Anthropic sues to block Pentagon blacklisting over AI use restrictions

Is neither unusual nor extraordinary. The 2022 TikTok ban on government devices—enacted under the Biden administration—carried the same viral-as-in-GPL terms.

I do not want a TikTok hoovering up our personal info sending it to China

I do not want a Anthropic becoming essential to warfare then questioning when the their AI is used to bring an enemy to justice

I do not want Nvidia sending their latest and greatest to China

I do not want a ASML moving their super advanced photolithography machines to China

I do not want a DJI selling their drones in the US and then exporting all the meta-data back to China

I do not want a Huawei hacking through American IT companies and then getting a free pass on selling their devices based on stolen IP in the US

Anthropic is trying to sell to the government while simultaneously dictating terms on how AI is used in the war department.

When you sell to the War department, or the IC, you can be certain that they are going to use it for planning operations and for executing operations.

> The government has near-absolute discretion over whom it contracts with,

Not at all the case, procurement is dictated by a maze of Congressional acts and the FAR.

> and no company has a constitutional right to be a federal vendor.

Not constitutional but federal law actually dictates they do. Many companies actually have _more_ of a right to contracts than primes.

> Courts treat military technology decisions as core Commander-in-Chief functions subject to minimal judicial review,

Not at all the case there have been many disputes and it’s not uncommon to see a protest filed against procurement decisions in even innocuous cases. Many companies (eg Palantir) have sued the government on procurement and won.

> and the political question doctrine may bar second-guessing what the Secretary deems a security risk.

Sure, lowercase security risk, but uppercase Supply Chain Risk designation is an actual action subject to administrative procedure. There are many laws (eg Administrative Procedure Act) that allow judges to overturn this. The current basis of their suit is largely ideological but if they instead argued the designation was arbitrary the APA could very possibly be used to overturn it.

It goes much further than the "refusal to provide services" speech. By blacklisting them, they are blocked from doing any future business, which is prior restraint. Courts aren't very friendly to that.

It aligns with Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer who said "I need someone who’s not going to wig out in the middle"

Both statements give the impression Anthropic is looking to be directly inserted into the kill chain command structure which as far as I understand is not accurate.

Or, when Anthropic re-iterates “no murder without human approval, no domestic mass surveillance”, why should the government not only change suppliers (free-market), but label Anthropic a “supply-chain risk”?

you must not be seeing what I'm seeing

refusing to renew Anthropic's contract because Anthropic doesn't want to comply with their terms, would have been reasonable; retaliating by designating them a SCR is not