You can't discuss this topic without broaching the idea that the government is acting in bad faith — that they don't actually believe that Anthropic is a supply-chain risk and that this action is meant to punish the company. But this is in the HN guidelines regarding comments:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

If a commenter who supports the government makes the same argument that the government is making, the guidelines tell us to assume good faith.

My conclusion is that any topic where a commenter might be making a bad faith argument is outside the scope of Hacker News.

My interpretation of that is that I’m required to assume good faith on behalf of other commenters. So, if someone makes the same argument as the government, I’m supposed to assume good faith there, but nothing requires me to assume good faith on behalf of the government. So I can say that this is obviously a shakedown without breaking the rules.

On the other hand, pretending the government is acting in good faith is probably acting in bad faith at this point.

>Assume good faith.

This is more for “assume op is not a troll” rather than “assume Donald trump never took part on Epstein’s parties”.

I’ve never taken it to apply to anything other than the interaction with other commenters.