> However, in this instance, it does seem that Anthropic is walking away from money.

The supply chain risk designation will be overturned in court, and the financial fallout from losing the government contracts will pale in comparison to the goodwill from consumers. Not to mention that giving in would mean they lose lots of their employees who would refuse to work under those terms. In this case, the principles are less than free.

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Stratoscope 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> ...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!"

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layer8 an hour ago | parent [-]

Still, you’d need a million people to do that to compensate the $200M military contract.

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Tepix 41 minutes ago | parent [-]

Does the military pay $200m per month?

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layer8 38 minutes ago | parent [-]

As the parent stated, the Claude Pro plan is $200 per year, not per month.

	▲	Tepix 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Gotcha, mixed it up with the Max plan.

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aoeusnth1 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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?

	▲	altairprime 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The longer it takes, the better the impact on their reputation.

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mech422 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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?)

	▲	heroh 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It’s not rolling 30 days. Lost 2 days of use by subscribing in February.

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skissane 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> 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.

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ajam1507 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> 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.

A tweet does not have the force of law. Being designated a supply chain risk does not mean that companies who do business with the government cannot do business with Anthropic. Hegseth just has the law wrong. The government does not have the power to prevent companies from doing business with Anthropic.

	▲	skissane an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The issue is, even if the Trump admin is misrepresenting what the law actually says, federal contractors may decide it is safer to comply with the administration’s reading. The risk is the administration may use their reading to reject a bid. And even if they could potentially challenge that in court and win, they may decide the cheaper and less risky option is to choose OpenAI (or whoever) instead