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nickysielicki 7 hours ago

This could kill Anthropic.

The designation says any contractor, supplier, or partner doing business with the US military can’t conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic. Well, AWS has JWCC. Microsoft has Azure Government. Google has DoD contracts. If that language is enforced broadly, then Claude gets kicked off Bedrock, Vertex, and potentially Azure… which is where all the enterprise revenue lives. Claude cannot survive on $200/mo individual powerusers. The math just doesn’t math.

cobolcomesback 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

None of the hyper scalers are going to stop offering Claude. All of the big 3 have invested billions of dollars into Anthropic, and have tens (if not hundreds) of billions more tied up in funding deals with them. Amazon and Google are two of the largest shareholders of Anthropic.

Anthropic is going to be fine. The DoD is going to walk this back and pretend it never happened to save face.

CobrastanJorji 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It will really depend on the fine details. If Amazon would lose its military contracts unless it dropped Claude, then Claude will be gone tomorrow. They just got a half billion contract for the Air Force earlier this year, and it's not their only military contract, and they're going to want to be well positioned next time something like the JEDI contract comes along.

Also, AWS has a long history of rolling over when politicians make noise about AWS customers, going back to when Joe Lieberman casually asked Bezos to please stop supporting Wikileaks.

alephnerd 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

GovCloud revenue is in the tens of billions of dollars. Bedrock less so. Almost every FedRAMP product uses the same codebase for Fed and non-Fed, and this would force most FedRAMP vendors to blackball Anthropic.

cobolcomesback 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The JWCC, which is larger than GovCloud, was only $9b, split across three companies, over ten years. It’s peanuts compared to the investments that the hyperscalers have with Anthropic.

alephnerd 6 hours ago | parent [-]

JWCC is not the only project. Vendors like Crowdstrike also rely on hyperscalers to serve their products to federal customers, and the codebase is shared.

This announcement has made Anthropic toxic in the entire dependency chain because it means years of efforts and tens to hundreds of millions of dollars rearchitecting entire platforms and renegotiating contracts.

The entire cybersecurity industry has a TAM of $208 BILLION [0]

[0] - https://www.bccresearch.com/market-research/information-tech...

cobolcomesback 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> because it means years of efforts and tens to hundreds of millions of dollars rearchitecting entire platforms and renegotiating contracts.

This is exactly why this announcement has not made Anthropic toxic. The entire industry knows how ridiculous this move is from Hegseth, and it’s going to be rolled back next week once the adults get back from their weekend.

Kim_Bruning 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm concerned there's not that many adults left, else they'd have advised Trump and Hegseth not to act this way.

adastra22 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This restriction is viral. If AWS hosts Claude models, Lockheed can no longer use AWS for anything. Every defense contractor will pull out. What if Lockheed uses Asana or Jira or Slack? Guess what, they better not use Claude ANYWHERE in their organizations, or else all defense contractors will have to drop these products. Any any other company whose product they use in the design or manufacture of their products - if anyone, anywhere is using Claude products, they have to be dropped.

The downstream effects of this are HUGE.

adastra22 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think you understand. This supply chain risk designation is viral. Every Claude model provider now has to decide whether to (1) drop Anthropic models, or (2) drop every single government contract, every contract with government contractors, or any customer who has any customer to any degree of connection to a government contract [which is effectively everyone], or (3) go to jail.

SpicyLemonZest 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would find that a lot more plausible if people had not spent the past week giving me similar arguments, in precisely the same tone, for why this was an empty threat and would never happen in the first place. If Amazon and Google do not either bow down or immediately join a business coalition to get Trump out of power, Hegseth will be even happier to get an opportunity to prove his power by destroying them. Trump either doesn't want to stop him or has become too senile to stop him.

nickysielicki 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

cobolcomesback 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The DoD’s spend on cloud contracts is measured in single-digit-billions per year. It’s peanuts compared to the hyperscalers investments in Anthropic.

Think of it this way: each of the hyperscalers have built a handful of data centers specifically for government contracts. A handful each.

Meanwhile, AWS and GCP have dedicated over 50 new data centers solely for Anthropic to train new models, and more were announced today.

My bet is on Anthropic.

nickysielicki 6 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

cobolcomesback 6 hours ago | parent [-]

This isn’t “a few billion”. Maybe you missed some of the earlier comments. The hyperscalers have hundreds of billions of dollars tied up in deals with Anthropic. You’re delusional if you think these boards aren’t going to have a back room talk with Hegseth to smack some sense into him. This gets walked back next week, guaranteed.

nickysielicki 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The counterparty risk on those buildout contracts is not the same as their equity investments. Amazon isn’t assuming the entirety of that buildout exposure as a vote of confidence or form of investment in anthropic; they’re hedging it with insurance, credit default swaps, and MAE clauses.

Those datacenters are AWS infrastructure that Amazon owns and can repurpose. The equity stake is the only part that’s truly at risk, and $8B is a rounding error on Amazon’s balance sheet.

QuiEgo 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That $961 billion includes things like airplanes and bullets, tech companies are only getting a taste of that pie not anywhere close to the whole thing.

nickysielicki 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Obviously, but that's a huge number and some tens-of-billions amount of that absolutely does flow towards hyperscalers. Contractors need compute.

QuiEgo 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Amazon's stake in Anthropic is (was?) worth $61 billion.

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ai-bet-anthropic-soar...

It will be interesting to see how they handle this.

deaux 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Anthropic is not even close to too big to fail.

Ironically, of all things Trump has done so far, closing Anthropic could set a new record for pissing off the highest number of people globally. Outside of HN with a group of dedicated people who is against it, the whole global software world is already running on CC.

adammarples 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

and?

nickysielicki 6 hours ago | parent [-]

The cost of a company like Amazon or Google losing their piece of that $1T annual budget is greater than their exposure to the failure of Anthropic.

rolymath 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Not according to published Financials.

Also $1T is dishonest. DoD spends less than 0.1% of that on cloud services.

nickysielicki 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Source?

Half of that budget gets contracted out to Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop, Boeing, General Dynamics, etc. Those companies absolutely do spend money on the hyperscalers.

rolymath 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Great. So you've gone down from $1T to "half of that budget".

If you're honest with yourself, you'll find the true number.

nickysielicki 5 hours ago | parent [-]

obviously, I was never suggesting that the DoD spends $961b a year on cloud computing.

Look, it’s a very simple question: Amazon has invested $8b into anthropic. Do you think if the DoD disappeared tomorrow that Amazon would lose more than $8b in revenue over the next 5 years?

I think you underestimate how large the DoD budget is and how many times that money changes hands in the pursuit of fulfilling contracts. $20b-$25b in revenue per year across all hyperscalers is a totally reasonable estimate.

senordevnyc 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Why on earth would you compare $8 billion of equity investment in another company (which is likely worth far more now) to $8b of revenue?

thewebguyd 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not entirely true.

The designation only applies to projects that touch the federal government, or software developed specifically for the federal government.

Contractors can still use Claude internally in their business, so long as it is not used in government work directly.

A complete ban would be adding Anthropic to the NDAA, which requires congress.

The DoD designation allows the DoD to make contractors certify that Anthropic is not used in the fulfillment of the government work.

techblueberry 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The language in the tweet was

" Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic."

Is that just his fantasy or?

QuiEgo 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Example: Perhaps "Amazon US Services LLC" or whichever subsidiary they have that deals with the government will be banned from using Claude, and all of it's other subsidiaries won't?

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872423...

kube-system 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Claude is in all of 'em

https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-in-amazon-bedrock-fedr...

thewebguyd 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well, IANAL but tweets aren't legislation. What that tweet implies is something that would have to be amended into the NDAA, which requires congress. Hegseth can't just go on a drunk rant and have everything out of his mouth become law.

The supply chain risk directive would come from existing procurement law, which only allows the DoD to require contractors to certify that Anthropic is not used in the fulfillment of any government work.

Which is also separate from Trumps' EO, which being an EO only applies to the federal government directly.

So yeah, banning any contractor, supplier, or partner from any commercial activity with Anthropic is just fantasy without going through congress first.

CobrastanJorji 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You know, it's an interesting question what happens when the commander in chief makes a pronouncement like this. PROBABLY everyone will just ignore it and go with the actual technical definitions of these things, but...I mean it is an order.

raincole 19 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes. It's fantasy. However tariffs are legally fantasy too. This administration is a machine turning Trump's legal fantasy to reality.

DannyBee 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Lawyer here - this is legally fantasy, but socially not?

Anybody with significant contracts with the DOD is not going to use anthropic because they want to keep getting contracts with the DOD.

alephnerd 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Contractors can still use Claude internally in their business, so long as it is not used in government work directly.

I work in the enterprise SaaS and cybersecurity industry. There is no way to guarantee that amongst any FedRAMP vendor (which is almost every cybersecurity and enterprise SaaS or on their roadmap).

Almost all FedRAMP products I've built, launched, sold, or funded were the same build as the commerical offering, but with siloed data and network access.

This means the entire security and enterprise SaaS industry will have to shift away from Anthropic unless the DPA is invoked and management is changed.

More likely, I think the DoD/DoW and their vendors will force Anthropic to retrain a sovereign model specifically for the US Gov.

Edit: Can't reply

> This is the core assertion that is not clear nor absolute.

If Walmart can forcibly add verbiage banning AWS from it's vendors and suppliers, the US government absolutely can. At least with Walmart they will accept a segmented environment using GCP+Azure+OCI. Retraining a foundational model to be Gov compliant is a project that would cost billions.

By declaring Anthropic a supply chain risk, it will now be contractually added by everyone becuase no GRC team will allow Anthropic anywhere in a company that even remotely touches FedRAMP and it will be forcibly added into contracts.

No one can guarantee that your codebase was not touched by Claude or a product using Claude in the background, so this will be added contractually.

hyperpape 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> If Walmart can forcibly add verbiage banning AWS from it's vendors and suppliers, the US government absolutely can.

You can add new language to new contracts. That is not what this is.

alephnerd 4 hours ago | parent [-]

FedRAMP contracts require all inputs being FedRAMP compliant and a vetted BOM. Anthropic is no longer FedRAMP high and because it is declared a supply chain risk now all our FedRAMP contracts are at risk and any company who has FedRAMP customers is at risk too.

Kim_Bruning 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Possibly Claude has already touched too much code, so this will be very interesting.

tomrod 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> This means the entire security and enterprise SaaS industry will have to shift away from Anthropic unless the DPA is invoked and management is changed.

This is the core assertion that is not clear nor absolute.

monknomo 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is narrower than that by law, though not by their proclamation.

That label forbids contractors on DoD contracts for billing DoD for Anthropic, or including Anthropic as part of their DoD solution.

So - AWS can keep claude on bedrock, but can't provide claude to the DoD under its DoD contracts

mcintyre1994 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

From what I’ve heard the actual restriction is just on using Claude for stuff they’re doing for the Pentagon. They’ll keep using Claude for everything else and be less effective when they work for the government, and that’s fine because everyone else working for the government will have the same handicap.

robertjpayne 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This will likely go to court, again as Dario has stated this is blatant retaliation as no US company has ever been designated a supply chain risk and they continue to operate on classified systems for 6 more months.

roxolotl 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Yea strong odds this goes to court, the DoD’s clearly inconsistent logic is ridiculed by a judge, the designation is dropped, and everyone quietly goes about their way with the DoD continuing to use Claude according to the existing terms of the contract.

chasd00 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure, after a decade of litigation, meanwhile Anthropic goes bankrupt.

stephencoyner 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’m sure most of their revenue is large enterprise customers who serve government with their products - this looks very bad

aveao 6 hours ago | parent [-]

That's what hegseth says, but the law doesn't really say that AFAICT.

crooked-v 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's going to be a TRO against the attempt by like 9 AM Monday, and the bad faith from the government couldn't be more obvious. All it's really going to do is cost them some extremely expensive lawyer time.

hirvi74 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> This could kill Anthropic

I am both dumb and without access to Claude, thus I must ask: My fellow smart HN'ers, what kind of impacts would this likely have on the economy?

Has a lot of money and resources not been pumped into Anthropic (albeit likely less than OpenAI)? I imagine such a decision would not be the ROI that many investors expected.

mkoubaa 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No, Anthropic could easily call their bluff.