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

499 points · 900 comments · cramer4next

  1. petcat · · 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 · · focus · HN ↗
      No. This also means that no companies that work with th DoD can use anthropic models for any purpose.
      1. VWWHFSfQ · · focus · HN ↗
        Dario wanted to sell a $200 million chat bot to the US military and also dictate how it could be used. The government said no. And because of that Claude also cannot be deployed to the GenAI.mil AI infrastructure. This means that any sensitive work for the DoD that uses Claude will go through Anthropic's infrastructure, not the US military-hosted backend.

        So yes obviously defense contractors are forbidden to use it.

        1. tmvphil · · focus · HN ↗
          If the government wanted to put iPhones in missiles, and apple said "we won't sell you iPhones to put in missiles" would the correct government response be to say "no government contractor can ever use an iPhone".
          1. rayiner · · focus · HN ↗
            Sure why not? The government is just exercising its power as a purchaser.
            1. apawloski · · focus · HN ↗
              Exercising its power as a purchaser is "not buying it" or "choosing a competitor." Instead, this is arbitrarily and capriciously using an administrative mechanism in a novel way to punish a company.
              1. rayiner · · focus · HN ↗
                The "administrative mechanism" here is just a way of exercising purchasing control. A private company could do the same thing.
                1. apawloski · · focus · HN ↗
                  Private companies are not bound by the first amendment, the fifth amendment, the administrative procedure act, etc.
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