Thread

1. 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. hiddencost · 1790354488 · focus · HN ↗

      No. This also means that no companies that work with th DoD can use anthropic models for any purpose.

      1. Jtsummers · 1790355012 · focus · HN ↗

         > This also means that no companies that work with th DoD can use anthropic models for any purpose.

         No, it does not mean that. I don't know why people have been making this claim. If you work for a company, let's call it X, and your work is not DOD related, let's say you work on a social media service, then X has no reason (from this designation) to prevent you from using Anthropic, it will not impact their defense contracts at all.

         1. SpicyLemonZest · 1790355613 · focus · HN ↗

            People have been making this claim because the Secretary of Defense personally issued a statement demanding that "no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic". We're not going to play this absurd game where government officials issue fascist instructions and we all pretend they said something more reasonable instead.

            1. Jtsummers · 1790356201 · focus · HN ↗

               Except you and many others are accepting what he said as if it were true, that statement is false. And hiddencost and others are just parroting it instead of describing the real situation.

               This designation means Athropic's systems can't be used in DOD work, but many companies that work with the DOD also do work outside that. That separate work is not restricted with respect to the use of Anthropic's systems. Repeating a lie as if it were true is just dumb, it helps spread that lie.

               1. scottyah · 1790358090 · focus · HN ↗

                  If AWS employees use Claude to build govcloud, it is a violation of supply-chain. Either Amazon, Microsoft, and Google require their employees to stop using claude or the DoD has to migrate off of these cloud providers.

                  Or these companies have to completely split the govcloud work from its commercial offerings (which defeats the whole point).

                  1. Jtsummers · 1790358206 · focus · HN ↗

                     That's a DOD related system though. If an Amazon employee uses Claude to change shopping cart behavior, it's not a problem though and Amazon has no reason to stop those employees from using Claude given the supply chain risk designation, except out of an abundance of caution or to kiss Hegseth's ass.

                     1. SpicyLemonZest · 1790358892 · focus · HN ↗

                        [delayed]

                        1. mpyne · 1790380169 · focus · HN ↗

                           > What if an Amazon employee uses Claude to develop the S3 storage service, which is a core product offering unrelated to the DoD but also something that will be provided to the DoD in govcloud?

                           Honestly that question has been open for as long as GovCloud has been around. I've used it myself as an exercise in pushing within the Navy to adopt public cloud where security requirements permit, rather than forcing everything onto GovCloud.

                           After all, if it's the same S3 either way then the real point of security isn't the Amazon datacenter employee changing out dead hard disks in a physical GovCloud datacenter, but the S3 service team developers who are frequently not even American citizens, but whose code may very well go on to touch the most sensitive data the nation generates.

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