The Department of War has stated they will only contract with AI companies who accede to “any lawful use” and remove safeguards in the cases mentioned above. They have threatened to remove us from their systems if we maintain these safeguards; they have also threatened to designate us a “supply chain risk”—a label reserved for US adversaries, never before applied to an American company—and to invoke the Defense Production Act to force the safeguards’ removal. These latter two threats are inherently contradictory: one labels us a security risk; the other labels Claude as essential to national security.
Regardless, these threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.
It is the Department’s prerogative to select contractors most aligned with their vision. But given the substantial value that Anthropic’s technology provides to our armed forces, we hope they reconsider. Our strong preference is to continue to serve the Department and our warfighters—with our two requested safeguards in place. Should the Department choose to offboard Anthropic, we will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider, avoiding any disruption to ongoing military planning, operations, or other critical missions. Our models will be available on the expansive terms we have proposed for as long as required.
Did we read the same thing?
We support the use of AI for lawful foreign intelligence and counterintelligence missions. But using these systems for mass domestic surveillance is incompatible with democratic values.
So they accept surveillance in other countries? What about other countries’ democratic values?
Even fully autonomous weapons (those that take humans out of the loop entirely and automate selecting and engaging targets) may prove critical for our national defense. But today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons.
So you don’t because it still sucks? But if it didn’t, you would?
And what about legal?
- Do Not Develop or Design Weapons???
- Do Not Compromise Privacy or Identity Rights???
I’ve really lost my faith in the US. They think they hold the power, but they’re missing the point: real power is built on trust-and we’re losing more of it every day.
Its been an american leadership view for as long as ive been alive that American lives are worth at least a hundred times more than other lives.
That is, in war situations, not in situations where leadership takes care of its citizens. No, there those lives are worth next to nothing. So American leadership is pretty much at war both with its own people and countries who dont want American culture.
I’ve really lost my faith in the US.
What little I had left was destroyed in November of 2024.
I was hoping they had learned from their previous mistake, but instead they doubled down.
What about other countries’ democratic values?
So, gentlemen should not read other gentlemens mail?
So the government wants “full self-driving” attack drones. You know, just in case the military actually disobeys an unlawful order?
How many pieces of science fiction do we have where the “bad guys” are literally just killer robots we created and then realized we didn’t have control over? Why would we decide it is a good idea to literally build terminators? I’m convinced the government will actually build the “orphan crushing machine” next…
Because we literally are allowing the pedofile parasite class to rule over us
Anthropic is now playing Good Cop in a charade. They don’t care about ethics.
Anthropic’s CEO admits compromising with authoritarian regimes to secure AI funding
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei backs President Trump on AI policy, pushes back on criticism
It’s probably more they don’t wanna get blamed if AI launches missiles because the idiots in charge pressed shift+tab and yolo’d.
Claude: “You’re right. I completely committed a war crime. I’m so very sorry! How would you like to proceed?”
Why not both? I’m pretty sure Trump wanted to hold them legally responsible for whatever their system did too
Those two safeguards they deny to remove must be quite the thing.
I was listening to NPR yesterday and heard the two are apparently mass surveillance of Americans and autonomous weapons systems with no human interaction…
Or they are just doing this for optics, with an understanding that the feds will end up forcing their hand in the future.
Can’t say I know what or why, but I was having issues this week with their desktop client. When I was viewing their status page, I saw that they have a new service for gov use that went online about 10 days ago.
And I see the big baby in chief has answered in typical baby fashion.
I guess it’s good that they draw the line somewhere, but it is absolutely horrifying to me as a non-American that the moral stance is limited to:
- taking issue with fully autonomous AI weapons (purely for technical reasons according to this letter, they are working hard on making them possible)
- refusing to conduct mass surveillance of US citizens specifically (foreign nationals are fair game and the intelligence apparatus will surely only be used for good and to preserve democracy).
This is not Anthropic refusing to cooperate with the Trump administration as the title may suggest, they are in fact explicitly eager to serve the US Department of War. They are just vying for slightly better contract terms.
vying for slightly better contract terms
Do you mean that all this about principles is a smoke screen and Anthropic are just using it as a front to squeeze for more money?
No, if you want my opinion it seems too risky of a move to make all of this so public if all they want is more money. It’s possible, but I’d be surprised.
I believe them when they say that what they want is to have those two particular things, fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of US citizens, removed from the contract terms (for now). This could be out of genuine moral principles, or out of fear of bad PR when this would be found out. Most likely a combination of both.
My point was that from my perspective it is a very minor difference. The conclusion I kept after reading this isn’t “good guy Anthropic bravely stands against pressure from Hegseth” as some of the Hackernews comments try to paint it. It is “Anthropic mostly bends over backwards and grovels for Pentagon money, willing to massively spy on all foreign nationals and working on creating autonomous weapons - other US AI companies likely to be even worse”.
As I said, horrifying.
You’re spot-on. As some additional context, Anthropic is already working tightly with the US government. Until the recent announcement regarding Grok, Anthropic was the only approved AI for US government work, as it is/was the only one certified for safely woeking with classified data.
And now they’re the only one banned from it.
they are in fact explicitly eager to serve the US Department of War
I suppose you are a party to their closed-door meetings then.
I am only going off of what they are saying in this very press release, which is filled with fawning over the Department and pleading to remain its contractors. That’s what I meant when I called it explicit, they advertise it in the letter we are currently discussing. A few excerpts:
Anthropic has therefore worked proactively to deploy our models to the Department of War and the intelligence community.
Anthropic understands that the Department of War, not private companies, makes military decisions. We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner.
Our strong preference is to continue to serve the Department and our warfighters
We remain ready to continue our work to support the national security of the United States.
Yes, they have their reservations, but it is undeniable from the text that they WANT to serve the Department of War and are frustrated that it won’t give up on those two red lines.
We have leaks, yes
They wouldn’t be negotiating if they didn’t want the co tract to begin with. It’s not like they can’t tell from 100 miles off who they’d be getting into bed with. I’m glad to see they have some lines drawn they won’t cross, but it’s laughable for you to question that they didn’t want to be here in the first place.
Amodei “we cannot in good conscience allow this”.
Hegseth looks confused, turns towards his team and mouths “…in good what?”"
“Anthropic publicly praised President Trump’s AI Action Plan,” said CEO Dario Amodei.
“We have been supportive of the President’s efforts to expand energy provision in the US in order to win the AI race,” he continued, apparently talking about Trump’s new anti green energy, pro fossil fuel program.
yes… mine was just a play on the title of this post.
Look, I’m not saying that Amodei is a saint and I do find him as full of shit as Altman with their AGI promises, but would you expect Anthropic to take a stand against increasing AI investment, because it’s coming from Trump? And I don’t like that he went looking for funding in the Middle East either.
I just think there is an ethical line between “I do business with people who do bad things” and “I’m actively helping people who do bad things to do them in a more efficient way”. It might be a fine line and it might also be that they are just posturing, but it’s still more than other companies did (companies that are a lot richer than Anthropic and that don’t need to find a lot of funding just to stay afloat).
My reply was a continuation of your joke, just using Dario’s actual words. My point is that he too lacks a conscience (see also, the other links I’ve posted)
Gotcha! Shit, I barely understand my own jokes… 😅
“… Without a subscription. For the full, unlocked dictatorship just the low low price of a bajillion dollars a month will give you the power you need to defeat your enemies.”
HN thread broke all this down and pointed out the PR wiggle room.
I read somewhere that Anthropic has $18,000,000,000 in commitments from last year alone, so conceivably, they can stand to lose a mere $200,000,000 and it won’t create a huge issue for them in the short term.
I hope that’s how they’re looking at it.
I read somewhere that Anthropic has $18,000,000,000 in commitments from last year alone, so conceivably, they can stand to lose a mere $200,000,000 and it won’t create a huge issue for them in the short term.
How does one count that amount of anything, let alone money
Start at 1 and work your way up in increments of 1.
See you in about 100 years give or take a few decades.
They’ll cave. These companies always do
cannot in good conscience
🤣
Department of
WarDefenseFascinating to suggest that it is bold or defiant to affirm that the most destructive, imperialist war machine on the planet is in fact for “defence.” “Department of War” is much more honest, and I’m not a fan of how criticisms like this are oriented toward maintaining the purported morality of what is fundamentally a genocidal, globally oppressive institution.
Truly a bot comment.
Only Congress can create, rename, or eliminate departments. No matter what big baby says.
I cannot express in words strongly enough just how little respect I have for who has the right to make what decisions in a wholly genocidal and imperialistic system. You think the legality is the problem, grow the fuck up. Do you know the indigenous name for the land you live on? Ask yourself why you would only notice the legitimacy of the US once its legal system is subverted and not when it fucking commits genocide to survive.
In fact, for this reason DOGE was not a brand new department but the result of Trump taking over the United States Digital Service, hollowing it out, and turning the shell into the United States DOGE Service. This was a tragedy because the USDS was doing genuinely useful work by bringing in people from the industry to use their experience to improve the incredibly crappy government digital services that exist. I was fortunate enough to see a talk by one of the founding people of the USDS (before it had official existence), and it was inspiring hearing how much of a difference he was able to make and how it made a real impact on the lives of veterans who were dependent on the service that was collapsing.
Additionally, this was also a tragedy because other departments had essentially been gradually coaxed into granting the USDS access to their data so that USDS could make improvements to their systems, which DOGE immediately took advantage of to get direct access to all of this data after it took over the USDS.
Be that as it may, its name is the Department of Defense, and Trump does not have the legal authority to change that name. Calling it the Department of War, like calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, is a form of giving in to the administration. That is what I am objecting to.
Who fucking cares? Genuinely. Who the absolute fuck cares if he changes the name of a genocidal monstrosity of an organization? On top of that, why the fuck should anyone respect the US legal authority at all? “Gulf of America” is a problem but not “The Grand Canyon” or “Mount Rushmore?” I wonder why you’d draw that line specifically.
You are mad that the empire doesn’t match the aesthetics of some purported morality, it’s spineless. It has always been evil, if “Gulf of America” or “Department of War” is the only point where you even consider the misuse of this “authority,” you’ve been dangerously ignorant until now.
I am a simple man: I see a fascist attempt to impose his will on the rest of us, I oppose it.
Removed by mod
Department of War Crimes
Are those the same AI systems that recommended nuclear escalation in 90% of simulations?
How about a nice game of chess?
So now you get it
I will admit that I am very cynical right now when it comes to multibillion dollar companies. I can also see it as being possible that he (the CEO) does not want his technology to be used for mass surveillance or Autonomous drone swarms. But seeing what we know, how corporations are acting and how they are protecting their own financial interest, this is, after all, capitalism, it would not surprise me if this is just a public facing statement that he is making so that he doesn’t lose public support. And privately, he is going to flip and help the US government. And of course Pete Hegeth is just going to say that he compelled them to do it through some law. But again, I am very cynical.
Anthropic founders are former OpenAI employees who left specifically because they disagreed with OpenAI’s stance on this kind of stuff and they wanted nothing to do with it. If this is just a PR stunt then I don’t see why they would’ve left OpenAI in the first place.
yes, too soon. It took years and several bajillions in profit for Google to remove the “don’t be evil” motto
There have been some pretty high-profile departures from Anthropic over the past few months, so… I dunno, seems like there are plenty of insiders who are unhappy with the company’s current trajectory.
Every Anthropic PR release has been followed up by a huge infusion of cash from companies like Google and Amazon.
On January 21, 2025, Amodei said that he was “more confident than ever” that we’re “very close” to “powerful capabilities,” defined as “systems that are better than almost all humans at almost all terms,” citing his long, boring essay. A day later, Anthropic would raise another $1 billion from Google.
Doesn’t support mass surveillance on US Citizens
Apparently everyone else is fair game.
Ironically, Dario Amadei’s anti-China chauvenism might loop back around to supporting surveillance on U.S. citizens.
I can’t see the name “anthropic” without thinking about furries.
Anthro pic.
Now you can’t either. You’re welcome.
One is fun and happy the other is saddening and seemingly inescapable.
