Why did they work with Palantir then, which is the integrator in the DoD? It does not take a genius to figure out where this was going.

I don't know why a personal testimony to the effect that "these are the good guys" needs to be at the top of every Anthropic thread. With respect to astroturfing and stealth marketing they are clearly the bad guys.

Anthropic's stance is "we believe in the use of our tools, with safeguards, to assist the defense of the US".

So of course they would work with Palantir to deploy those tools.

The issue we're seeing is because the DoW decided they no longer like the "with safeguards" part of the above and is trying to force Anthropic to remove them.

Others have addressed the first half of your comment, so I'll focus on the astroturfing claim.

While I've talked a lot about Anthropic this week, if I was astroturfing for a positive image, I'd be very bad at it [1][2][3].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47150170

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47163143

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47174814

They are pretty clear about this:

> the mass domestic surveillance of Americans

This they say they don’t like. The qualifiers tells you they’re totally fine with mass surveillance of Palestinians, or anyone else really, otherwise they could have said “mass surveillance”.

> fully autonomous weapons

And they’re pretty obviously fine with killing machines using their AI as long as they’re not fully autonomous.

All things considered they’re still a bit better than their competitors, I suppose.

Anthropic makes it kind of clear in all of their statements that they are not opposed to working with the surveillance state, with the military industrial complex, etc. Their central philosophy, it seems, is not incongruent with working with entities, public or private, that can be construed as imperialist or capitalistic or a combination of both. I actually appreciate their honesty here.

They exist within the regime of capital and imperialism that all of us who are American citizens exist within. This isn't a cop-out or cope. It's just the reality of the world that we live in. If you are an American and somehow above it, let me know how you live.

The further away from God, the more need to believe there are good guys.