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. VWWHFSfQ · 1790354726 · 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 · 1790355223 · 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 · 1790356135 · focus · HN ↗

               Sure why not? The government is just exercising its power as a purchaser.

               1. apawloski · 1790360812 · 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 · 1790362294 · focus · HN ↗

                     The "administrative mechanism" here is just a way of exercising purchasing control. A private company could do the same thing.

                     1. Jtsummers · 1790362775 · focus · HN ↗

                        > A private company could do the same thing.

                        Probably not, no private company has the ability to tell all its suppliers "thou shalt not do business with <some other company>". They lack the pull to compel them to do so. The closest would be things like what MS did back in the 90s, and got them in hot water with the anti-trust case against them.

                        1. rayiner · 1790363090 · focus · HN ↗

                           That's not what happened here. It was "you can't use <some other company> for stuff you do for us."

                           1. Jtsummers · 1790363676 · focus · HN ↗

                              Fair, and still not something most companies can pull off. Again, without risking running into anti-trust laws like MS did.

                              Do you seriously think that you can go to all your vendors (if you were a business owner) and tell them, "You can't use Atlassian when working on anything you sell us." How will your business actually compel all those vendors to drop their use of Atlassian for that work? How will you verify compliance and why should any of them sign a contract with you with these restriction? And if they do, how will you avoid anti-trust violations because almost certainly the only way you could talk them into signing such a contract would be to be a massive company throwing your weight around (like MS did with hardware OEMs back in the 90s, among other things).

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