Anthropic is really on a tricky path here. When you have had runaway success due to a hit it is easy to believe that it is the natural way of things. However, that happened due to unique convergence of tech paradigm shift, the competitive landscape, and how they were positioned to capture that value through claude code.

They somehow conflate their value with 'safety'. While it's an admirable internal quality for the company to have, their treatment of their user base (developers, users) has been bordering on indifference and their stance bordering on arrogance.

As competition heats up, there is a very real chance of them shooting themselves in the foot with friction such as this (to be fair not completely in their control but also they had their share of responsibility that led to this)

> They somehow conflate their value with 'safety'.

...I don't think this is, like, a choice available to Anthropic. Their idea of AI safety—in the very specific "an unaligned AI could kill everyone" sense—is Anthropic's entire reason for existence. It's how they've attracted AI researchers, which in turn is probably why they have the best models right now. (I really do think they have the best models, although I can't prove it because LLM benchmarks don't work. They're certainly very good.)

I have no idea what the top executives truly believe, but regardless of whether their messaging is sincere, it's likely for their employees as much as the rest of us.