Yeah, the alternative is be OK with their product being used for surveillance.

Not sure why it's controversial that they said no, regardless of the reasoning. Yeah there's a lot of marketing speak and things to cover their asses. Let's call them out on that later. Right now let's applaud them for doing the right thing.

FWIW I do not think they are the "good guys" (if I had a dollar for every company that had a policy of not being evil...). But they are certainly not siding with the bad guys here.

No surprises many people on YCs site align with Sam Altmans view of the world - right or wrong.

> ...the financial fallout from losing the government contracts will pale in comparison to the goodwill from consumers.

In fact, a friend heard about this and immediately signed up for a $200/year Claude Pro plan. This is someone who has been only a very occasional user of ChatGPT and never used Claude before.

I told my friend "You could just sign up for the free plan and upgrade after you try it out."

"No, I want to send them this tangible message of support right now!"

> The supply chain risk designation will be overturned in court,

I'm honestly uncertain how the courts will rule. You could be right, but it isn't guaranteed. I think a judicial narrowing of it is more likely than a complete overturn.

OTOH, I think almost guaranteed it will be watered-down by the government. Because read expansively, it could force Microsoft and AWS to choose between stopping reselling Claude vs dropping the Pentagon as a customer. I don't think Hegseth actually wants to put them in that position – he probably honestly doesn't realise that's what he's potentially doing. In any event, Microsoft/AWS/etc's lobbyists will talk him out of it.

And the more the government waters it down, the greater the likelihood the courts will ultimately uphold it.

> and the financial fallout from losing the government contracts will pale in comparison to the goodwill from consumers.

Maybe. The problem is B2B/enterprise is arguably a much bigger market than B2C. And the US federal contracting ban may have a chilling effect on B2B firms who also do business with the federal government, who may worry that their use of Claude might have some negative impact on their ability to win US federal deals, and may view OpenAI/xAI (and maybe Google too) as safer options.

I guess the issue is nobody yet knows exactly how wide or narrow the US government is going to interpret their "ban on Anthropic". And even if they decide to interpret it relatively narrowly, there is always the risk they might shift to a broader reading in the future. Possibly, some of Anthropic's competitors may end up quietly lobbying behind the scenes for the Trump admin to adopt broader readings of it.

Unclear how much damage the designation will do to their dealmaking ability in the meantime. How long will it take for the court to reverse order?

The consumer goodwill is working then - it pushed me to upgrade my plan on march 1st... (do they bill on rolling 30 day cycle ? or calendar-month to calendar-month?)

My reading is that OpenAI is paying lip service. Altman is basically saying "OF COURSE we don't want to spy on Americans or murderdrone randos, but OF COURSE the government would never do that, they just told me so (except for the fact that they just cut ties with Anthropic because Anthropic wouldn't let them do that)"

It doesn’t seem like anybody has addressed “If they are the good guys with principles why did they work with Palantir?”

There’s a comment that’s sort of handwaving and saying “because America”, but I would imagine that someone with direct knowledge of the people involved would have something more substantive than “thems the breaks” when it comes to working with Palantir

God has been used as a justification for a lot of human suffering.

My personal belief is that the closer to god you are; the more easily you can justify evil. How could you not? If my entire belief system is derived from faith, then there are *no* conclusions I could not come to, and therefore anything can be justified.

How much is your investment (you don't have to be exact)?

The bottom line is that if the investment is not profitable, then there will be less and less investment, because only fewer and fewer can afford to lose money and stick to their values, until no one will be investing; how ever high your values might be...

Sticking to your values when it cost growth is not sustainable for publicly traded companies...

> enthusiastically stood with Trump

I think "enthusiastically" looks different. They had to choose between kissing Trumps butt to make good business for 4 years or see their companies at a severe disadvantage. I'm not saying what they did was good, nor do I support it. But from a business angle it's not hard to see why they chose to do that. If you'd ask them privately off the record then I'm sure most of them would tell you that Trump is an idiot and dangerous.

Destroyed? No. But a new sharif is gonna show up while the existing exit stage left with big bags of nuts.

Sure, where is your productive output? Cause that's drivel.

Anthropic kept referring to Hegseth as "Secretary of War" and the DoD as "Department of War". Which is horseshit. This whole thing is Anthropic flailing.

I think the differences in this situation were that I do not want AI used in domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons, and Anthropic holds to that position.

I think Donald Trump has pretty much let Zohran Mamdani operate without applying the kind of political pressure he has applied to other people, notably his predecessor Eric Adams. Also, I think saying "let people be your allies when they take your position" is less "grandiose and noble" than demanding someone agree on all counts before you will accept any political alignment. But it's fine if everyone else disagrees. It's possible there really just isn't a political group which will accept my views and while that's unfortunate because it means I can't get all that I want, I think it'll be okay.

One could reasonably argue that the meta-position is to either join the Republicans full-bore (somewhat unavailable to me) or to at least play the purity test game solely because that's the only way to have any influence on outcomes. If it comes to that, I'll do it.

I think there is a marked difference in Trump's rhetoric v Mamdani prior to the meeting at the White House and after.