[Eggpants]

What’s interesting is Anthropic being singled out here. That either means:

1- OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc have no problem with their products being used to kill people so no need to bully them.

2- These other products are so terrible at the task that the clown shoe wearing SecDef is forced to try to bully Anthropic.

[mediaman]

It's not either of those. Anthropic put a lot of effort into getting FedRAMP approved so the DOD could use them; they are now being punished for that, and the government at present has no other good options. Other options could of course be developed, but other vendors may question how unreliable and untrustworthy the current DOD leadership is as as customer.

[ksymph]

Seems like Microsoft/OpenAI [0] and Google [1] both have FedRAMP approval.

[0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/azuregov/azure-openai-fedramp...

[1] https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/public-sector/gemini-in...

[SecretDreams]

> untrustworthy the current DOD leadership is as as customer.

Less than a year left on this clock.

[dylan604]

That seems quite optimistic. Or am I just that pessimistic?

[FrustratedMonky]

No, you are not overly pessimistic.

Trump was impeached before and nothing happened. He can continue to ignore congress. I wouldn't be surprised if at this point he abolishes congress, and even jokes at a press conference saying "I am the Senate".

[viccis]

He was impeached by the House but that does nothing without the Senate carrying out its trial, which requires an onerous 2/3rds vote. Obviously without the trial in Senate, nothing happens, and nothing ever will until one party gets 2/3rds control.

[dylan604]

Or enough members of his party find their spine. Not sure which is more likely telling me they are both just as unlikely to happen.

[b112]

You sure? War with Canada is about to break out, and you can't have elections when at war.

[strangattractor]

In the US elections cannot be canceled even when Martial Law is declared. That does not mean a certain someone will not try to simply ignore the Constitution given his track record of simply ignoring the Constitution

[bhelkey]

Is this sarcasm? The US held elections during World War II [1].

[1] https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-...

[pavlov]

The US President in 1944 was someone who wanted to have elections. In 2026 this is not the case anymore. How much of a difference it makes, nobody knows.

[wat10000]

Elections won't be canceled. They're too important for the perception of legitimacy. Virtually every country on Earth now has elections. Russia, China, even North Korea has elections.

The modern playbook isn't to abolish elections, it's a combination of blocking opposition candidates, suppressing votes, intimidating voters, and lying about the results. That's what to watch for.

[zzzeek]

turns out lots of people "know" that the president has no say in the affairs of US states running elections

[b112]

I guess that proves elections can't be delayed, right?

[stronglikedan]

> DOD

*DOW

[ok_dad]

No it’s still the DoD legally

[dpkirchner]

There is no such thing. That's a fantasy term used by deluded people to signal a particular virtue.

[b112]

I keep seeing DOW everywhere, and honestly had no idea it wasn't a legal namechange yet (or ever).

There's even a webpage for it.

So cut the guy some slack. No one knows wtf is actually going on these days.

[zzzeek]

pretty sure the Constitution doesn't say anything about "make a webpage" as some secret way for the Executive branch to overrule Congress

are you aware of how inept and corrupt the current Executive branch is ?

[b112]

None of what you just said, indicates whether a stated name change was an alias, or core name change.

[mindslight]

With a malevolent agent in the bully pulpit deliberately swamping the American zeitgeist with hostile nonsense ("flood the zone with shit"), it has become every American's duty to be on guard to avoid propagating the regime's bullshit. We are indeed at war, an information war of the US elites against We The People. So buck up.

[b112]

I'm not american, and further, whether a department name change is a primary name change, or an alias slapped on, seems pretty low on the list of things to care about.

[mindslight]

... signal a particular vice. It's vice signalling. We generally think of war as bad and try to avoid it, most especially the people tasked with fighting said wars.

Nothing has changed about the performative-ness, in fact if anything it's gotten more performative and hollow. They just signal vices rather than virtues, so a bunch of rightist-flavored-Lenin's useful idiots think it is fresh or effective or anti-"woke" or at least different.

[jvandreae]

Ah, yes, the Orwellian newspeak that is the phrase "Department of Defense" is something worth protecting. What next, the Ministry of Truth?

I don't really give any weight to what a leftist considers a vice or a virtue.

[mindslight]

The "Orwellian newspeak" at least makes an effort to aim for positive values, despite falling short. That's the point.

Also, please define what you mean by "leftist". These days it seems like it gets applied to anybody who believes in Constitutionally-limited government and the rule of law. That used to just be called being an American, but social media is a hell of a drug.

[croes]

Pretty ironic that this is coming from the same people that are opposing preferred pronouns and like to deadname people.

[LordDragonfang]

Also by the people that just work there(, man).

I mean, as dumb as it is, there is a certain musicality to hearing someone with a southern accent sardonically call it the dee-oh-dubya.

[learingsci]

Is over $50,000, all arguments are invalid.

[lkbm]

Anthropic already went through the process of getting approved to work in secure network. (I think xAI may have as well, but the others just don't have that access.)

[nerdyadventurer]

Microsoft AI (OpenAI) have already being used for war. Possibly Google AI too.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3ZxzCU_Qye8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RDKgsKbuNM

[api]

3- These others have more influence with the administration and are using it to bully a competitor?

[jasongill]

WaPo is reporting that OpenAI and xAI already agreed to the Pentagon's "any lawful use" clause, aka, mass surveillance and fully autonomous killbots. From the WaPo article https://archive.is/yz6JA#selection-435.42-435.355

> Officials say other leading AI firms have gone along with the demand. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, Google and Elon Musk’s xAI have agreed to allow the Pentagon to use their systems for “all lawful purposes” on unclassified networks, a Defense official said, and are working on agreements for classified networks.

The only difference is simply that Anthropic is already approved for use on classified networks, whereas Grok and OpenAI are not yet (but are being fast-tracked for approval, especially Grok). Edit: Note someone below pointed out that OpenAI may be approved for Secret level, so it's odd that Washington Post reports that they are working on it still.

[fcarraldo]

OpenAI is usable through Azure for Government up to IL-6.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/azuregov/azure-openai-authori...

Either Anthropic is seen as the clear leader (it certainly is for coding agents) or this is a political stunt to stamp out any opposition to the administration. Or both.

[chasd00]

> fully autonomous killbots

I keep hearing this but it should be plainly obvious to everyone (at least here) that an LLM is not the right AI for this use case. That's like trying to use chatgpt for an airplane autopilot, it doesn't make sense. Other ML models may but not an LLM. Why does the "autonomous killbot" thing keep getting brought up when discussing Anthropic and other llm providers?

For reference, "autonomous killbots" are in use right now in the Ukraine/Russia war and they run on fpv drones, not acres of GPUs. Also, it should be obvious that there's a >90% probability every predator/reaper drone has had an autonomous kill mode for probably a decade now. Maybe it's never been used in warfare, that we know of, but to think it doesn't exist already is bonkers.

[TGower]

It wouldn't make sense to have the LLM try to do the target recognition, trajectory planning, or motor control. It might make sense to have the LLM at a higher level handling monitoring of systems and coordination with other instances, to provide more flexibility to react to novel situations than rules bases systems.

[morkalork]

It's almost a silly distinction since ML has been used in weapons for quite a while. For example: Javelin missiles have automatic target recognition, cruise missles have intelligent terrain following, long range drones use algos like SLAM for guidance.

[tikhonj]

3- Anthropic looks "woke" and the administration cares more about perceptions than reality.

Not too different from picking on Harvard/etc.

[Spooky23]

You’re reading into it like the federal government is an honest broker.

It’s just corruption. Google is a bigger fish. OpenAI is attached to Oracle and Larry Ellison, who is a Trump collaborator. Kushner is also in investor.

Anthropic is the weakest animal in the herd. They also started a campaign targeting OpenAI, which is capturing hearts and minds (everyone is talking about Claude Code), and really pissed off Sam Altman.