Thread

1. ApolloFortyNine · 1790356118 · 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. jzb · 1790359108 · focus · HN ↗

      “the military said no and therefore doesn't want anthropic used anywhere in their supply line”

      It’s clearly a punitive measure and has nothing to do with national security.

      If a supplier uses Anthropic to develop a product, how does that pose a risk to the DoD or national security? The DoD can specify that a third party system can’t rely on Anthropic for DoD use without designating the company a supply risk. It was very clear that the administration was punishing the company for saying “no”.

      1. frumplestlatz · 1790359216 · focus · HN ↗

         Anthropic took the position that our military’s decision making power should be subordinate to Anthropic’s constraints.

         Any dependency on a company that thinks they have that moral authority and has the technical means to enforce it is absolutely a risk to the supply chain.

         If you want to blame someone or something for this, we should start with Dario and “effective altruism”.

         1. testdelacc1 · 1790361771 · focus · HN ↗

            But why can’t the military just not use Anthropic? Why can’t the DoD say “ok we’re going with a different vendor”? Even if you find Anthropic’s stance distasteful, why support taking punitive action on Anthropic?

            1. satvikpendem · 1790366619 · focus · HN ↗

               I feel like in this thread no one is understanding what supply chain risk designation is. The government can just not use Anthropic, and that's exactly what they're doing, and they are not using it so much that they don't want Anthropic anywhere in their chain of supply. It's not necessarily punitive, the government is just covering their tracks so that if somewhere in their supply chain Anthropic exists, they want to remove them. They are complying with Anthropic's demands to not be used in war and the DoD says, okay, we won't use you anywhere and also enforce that we won't use you, just like you wanted.

               1. rhdunn · 1790367595 · focus · HN ↗

                  It's going to make things complicated w.r.t. software used anywhere within and by the DoD:

                  1. the linux kernel has patches created by and security vulnerabilities identified by Claude/Anthropic;

                  2. same with other software like SQLite and rsync.

                  1. firesteelrain · 1790368703 · focus · HN ↗

                     Humans are 100% in the loop with software patches and there are many people in the chain so that provenance is maintained. It’s not that Claude could never look at the source code

                     1. joshuamorton · 1790369754 · focus · HN ↗

                        Correct, anthropic's requirement was human-in-the-loop.

                        The DoD's response was to ban anthropic from all DoD facing activity and supply chains, whether or not there is a human in the loop. This does in fact run into exactly GP's issue. (or as I suggest elsewhere, can Boeing use Claude Code for software development?)

                        1. firesteelrain · 1790370849 · focus · HN ↗

                           It’s hardly “self defining” as the Appeals Court noted because military operations can involve different degrees of human involvement in targeting decisions. It’s not as binary as people have been trying to portray it.

                           [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.cadc.uscourts.gov&#x2F;opinions&#x2F;docs&#x2F;2026&#x2F;09&#x2F;26-1049-2194984.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.cadc.uscourts.gov&#x2F;opinions&#x2F;docs&#x2F;2026&#x2F;09&#x2F;26-104...

                           1. hardbass · 1790374537 · focus · HN ↗

                              Find me what degrees of human involvement bombed the girls school.

                              1. firesteelrain · 1790375867 · focus · HN ↗

                                 Humans make mistakes too.

                                 1. hardbass · 1790376500 · focus · HN ↗

                                    Perhaps Anthropic was right in needing more oversight in using AI for murder

                                    1. firesteelrain · 1790377573 · focus · HN ↗

                                       Maybe. That statement is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It’s a different argument than saying Anthropic’s restriction would have prevented it (it was based on bad intel&#x2F;old military installation)

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.