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▲ HarHarVeryFunny 4 hours ago

Evidentially not - Anthropic want to do business with the US military, but on their own terms, telling the military what they can and cannot use it for.

▲hardbass 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Is that a problem? Are there any special rules (genuinely curious) that allow the military to hijack the management of a private firm?

▲stusmall 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

AFAIK it wasn't in play here, but yes, we do allow that to a degree via the Defense Production Act

▲rayiner 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s not a problem. But it’s also not a problem for the DOD to decide that it doesn’t want to use anthropic or have its suppliers use anthropic for DOD matters. The DOD didn’t ban private citizens from using Anthropic. You can sell in your own terms but the DOD can also buy in its own terms.

▲bitexploder 3 hours ago | parent [-]

That is the funny thing to me. I hate diving into politics here on HN, but this has such a rank smell to it. Trump's comments about Dario. His insane propaganda video about how we will never be communist / Marxist. In the same breath our government is bribing people with offers of $$ (the $5,000 checks) and essentially bullying to outright moving towards saying this technology is so powerful we will just have to seize it for our own use.

It is impossible to miss the absolute hypocrisy of this moment and how people and corporations are supposedly free, but if you happen to be of interest to the government they will try to casually ruin you. It has always been this way, people just haven't noticed because it flies under the radar most of the time when the govern crushes some smaller enterprise or another because it got in their way or didn't play by their rules.

It seems simple to me. Anthropic is a private company. If you don't like it fix the laws or don't buy from them.

▲rayiner 3 hours ago | parent [-]

You're overlooking the critical difference between the government-as-government and the government-as-purchaser. You have to play on Walmart's terms--which are draconian and exacting--to sell to Walmart. Why should the DOD be any different when it comes to stuff the DOD is buying or indirectly paying its contractors to buy?

Yeah, the DOD is such a huge purchaser that it can "ruin you" by blacklisting you if you don't play by its terms. The same is true about Walmart if you're a grocery supplier, Apple if you make electronics components, etc. Private companies absolutely exercise their power like that.

▲SpicyLemonZest 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm intensely skeptical that Walmart has clauses in its contracts saying that no supplier may use FooCorp software in the process of delivering its goods. If they do I would definitely call that an abuse of corporate power.

▲ThunderSizzle 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think the answer is the military finds another vendor willing to deal, or move it in house.

It's not like Anthropic will be nationalized any more than the bankrupted auto companies of 2008.

▲hardbass 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't care what the military does. This is pure thuggery and abuse of the rights of private firms. Any time you contract with the government and they don't like your terms, will they designate you a threat?

▲rayiner 3 hours ago | parent [-]

In this context, that designation just means that the DOD won’t use your product and it’s suppliers can’t use your product for DOD-facing activity. That’s not “thuggery” it’s something any buyer can do. Walmart or whatever could do it too.

▲0xdeadbeefbabe 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The customer is always right. It's more of a tradition.

▲topspin 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Are there any special rules"

Yes. Paragraph #1, sentence #1 of the US Constitution: "provide for the common defence[sic]". This is further elaborated upon in other original Constitution articles and subsequent amendments.

From that, we derive a long, storied history of things, among the more recent of which, and the operative matter here, is the Defense Production Act circa 1950.

The US is fundamentally based on the obligation of mutual military defense, and delegates the authority to call military balls and strikes, such as who will and will not be permitted to contract with the US military, exclusively to POTUS. Anthropic et al. are way out of their depth when they imagine their "terms and conditions" imbue them with some sort of military veto power in the US. Trump's action here, given his nature, is actually moderate: he could take this much further if he wishes.

▲shimman 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, for national security being the biggest one. Also Congress can do whatever they want if they desired. If Congress mandated that all social media companies have to become workplace democracies, that's totally fine and legal.

We've forgotten what it means to run a society, we're allowed to change rules how we see fit whenever we want to. Only the elites exercise this power, but people have it too.

▲hardbass 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It's not good for the people. Anything that erodes the rights of companies erodes your rights. Private property and being able to run your firm on your own terms applies to everyone. Governments eroding them show they can do the same to you willy nilly.

▲miyoji 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Private property and being able to run your firm on your own terms applies to everyone.

In theory, maybe. In reality, this is a privilege for a very small number of rich people.

> Anything that erodes the rights of companies erodes your rights.

How absurd. Food safety regulations don't erode my rights one bit, but they do erode the rights of companies to negligently poison me. I guess I'm losing the right to start a food company that poisons people, but I'm happy to forfeit that right in exchange for not being poisoned. We could extend this list of reasonable tradeoffs in which we all exchange the right to treat people poorly for the right not be treated poorly, and we all would benefit.

Except the people who want to sell poisoned food, those people will be worse off. I am okay with that.

▲hardbass 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Would you like if your company was deemed a supply chain risk if you were in negotiation with the government and they didn't like the terms?

▲shimman 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No, companies have routinely killed millions of Americans for profit. I do not trust companies at all. Attacking companies to provide for Americans has always benefited society as a whole and has always had vast majority of support from voters.

Also what private property? Most Americans can't afford to buy homes and are being priced out of owning property entirely.

Corporations have eroded the livelihood of Americans more than the government ever has.

There is only one class that fights against raising the minimum wage, or establishing a 32 hour workweek, or enacting medicare for all, or providing a society free of pollution and it's always been the corporate class.

There has been no dominating force that has killed more American civilians than the American corporation.

Corporations can't even regulate themselves and you're trying to argue that the true enemy is a democratic government? Come on man. These types of retorts does not convince voters (so please continue saying them). Actually go out there and do some deep canvassing.

People rightfully hate corporations because they are the last vestige of monarchs, oligarchies, and authoritarians that are allowed to ruin + destroy our lives with little repercussions.

One just has to look at the situation of our deteriorating food safety inspections (that were hallowed out by Musk + DOGE goons FYI) to know that corporations absolutely do not care about public safety over profits. Or health insurance companies that are incentivized to deny Americans life saving care for shareholder profits.

We have a sick society and it's mostly due to the unabashed influence of corporations over our lives.

---

Also in other comments you seem to be under the impression that corporations should be legally allowed to do what they want with zero government interference? Why do you believe such things over concepts of democracy or regulation?

Society is allowed to tell someone no, not everyone consents to your beleifs.

▲hardbass an hour ago | parent | next [-]

If you got the impression I am some kind of libertarian or anarchist, that would be a wrong impression. I probably fall somewhere along the spectrum toward social democracy.

▲hardbass 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I fully believe in democracy and regulation. Democracy cannot exist without capitalism and private property. At no point did I say companies should be free to do anything, I said companies should have freedom to enter or not in contracts under any terms they wish with anyone they want.

Regarding housing crisis, its the "small people" who cause this. I don't know of any large corporation that is NIMBY. If I had it, I'd steamroll NIMBY's houses and declare them a blight, they should agree with it since they regularly call various constructions blights. Places that tries building more housing saw reductions in prices. Its not the fault of corporations if people don't want houses built.

You can only say corporations "killed" people in abstract ways, governments not only have the legal power to but have routinely murdered millions very directly and physically.

Even if you believed corporations are authoritarian, its still better to have competing sources of power, not all corporations will always align with the government so it is better for powerful opposition to exist if government turns shit.

You also mentioned monarchs in your list, fascist italy is a direct example in my favor, the king's ego and his own self interest in his power caused him to continually give friction to Mussolini thus weakening the dictator.

▲sieabahlpark 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

▲theptip 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Every private citizen or corporation gets to do business (or not) with the military on their own terms. This is the difference between totalitarianism and a free country.

Anthropic’s position is also known as “having terms of service”.

To be clear the existing, signed ToS terms that Trump balked at were:

1. No mass surveillance of US civilians - illegal but we have all read the Snowden papers.

2. Fully unmanned kill chains on autonomous weapons - Anthropic have even stated they will support this eventually, they just didn’t think their models were ready and didn’t want the obvious, inevitable blowback.

The DoD is within its rights to cancel the contract if it doesn’t like the terms that it previously signed.

▲andrewla 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The concern, I think, in its most generous terms, is that they can't buy Anthropic's service the way the could, say, a wrench, because Anthropic can decide at any point to disable the military's ability (even transitively, through other vendors) to use their models if they determined that they do not like what the military is doing with that or if it violates their interpretation of the terms of service.

This seems like a definitional supply chain risk.

▲Firaxus 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

By that expansive definition, any cloud software provider can do the same thing and so should also be a supply chain risk.

This whole fiasco is happening because the defense dept wanted to use anthropic models in a way not allowed in the existing contract. Anthropic stuck to the contract, and the def dept tried to be punitive about it.

If they can’t get what they want from the seller, fine go to a different seller, but the supply chain risk is just government overreach.

▲andrewla 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I think I mostly agree here -- any cloud provider or frankly SaaS system carries a similar risk. The question is whether they want to explicitly make that part of their terms of service, and in addition have made public statements about their willingness to apply those terms of service.

AWS GovCloud I believe promises the opposite. They could still do it, in terms of the capability itself, but then they'd be subject to both civil, criminal, and possibly even military consequences. Whereas Anthropic would be shielded from those consequences by the terms of their agreement (presumably; I'm not up to speed on the specifics of their contractual demands. This is just based on the context from this article and the previous appeals case that ruled against the government).

▲theptip an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

That is not the definition of a supply chain risk, this is:

> FASCSA definition (41 U.S.C. § 4713(k)(6)): "Supply chain risk" means the risk that any person may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, extract data, or otherwise manipulate the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, maintenance, disposition, or retirement of covered articles so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise manipulate the function, use, or operation of the covered articles or information stored or transmitted on the covered articles.

This topic is a mind-killer, lots of uninformed opinion swamping the news, and it's hard to get actual signal on the technical questions at hand. (And, I think it's naive to believe that the government is actually concerned about the precise legal definitions; remember Hegseth decreed that no government sub-contractors would be allowed to transact with Anthropic, despite there being no legal basis for this?)

> Anthropic can decide at any point to disable the military's ability

If you're referring to the claims of a killswitch, Anthropic testified under oath that they don't have one. This has been thoroughly covered, e.g. https://www.axios.com/2026/04/22/anthropic-no-kill-switch-ai.... Anthropic provides the weights, they get run in DoD's secure enclave. There's no "phone home".

If you mean more generally, that DoD might breach a contract and then have that contract cancelled going forwards, then yes - this is literally how all SaaS contracts work. And it's very clearly not what the quoted text above refers to.

The way this works in a non-totalitarian country is, the government says "I want new terms and you won't give them to me; instead I will take my business elsewhere". And indeed this is what happened, DoD now has contracts with Google and OpenAI for equivalent capabilities.

Just to engage on your terms, with the actual concern you're raising; I would say rather than "FASCSA supply chain risk" a better way of thinking about it is "vendor lock-in". DoD absolutely should not rely on a single vendor for these kinds of capabilities. And most defense spending explicitly contemplates this already. This should be and has been solved through basic procurement practices.