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

499 points · 900 comments · cramer4next

  1. ApolloFortyNine · · focus · HN ↗
    I know everyone says this is political but it actually seems like a textbook designation. Anthropic wanted to have rules on how the military used AI, the military said no and therefore doesn't want anthropic used anywhere in their supply line.

    This is like a pen manufacturer not wanting their pens used to sign drone strike orders, now the military needs to have a special box of pens that don't have stipulations attached. With AI usage it would be the same thing except applied to entire product chains. It seems like it would just add more complexity to operations.

    You can agree with the rules anthropic wanted, but having rules set by a private company at all that apply to the military does seem fair for the military to object to.

    >The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary

    Though they'd probably put the DoD on the cybersecurity whitelist today, the very idea of the claude whitelists for certain functionality already exists and is being used by them today.

    1. romellem · · focus · HN ↗
      > textbook designation.

      Hardly. I invite you to [read the opinion][1], particularly the great pains the majority spends on wrangling the definition of the word "manipulate."

      Basically, [FASCSA][2] says to denote a company is a "supply chain risk," the govt has to meet the law's rigorous definition of what a "significant" risk actually is. That definition contains a catch-all "or otherwise manipulate the function" of the thing at hand (in this case, Claude) at the very end.

      The govt's whole argument is "Well Anthropic has admitted that it can technically "manipulate" the response, therefore its a significant risk, therefore we designate it as such."

      The dissent gives an analogy:

      > A library might post a sign saying, “Do not shout, loudly talk on the phone, play music, or otherwise disturb others.” The common understanding would be that the rule bans bringing a boom-box into the reading room with the volume turned on high but not listening to music with headphones set at a modest sound level—even though both constitute “playing music.”

      It is as if the govt argued "ah ah, Anthropic played music on their headphones, they broke the rules! We therefore have the authority to ban them" and the majority insanely agrees. It is clear to anyone with basic reading comprehension that the "manipulate" clause is supposed to continue the idea of malicious or subversive manipulation that the whole section entails. The hand-waving the majority uses gives the whole game away.

      [1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.politico.com&#x2F;f&#x2F;?id=000001a0-d91e-d276-aff6-f97f35910000" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.politico.com&#x2F;f&#x2F;?id=000001a0-d91e-d276-aff6-f97f3...

      [2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;SECURE_Technology_Act" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;SECURE_Technology_Act

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