> We are all susceptible to market forces, and companies like Anthropic need as much revenue as possible to be able to maintain themselves and grow given the cost of training.

There's also the consideration that if they come across at too against US military support, the administration can and will make things extremely painful for them. I suspect they've actually gotten off pretty easy just being named a supply chain risk (so far). Imagine the backlash if they'd for example accepted contracts with China. Or even made so much as a hint that they weren't open to most military use cases.

As soon as you accept "we need to survive to do good," survival becomes the priority and the good becomes negotiable. And so every compromise reduces their ethical position a little more.

Living in accordance with an ethical framework only matters when that decision is hard. There are clearly consequences to doing so. But Anthropic has clearly forfeited their right to claim the moral high ground. Their posturing against OpenAI is based on a false dichotomy: they are arguing around a cutout incredibly minor commensurate with their broader exposure.

I think Anthropic can avoid contracting with the military at this stage, with all of their babbling about alignment, and not actively contract with China.