That's a pretty big gun aimed at every LLM company based in the United States.
But it's also just plausible that the government's referencing some more esoteric command, or even just making things up.
Dean Ball had a really interesting take on it https://x.com/deanwball/status/2066499769833341419
And a more interesting way to read it is, well what if that's the point? Coming out and saying "here are the rules and regulations" means the Trump admin has to play by them as well. Meanwhile some vague there is no regulation except when we say there is which we may or may not do policy gives them a lot of power to boss around the companies/owners they don't like and favor companies they do.
I guess that's an insight, but it's a pretty unimpressive one in the modern era. Arbitrary, contradictory, and impossible-to-verify compliance nonrules are such a common thing in gunnie contexts that I've made a running theme out of it, and it's just more obvious in gunnie spaces because there are clear definitional categories. Whether it's California insisting on microstamping tech, or New York trying to ban 3d printers, the requirements don't even need to be possible.
Hell, Ball seems to even be missing the actual alpha in the strategy. The rules don't actually have to include a disliked organization's behavior: the administration can always just try to bring enforcement anyway, lie to the courts, and then shoot someone in the head for breaking the 'rules' so long as they do it before the rules are enjoined. Look at both FCC v Starlink and Illinois v Due Process here, and note that the real punchline is that none of the appeals processes for either cared that the rules were made up and the points don't matter, and even post-hoc no one cares but absolute nuts like myself.
((But yeah, no one received civil contempt penalties or faced legal oversight, if only because they'd have to investigate themselves.))
The real benefit is that it makes it impossible to challenge and drives terror in the people who oppose you.
But again, Defense Distributed. Would be nice if no one burnt that bridge.
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I think it's ITAR. I don't know all the technicalities of the legal regime, but it sounds like the proximate concern of the government is that China/Iran/North Korea/Russia would be able to use Fable to find and fix security vulnerabilities in their own code. This would be a big blow to US offensive cyber capabilities. Think Stuxnet exploits getting patched.
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