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| ▲ | kalkin 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It appears that when it comes to Jesse Jackson you're entirely capable of understanding how a shakedown works: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47046514 | | |
| ▲ | tgma 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, I am entirely capable of doing that. Your point? | | |
| ▲ | kalkin 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm providing information for other readers to evaluate your good faith, or lack thereof. | | |
| ▲ | tgma 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's a nice straw man you got there. I don't mind you characterizing the negotiation however you want. That's not the debate. Call it "shakedown" or "mafia" as someone else mentioned, or whatnot (although it is appears the company that was trying to grandstand the elected US Government by dictating their own terms was Anthropic, not the other way around, but I digress). The question is was it a breach of contract or just a tough negotiation? Companies have gone out of business due to a big customer pulling the contract. Imagination Technologies comes to mind. This is not a rare thing in business. | | |
| ▲ | danorama 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I have to admit, “accept this unilateral change to the contract or we will use the full power of the US government to destroy your company” is certainly a tough negotiation stance. You got that part right. | | |
| ▲ | tgma 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | How did you get the "destroy your company" part? If HN sentiment is any evidence, they are even more popular than before. GPU is a constrained resource and I am sure they are going to have enough business to saturate what they got. I'm certain they would have just removed (and still will remove) two paragraphs from the terms had it really "destroyed their company." > full power of the US government Haha, I can assure you that is not even close to the full power of US government. Ask the crypto people during Biden admin for just a little more power (still not even close to "full.") | | |
| ▲ | danorama 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | "Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic." For a company of Anthropic's size, this may very well be a death sentence, even if their work has nothing to do with the military supply chain. They could have just canceled the contract, but they wanted to go full Darth Vader on them to prove a point in case anyone else thought about "negotiating" "voluntarily" with the federal government. | | |
| ▲ | tgma 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | You don't think Anthropic is going out of business any minute now, do you? This is just rhetoric. Affirmative evidence is they would just remove two paragraphs if they were. |
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| ▲ | jibal 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > I am not aware People have noticed. > It's called negotiation in business. The bad faith in this statement alone is almost equal to the sum of it in the rest of your comments. | |
| ▲ | rolymath 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm just curious, do you understand that the DoD isn't saying it won't do business with Anthropic. Its saying it will also ban any company that does business with the DoD (so 90% of large enterprises?) from doing business from Anthropic. Are you aware of this? | | |
| ▲ | tgma 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, I am aware. That is not entirely unreasonable if it touches the actual Supply Chain tree. I do fully sympathize that the extent of legality of that rule should be clarified/restricted if say, Claude is used by a separate division unrelated to DoD business. I think courts will resolve this, likely fairly quickly via an injunction. |
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| ▲ | Hikikomori 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Hegseth managed to get through art of the deal? Maybe he made a drinking game out of it, a shot per page. | |
| ▲ | Analemma_ 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You seem really unaware of the timeline of this issue and what has actually happened, I think you should update your info before posting so confidently wrongly. The contract, including Anthropic's redlines, was signed more than a year ago and has been humming along with no objections from anybody. Hegseth abruptly got a bug up his ass about it last week, and demanded Anthropic sign a revised version under threat of punishment. Anthropic is simply saying "no, we will not be forced into signing a new version, you can either keep going with the original terms we all agreed to, or stop using us". The Pentagon can simply stop using Anthropic if they don't like the terms anymore (which, again, are the terms Pentagon agreed to in the first place). But what the DoW wants is to strong-arm Anthropic, using the DPA, into new terms because they abruptly changed their mind. That's not "negotiation" in any sense, that's Mafia behavior. | | |
| ▲ | tgma 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | How you characterize the behavior, Mafia or not, is of course your opinion, and I am sure if you are a voter/stakeholder you'd consider that in your political activity, but I'd appreciate if you clarify what you mean but your story and timeline, so I ask again, are you suggesting the US government has breached the contract they already signed? | | |
| ▲ | Analemma_ 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't know why you keep bringing up breach of contract, it is not relevant to this discussion at all. No, the government did not breach the contract AFAIK, they just decided they didn't like it anymore, and instead of either withdrawing or entering into a negotiation about it, they decided to use threats to try and get their terms at metaphorical gunpoint. The actual terms of the contract aren't even relevant, this is purely a matter of tort law and whether you can bully someone into a new contact because you woke up one day and decided you didn't like the one you agreed to. | | |
| ▲ | tgma 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Because you implied it here: > Anthropic's terms were laid out in the contract the Pentagon signed, which they want to forcibly amend. They want to "forcibly amend" is either within their rights per original contract, or not. One is fair game, the other is not. | | |
| ▲ | wasabi991011 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | I did not read that as implying breach of contract, and AI don't understand your explanation. Isn't agreeing to amend a contract always within their rights? |
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| ▲ | ImPostingOnHN 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The comment you replied to is pretty clear: Yes, the US government seeks to void the contract they already signed. That said, many government contracts include some variant of "we can cancel at any time for any reason". | | |
| ▲ | Analemma_ 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's actually even worse than that: Anthropic already agrees that the Pentagon can walk away from the contract and stop using Claude if they want to, there's no dispute there. What the Pentagon wants is to force Anthropic into a new set of terms which cannot be refused. | | |
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