Anthropic and the military had a contract. The military wanted to change the terms of that contract. Anthropic said no, which is their clearly defined contractual right. They got labeled a supply chain risk. How is this anything other than a shakedown? Does contract law mean anything to this administration?
> “Supply chain risk” means the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of a covered system so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise degrade the function, use, or operation of such system (see 10 U.S.C. 3252).
Naming a US company a "supply chain risk" is basically saying "this company is an adversary of the USA", which is FUCKING INSANE.
And the F35 comes with tons of contract terms in favor of the manufacturer. Like I've heard about how planes have been grounded because although an air base has the parts and mechanics rated to perform the repair on site, the servicing contract only allows it to be performed by the service contractors who needed to be flown in.
The DOD can't even force companies to hand over data, such as schematics, if it wasn't in the original contract without providing extra payment negotiated with the contractor, and they can't force the contractor to set a particular price. This has happened on numerous systems. One of the biggest I'm aware of was the H-60 where the DOD ended up reverse engineering the early helicopters in order to maintain them, all because the DOD program office forgot to include a data rights clause in the contract (Sikorski didn't forget, they just didn't remind the DOD).
> Depending on their agreements, you could argue it's a rented asset. Doesn't change any calculus.
I think your mistakenly thinking of it as an asset. It's not as asset like a house, it's a service. They have a service contract. They have uptime and SLA commitments. That contract has parameters, and changing those parameters means a new contract.
A similar service would be signing up a private company to do intelligence gathering and analysis for the DoD in Asia. They find a company that specializes in Asia and sign a contract. They give them work and the contractors fulfill it. Coming back and saying "we want you now to give us analysis for important decisions in South America." The company would reasonably reply "we don't have the skills to do that in South America. Our team knows nothing about South Am, we're no better than someone off the street at that. There is no credibility behind anything we'd say about South America. And on top our contract was foe Asia". If we want to discuss a plan for hiring people for South Am let's discuss it, but that's a new contract." And then the DoD saying they're a supply chain risk makes no sense.
Or if you want an even more and hyperbolic example they cant take those data analysis to and say we're sending them ti the front lines of Iran. The company say no, and the DoD replying "you're a supply chain risk". They are not renting people, they are signing for a service of data analysis. Similarly they are not renting hardware they are signing for an LLM/intelligence service.
> Are you under the impression that the military is submitting Anthropic API calls?
Yes? I assume that it's not in a government owned and operated datacenter, but likely in AWS (govcloud or whatever) and maintained/serviced by Anthropic SREs like I suppose regular Claude is.
Because last time I checked, private companies that voluntarily offer a service to the government on contract terms are free to put whatever restrictions they want into their contract, and the government is free to not sign it if they don't like it?
Or is, say, FedEx now a supply chain risk too, if they happened to offer parcel delivery services for the DoD and put in a clause excluding delivery to active war zones?
Congratulations, you are clearly the smartest person on this forum, and I don’t mean that facetiously. The number of naïve comments here is absolutely astounding.
It would be like a spouse proposing restrictions and terms of their access to your phone contingent on you marrying them. Assuming guilt until proven innocent
Even in your analogy, it's appropriate to reject the terms of marriage and not wed this person. But it's unprecedented to also vindictively ruin their life (e.g. by unilaterally putting them in jail)
> It would be like a spouse proposing restrictions and terms of their access to your phone contingent on you marrying them.
It is easy to cherry pick one metaphor. We owe it to ourselves to think better than that.
What happens when you analyze this overall situation in all of its richness from multiple points of view and then seek synthesis? Speaking for myself, I would want to know your (1) probabilistic priors: the Bayesian equivalent of "disclosing your biases"; (2) supporting information; (3) conflicting information: I want to know that you aren't just ignoring it; (4) various theories/models you considered; (5) overall probabilistic take. All in all, I'm uninterested in analysis disconnected from the historical particulars.
Few people have the skillset and time to dig in properly. I suggest starting with "A Tale of Three Contracts" by Zvi Mowshowitz [1] In my experience, you would be hard-pressed to find anything around AI of this quality in the usual mainstream publications.
2. One what basis is it rational to give the current administration (the leadership) the benefit of the doubt w.r.t. having a sincere drive towards advancing the national security of the United States? The evidence highly points in the other direction: towards corruption, political ends, and narcissistic whims.
Anthropic and the military had a contract. The military wanted to change the terms of that contract. Anthropic said no, which is their clearly defined contractual right. They got labeled a supply chain risk. How is this anything other than a shakedown? Does contract law mean anything to this administration?
The other such labeled companies have contracts too.
10 USC 3252 has only been used once, against Acronis AG, a Swiss company with Russian connections.
Acronis did not have DOD contracts.
Other companies (Huawei) have been deemed risks under different laws, or by Congress, but they also didn't have direct DOD contracts.
Do you have any evidence for your assertion? Did you check if it is true before posting?
no, the other such labeled companies are foreign owned firms like Huawei that the government never intended to do business with in the first place
The legal definition of supply chain risk:
> “Supply chain risk” means the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of a covered system so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise degrade the function, use, or operation of such system (see 10 U.S.C. 3252).
Naming a US company a "supply chain risk" is basically saying "this company is an adversary of the USA", which is FUCKING INSANE.
They think anyone who isn't a republican is an adversary of the USA.
Because it's not a military asset? It's a privately-owned asset.
> Because it's not a military asset? It's a privately-owned asset.
Are you under the impression that the military is submitting Anthropic API calls?
Whatever model the military is using is as much of an asset as the F35 they purchased.
Depending on their agreements, you could argue it's a rented asset. Doesn't change any calculus.
And the F35 comes with tons of contract terms in favor of the manufacturer. Like I've heard about how planes have been grounded because although an air base has the parts and mechanics rated to perform the repair on site, the servicing contract only allows it to be performed by the service contractors who needed to be flown in.
The DOD can't even force companies to hand over data, such as schematics, if it wasn't in the original contract without providing extra payment negotiated with the contractor, and they can't force the contractor to set a particular price. This has happened on numerous systems. One of the biggest I'm aware of was the H-60 where the DOD ended up reverse engineering the early helicopters in order to maintain them, all because the DOD program office forgot to include a data rights clause in the contract (Sikorski didn't forget, they just didn't remind the DOD).
> Depending on their agreements, you could argue it's a rented asset. Doesn't change any calculus.
I think your mistakenly thinking of it as an asset. It's not as asset like a house, it's a service. They have a service contract. They have uptime and SLA commitments. That contract has parameters, and changing those parameters means a new contract.
A similar service would be signing up a private company to do intelligence gathering and analysis for the DoD in Asia. They find a company that specializes in Asia and sign a contract. They give them work and the contractors fulfill it. Coming back and saying "we want you now to give us analysis for important decisions in South America." The company would reasonably reply "we don't have the skills to do that in South America. Our team knows nothing about South Am, we're no better than someone off the street at that. There is no credibility behind anything we'd say about South America. And on top our contract was foe Asia". If we want to discuss a plan for hiring people for South Am let's discuss it, but that's a new contract." And then the DoD saying they're a supply chain risk makes no sense.
Or if you want an even more and hyperbolic example they cant take those data analysis to and say we're sending them ti the front lines of Iran. The company say no, and the DoD replying "you're a supply chain risk". They are not renting people, they are signing for a service of data analysis. Similarly they are not renting hardware they are signing for an LLM/intelligence service.
> Are you under the impression that the military is submitting Anthropic API calls?
Yes? I assume that it's not in a government owned and operated datacenter, but likely in AWS (govcloud or whatever) and maintained/serviced by Anthropic SREs like I suppose regular Claude is.
status.claude.com shows the uptime for the government cloud service. It's running in-part on an AWS server.
Because last time I checked, private companies that voluntarily offer a service to the government on contract terms are free to put whatever restrictions they want into their contract, and the government is free to not sign it if they don't like it?
Or is, say, FedEx now a supply chain risk too, if they happened to offer parcel delivery services for the DoD and put in a clause excluding delivery to active war zones?
Congratulations, you are clearly the smartest person on this forum, and I don’t mean that facetiously. The number of naïve comments here is absolutely astounding.
It would be like a spouse proposing restrictions and terms of their access to your phone contingent on you marrying them. Assuming guilt until proven innocent
Even in your analogy, it's appropriate to reject the terms of marriage and not wed this person. But it's unprecedented to also vindictively ruin their life (e.g. by unilaterally putting them in jail)
> It would be like a spouse proposing restrictions and terms of their access to your phone contingent on you marrying them.
It is easy to cherry pick one metaphor. We owe it to ourselves to think better than that.
What happens when you analyze this overall situation in all of its richness from multiple points of view and then seek synthesis? Speaking for myself, I would want to know your (1) probabilistic priors: the Bayesian equivalent of "disclosing your biases"; (2) supporting information; (3) conflicting information: I want to know that you aren't just ignoring it; (4) various theories/models you considered; (5) overall probabilistic take. All in all, I'm uninterested in analysis disconnected from the historical particulars.
Few people have the skillset and time to dig in properly. I suggest starting with "A Tale of Three Contracts" by Zvi Mowshowitz [1] In my experience, you would be hard-pressed to find anything around AI of this quality in the usual mainstream publications.
[1] https://thezvi.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-three-contracts
> There are game theoretic reasons why a military should never accept any external restrictions on an asset.
1. Last week I made a case for why DoD, if rational, would accept limited use under a consequentialist decision theory frame: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47190039
2. One what basis is it rational to give the current administration (the leadership) the benefit of the doubt w.r.t. having a sincere drive towards advancing the national security of the United States? The evidence highly points in the other direction: towards corruption, political ends, and narcissistic whims.