Ok, just labeling them a supply chain risk while also claiming they’re critical to national security for insisting the government stick to the powers to the model they agreed to in the contract and not expanding it.

> Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military. That is unacceptable.

Yup, definitely not an enemy.

> Instead, @AnthropicAI and its CEO @DarioAmodei, have chosen duplicity

Don’t you call your friends duplicitous?

> Anthropic’s stance is fundamentally incompatible with American principles.

Oh boy. Doubleplus ungood.

> I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic

Oh yeah, totally not an enemy. Just no one can do business with them. Doubleplusungood behavior.

They’re both a danger to US troops with their behavior and also critical to the supply chain of said troops. Very important to understand and accept that doublethink.

I would love to hear your perspective of how the label "supply chain risk" and its definition aren't in accordance with the concept of being branded an enemy of the state. I'll reproduce the definition below:

> “Supply chain risk” means the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of a covered system so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise degrade the function, use, or operation of such system (see 10 U.S.C. 3252). (https://www.acquisition.gov/dfars/subpart-239.73-requirement...)

There's a little bit of leeway here, but this definition means either the company is an adversary (or an extension of one, e.g. Huawei/the CCP) or is under threat of being compromised by an adversary.

So which is Anthropic? Well, neither: the government's court filings and public comments in the media claim that Anthropic has an "adversarial posture". They want to simultaneously get away with bucketing Anthropic under the statute for adversaries, but without calling Anthropic an adversary directly in a court of law. They want to apply the statute without needing to follow the actual definition of an adversary.

From a CNBC interview:

> We can't have a company that has a different policy preference that is baked into the model through its constitution, its soul, its policy preferences, pollute the supply chain so our warfighters are getting ineffective weapons, ineffective body armor, ineffective protection. That's really where the supply chain risk designation came from. (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/12/anthropic-claude-emil-michae...)

That's why the judge rightly called this situation Orwellian: we're looking at linguistic sleight of hand designed to allow the government to turn what is a simple contract dispute into a company-threatening classification that threatens to uproot them entirely from any company that does business with the most powerful entity in the United States. Because Anthropic doesn't want to do the government's bidding despite being allowed to as a matter of freedom of speech, they are being threatened with a punishment that goes beyond just not being able to contract directly with the government. And that's not fair.

I would also love to understand why you keep going back to the literal events of the book. You don't need to be locked in a room and forced to claim that 2+2=5 for your situation to be Orwellian.

No, it's quite clear, from the brief:

> Moreover, Defendants’ designation of Anthropic as a “supply chain risk” is likely both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious. The Department of War provides no legitimate basis to infer from Anthropic’s forthright insistence on usage restrictions that it might become a saboteur. At oral argument, government counsel suggested that Anthropic showed its subversive tendencies by “questioning” the use of its technology, “raising concerns” about it, and criticizing the government’s position in the press. Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government

And something like 150 retired judges signed on, those are the amicus briefs supporting Anthropic:

> Numerous amici have also described wide- ranging harm to the public interest, including the chilling of open discussion about important topics in AI safety. The motion for a preliminary injunction is granted.

She could have said that those amicus briefs raise surveillance concerns. She didn't use the word surveillance; she didn't say AI safety is important; she said open discussion about AI safety is important. That's the issue over which this injunction is granted.

We know that the judge asked a long, organized list of questions to the government; there are multiple ways for the government to get out of a contract, and she gave them room for nuance. We're talking about an astute top graduate of the Ivy League, who understands what it means to reference 1984; not some new jerk appointee.

So, I have to wonder if your perspective is an experiment. It's possible for someone today to pretend to be as brainwashed as the proles in 1984, to gauge 2026 reactions in a near-anonymous forum. Do like-minded others jump in? How many people actually read the judicial order? Do bots come out of the woodwork to bring up colonization and antisemitism points against Blair himself? If you bring up the same points on Reddit, do certain phrases appear at a frequency too high for coincidence? Orwell appears so regularly that repeated trials of this might demonstrate that the window is opening to a kind of 1984 doubt. I think we agree that'd be fascinating research.

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command"