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. scottyah · 1790359327 · focus · HN ↗

                        That depends on what "change shopping cart behavior" entails though. Sure, if you edit the icon you're pretty safe, but what if the change is a fix so if two people are adding things to the same cart on separate computers, the page will get updated, so they swap out to their webhook library and make a couple edits, but that library is also what powers the UI for the AWS consoles in govcloud?

                        Now you're making changes to the source code used in govcloud using claude, a clear supply chain violation.

                        It's a very wishy-washy area right now, and the branches are all struggling to figure out how to work around these laws that were mostly intended to keep jobs in the USA but are now hampering productivity. One example is that DoD contractors can't use open source software that has a non-us developer as a core maintainer. Obviously that's extremely hard to track and it's mostly ignored. Pete definitely bit off more than he realized in his effort to seem cool and get what he wanted.

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