3 pointsby Jimmc4144 hours ago3 comments
  • 2 hours ago
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  • anonymousiam3 hours ago
    From Anthropic's lawsuit brief: “The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech,” and “Anthropic turns to the judiciary as a last resort to vindicate its rights and halt the Executive’s unlawful campaign of retaliation.”

    Unfortunately for Anthropic, the Constitution does not require the government to purchase goods or services from a company that has made a public declaration that it will not allow its AI models (specifically Claude) to be used for mass domestic surveillance or to power fully autonomous weapons, if such a declaration goes against the government's contract requirements.

    The government, and not the contractor, should have control over the scope of its use of products purchased from a supplier. If a supplier wants to retain such control and restrict functionality, deeming them a supply-chain risk seems appropriate.

    • dragonwriter2 hours ago
      > Unfortunately for Anthropic, the Constitution does not require the government to purchase goods or services from a company that has made a public declaration that it will not allow its AI models (specifically Claude) to be used for mass domestic surveillance or to power fully autonomous weapons, if such a declaration goes against the government's contract requirements.

      Obviously, if the contract requirements themselves are lawful, the government has the power to purchase only those goods and services that meet the requirements, and to not purchase those that do not.

      But that's irrelevant, because the "supply chain risk" designation is not needed if the government is merely trying to assure that the good and services in a contract meet the requirement of the contract, it is a separate legal provision with separate purposes that would be superfluous for the purpose described.

      If the government is using the "supply chain risk" designation as a backdoor way to rewrite all previously-entered, still-in-force defense contracts to retroactively add new requirements incompatible with the use of Anthropic software given their limitations on the service Anthropic is willing to provide, that also is not what the "supply chain risk" designation exists for, and, even if were to seem facially within the statutory purpose of the authority, would raise 5th Amendment takings issues.

    • alpaca1282 hours ago
      > If a supplier wants to retain such control and restrict functionality, deeming them a supply-chain risk seems appropriate

      Anthropic provides their product under specific terms, if the government doesn't accept those terms then there's no deal, simple as that. That's how basic contracts work, not sure why you think that has anything to do with a supply chain risk.

      • anonymousiam2 hours ago
        DoW did probably did this because the government has existing contracts, and Anthropic will not perform to their requirements. It's a way for the government to invalidate the contracts, and avoid the problem in the future.

        Given that the Anthropic announcement of their policy update to their AI being used in they way it was already being used happened less than two weeks ago, how could the government have had a right of refusal at the time the contracts were issued (probably years ago)?

      • peyton2 hours ago
        Steel-manning a bit. AFAIK one major issue was that Palantir relied on Claude under the hood. If that’s true, the designation makes some sense. Essentially “given our dealings with Anthopic, we don’t want our suppliers using them for products we buy either.” Hence the “chain.”

        But who knows. None of us are at the table, and there’s probably classified stuff anyway, so as an observer it’s tough to take a position based purely on facts.

        In an ideal world, it sounds like Anthropic should not accept the military’s terms, and consequently no supplier will accept Anthropic’s terms, and everybody will get what they want.