Thread

U.S. appeals court upholds designation of Anthropic as supply chain risk

499 points · 900 comments · cramer4next

petcat · 1790353704 · focus · HN ↗
I still don't fully understand what this was about. It sounds like the DoD said they wanted unrestricted access to Anthropic's models, Anthropic refused, so the Pentagon declared that they wouldn't use them at all.
Isn't this basically what Anthropic wanted?
1. HarHarVeryFunny · 1790354633 · focus · HN ↗
  Evidentially not - Anthropic want to do business with the US military, but on their own terms, telling the military what they can and cannot use it for.
  1. hardbass · 1790354916 · focus · HN ↗
    Is that a problem? Are there any special rules (genuinely curious) that allow the military to hijack the management of a private firm?
    rayiner · 1790355972 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s not a problem. But it’s also not a problem for the DOD to decide that it doesn’t want to use anthropic or have its suppliers use anthropic for DOD matters. The DOD didn’t ban private citizens from using Anthropic. You can sell in your own terms but the DOD can also buy in its own terms.
    bitexploder · 1790357367 · focus · HN ↗
    That is the funny thing to me. I hate diving into politics here on HN, but this has such a rank smell to it. Trump's comments about Dario. His insane propaganda video about how we will never be communist / Marxist. In the same breath our government is bribing people with offers of $$ (the $5,000 checks) and essentially bullying to outright moving towards saying this technology is so powerful we will just have to seize it for our own use.
    It is impossible to miss the absolute hypocrisy of this moment and how people and corporations are supposedly free, but if you happen to be of interest to the government they will try to casually ruin you. It has always been this way, people just haven't noticed because it flies under the radar most of the time when the govern crushes some smaller enterprise or another because it got in their way or didn't play by their rules.
    It seems simple to me. Anthropic is a private company. If you don't like it fix the laws or don't buy from them.
    rayiner · 1790357603 · focus · HN ↗
    You're overlooking the critical difference between the government-as-government and the government-as-purchaser. You have to play on Walmart's terms--which are draconian and exacting--to sell to Walmart. Why should the DOD be any different when it comes to stuff the DOD is buying or indirectly paying its contractors to buy?
    Yeah, the DOD is such a huge purchaser that it can "ruin you" by blacklisting you if you don't play by its terms. The same is true about Walmart if you're a grocery supplier, Apple if you make electronics components, etc. Private companies absolutely exercise their power like that.
    SpicyLemonZest · 1790358339 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm intensely skeptical that Walmart has clauses in its contracts saying that no supplier may use FooCorp software in the process of delivering its goods. If they do I would definitely call that an abuse of corporate power.
    folocitoan · 1790370648 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    mpyne · 1790379775 · focus · HN ↗
    They're not allowed to use it for military work, precisely so that the military supply chain cannot be broken by an unaffiliated private contractor acting at its own behest.
    The Federal government often imposes terms on its contractors that specify what sub-contractors are allowed to do, including "flow down" requirements that ensure these terms are themselves enforced recursively all the way down to leaf suppliers.
    None of those amount to a ban, after all private companies are also able to do the same thing, and often do. E.g. when Apple requires its suppliers to pursue clean energy efforts as in <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/09/apple-advances-supplier-clean-energy-commitments/" rel="nofollow">https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/09/apple-advances-suppli...
    Turn_Trout · 1790499110 · focus · HN ↗
    > None of those amount to a ban
    Please check your facts. Hegseth originally stated that it would apply to ALL usage by companies that work with the military.
    [1] <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-declares-anthropic-supply-chain-risk/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-declares-anthropic-supp...
    mpyne · 1790564232 · focus · HN ↗
    And the fact is that he had to reverse that position because it was not supportable by the statutory law he was trying to use. So the DoW policy changed.
    I'm a big fan of checking the facts, which is why I encourage you to stay current on the discussion. Companies that do defense work are already familiar with the need to setup corporate structures to ensure that the blast radius of changes to FAR, DFARS, statutory requirements etc. don't reach the main corporate entity.
    Like, the whole term "defense industrial base" is a known category treated as "critical infrastructure" by the U.S. government for years now: <a href="https://www.cisa.gov/topics/critical-infrastructure-security-and-resilience/critical-infrastructure-sectors/defense-industrial-base-sector" rel="nofollow">https://www.cisa.gov/topics/critical-infrastructure-security... and <a href="https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47751#_Toc192775742" rel="nofollow">https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47751#_Toc192775742
    The thing that is novel here is that requirements traditionally focused on protecting for undue linkage with potentially-hostile foreign sources are being applied against Anthropic. But it's also novel that Anthropic is trying to apply conditions of use restrictions through its contract with the military.
    I don't personally feel that's novel enough to warrant a ban across the whole supply chain, but that's been the net effect of quite a few other FAR and DFARS restrictions over the years, which have caused companies to either exit the defense space or avoid selling into it in the first place.

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