[easton]

> Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.

I’m sure the lawyers just got paged, but does this mean the hyperscalers (AWS, GCP) can’t resell Claude anymore to US companies that aren’t doing business with the DoD? That’s rough.

[prpl]

Probably yes. Additionally the (probably more for AWS) won't be allowed to use it internally either. This will probably apply to all the top SaaS/software companies unilaterally.

Additionally, every major university will undoubtedly have to terminate the use of Claude. First on the list will be universities that run labs under DOD contracts (e.g. MIT, Princeton, JHU), DOE contracts (Stanford, University of California, UChicago, Texas A&M, etc...), NSF facilities (UIUC, Arizona, CMU/Pitt, Purdue), NASA (Caltech).

Following that it will be just those who accept DOD/DOE/NSF grants.

[doug_durham]

There is no evidence that what you say is true. A tweet is not a legally binding statement.

[prpl]

What part? Are you doubting that they are being designated as a supply chain risk? Or the implications of being designated as one?

We do have a recent example with Huawei, and it did fall just like this - and that was just some hardware.

[vharuck]

>A tweet is not a legally binding statement.

In the recent Supreme Court hearing over the firing of Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve, the administration is acting like Truth Social posts are official notices.

>Several justices have noted the unusual nature of the case before it, which began with a post by Trump on his social media platform, Truth Social, that said he would fire Cook.

>Jackson wondered why that would be considered sufficient notice: “How is it that we can assume that she’s on social media?”

https://apnews.com/live/supreme-court-lisa-cook-federal-rese...

[lemming]

It will be true as soon as it becomes official though, assuming they actually go through with it and this is not just a bargaining tactic.

[crummy]

Won’t that require an act of congress? How likely does that seem?

[prpl]

Huawei was not on the NDAA (the congress part) until August 2019, well after companies started cutting ties in April/May of that year

[jzig]

When did legality apply to this administration?

[s3p]

It was confirmed by the Anthropic CEO that contractors can still use Claude for non-defense work.

[stackskipton]

Billable hours will win figuring it out but in theory, no because they can’t test it or use it.

Generally any machine that touches Supply chain Risk software cannot ship any software to DoD. AWS has separate clouds but software comes from same place.

[fluidcruft]

Bigger question is whether government contractors can use any Open Source software after this. Open Source is a big part of the supply chain.

[JumpCrisscross]

It means everyone waits for the injunctions.

[progbits]

(edit: I'm most likely wrong)

You got it backwards, can't use claude if you ARE doing business with DoD.

Presumably AWS/GCP don't care, its up to the end customer to comply. Not like GCP KYC asks if you work with DoD.

[cobolcomesback]

AWS/GCP/Azure all do business with the DoD and at least AWS and Azure use Claude a decent amount internally. AWS’s Kiro tool (which is used internally instead of Claude Code) relies entirely on Claude models.

This is almost certainly going to be rolled back, because I guarantee the DoD isn’t going to stop doing business with the hyper scalers, and the hyper scalers aren’t going to stop doing business with Anthropic.

[rfw300]

I don't think he got it backwards, at least if Hegseth's statement is accurate. AWS, GCP, etc. all do business with DoD. If they, as DoD contractors, are no longer allowed to do business with Anthropic, then presumably they have to stop re-selling or hosting Anthropic's models to anyone.

[progbits]

Ah, true. Well then, what makes GCP/AWS more money? DoD contracts or Claude resell fees? They could drop DoD though I guess I see how this will go...

[chasd00]

Does gcp have anything to do with Claude? AWS is the one that has to choose, if AWS picks Anthropic then GCP get all of the DOD. And then google also gets to provide Gemini to the DOD. Thats a nice chunk of change.

[stackskipton]

DoD for sure. It's also much more stable income then reselling AI.

[skeeter2020]

>> at least if Hegseth's statement is accurate

Oh you tender babes, trying to logic the meaning of what the lieutenant of the biggest crime syndicate in the world means with his words, as if this was a well thought-out strategy... it's a shakedown; it would make more sense to ask "at least if Hegseth is sober..."

[rfw300]

If I had to bet, there will be some kind of face-saving climbdown by the end of next week. But all I can do right now is read the words on the page.

[copperx]

So GitHub Copilot will remove Anthropic as an LLM provider, I suppose?

[infecto]

Agree with other reply. I don’t think it’s backward. No they said any commercial activity. Does not feel like a stretch that commercial activity includes reselling api usage.

[prpl]

have you tried punching in "Huawei" the shopping portal on google.com in the US?

[mtmail]

No, what happens when one does?

[prpl]

nothing, which is the point though

[outside1234]

There is no way they can just stop selling Opus 4.6. This will crater the market.

[janalsncm]

This doesn’t erase Claude, and even if it did Gemini and Codex are there to replace it.

Even if a ton of companies have to switch over to an alternative, it won’t be catastrophic to the economy.

[robertjpayne]

The stock market will be spooked if the US govt can willy nilly high trajectory darling of the AI world like this though.

Who's next? OpenAI? Google? What if they refuse to allow the DoD to use AI with zero safeguards and Trump's goons decide they are also a "supply chain risk"?

[direwolf20]

In the end we discovered this had nothing to do with safeguards — OpenAI simply bribed them to switch. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47197505

[intrasight]

No. The stock market has understood for generations that it's the guys with the guns that protect their gold. The stock market will have a sigh of relief.

[voganmother42]

Its the agents who control the drones now.

[hobom]

Even more extreme, that might mean they won't be able to offer Claude to non-US companies at all.

[nl]

I don't see how you get that reading. Anthropic is clearly allowed to sell Claude to companies not doing business with the US Military. If anything that's more likely to be non-US companies.

[cogman10]

IIRC, the supply chain risk designation is sticky which is why it tends to ultimately mean "nobody can work with this". Amazon using claude means a DoD company can't use Amazon. Every business that touches claude gets tainted.

It's a bit like how the US Cuba sanctions worked and why they effectively isolated Cuba from everything.

[nl]

Yes I got that. But doesn't that mean that non-US customers would be the major customer segment still open to Anthropic in that scenario?

I still don't see any way to read that as saying they could only do business with US customers, whether they give in or not?

[throw310822]

Because Anthropic sells Claude through other companies that in turn do business both with Anthropic and the government. These intermediaries, large cloud companies, can't offer Claude anymore if they want to keep the government as a customer.

[nl]

But thay doesn't imply they can't do business with say the German Federal Government for example?

[stdgy]

The government is faaaaaaaaaaaar too invested in Azure and AWS for Microsoft or Amazon to give even half a shit. The DOD has no where else to go and the companies know it. They'll sit on their hands until the legal maneuvers play out, which will take longer than this administration will be in office.

[nickysielicki]

You expect hyperscalers to play chicken with the DoD?

The courts have historically been pretty consistent about giving the DoD whatever the fuck they want, going back to WW2 and even longer for the predecessors of the DoD. I agree that the next administration might reverse it, but the thing is, the government will stay irrational longer than Anthropic will remain solvent.

The US government told every American company to stop doing business with Huawei and they all did it overnight, even when it cost them billions. TSMC stopped fabricating for them, Google pulled Android licensing… The machinery of sanctions compliance is extremely well-oiled and companies fold instantly because the outcome of noncompliance is literally getting thrown in prison.

[kccqzy]

So is it actually sanctions? I believe Huawei was on the entities list. Such a list comes from the fact that the government can require export licensing. Since Anthropic is in the U.S., I do not believe it’s the same thing as Huawei.

[throw310822]

This is also true, unless the government can force them to drop Anthropic on the basis that the alternative- the government dropping them- is unworkable.

[SpicyLemonZest]

Or Pete Hegseth will threaten to do the same to them unless they comply, and they will demonstrate the same inexcusable cowardice the American business class has consistently demonstrated this past year. Hope I'm wrong and this has finally woken them up!

[hobom]

Sorry, the "they" referred to the hyperscalers

[throw324782]

Wait, what about Bun?