[somethoughts]

While not exactly parallel, it seems slightly hypocritical that this is coming from the party of "a baker should not be forced to bake a wedding cake for a customer that they ideologically/morally disagree with."

I guess the rules are different if the customer is the government? If it's the government, then if the government doesn't get its wedding cake then the government can go so far as to prevent the baker from selling cakes entirely to any other customers.

[apothegm]

To this political faction, it’s different when the customer is the in-group.

[skue]

This isn’t parallel at all, and I didn’t realize that Anthropic was the member of any particular party.

[somethoughts]

Sorry I was a bit unclear - this was referencing the Administration not Anthropic.

The United States Department of Justice under the Trump administration, supported Phillips.[20][5] While the Department asserts that anti-discrimination laws are necessary to prevent businesses that provide goods and services from discriminating, these laws cannot be used to compel a business into expressing speech they do not agree with, nor used to provide goods and services with such expressions without the ability for the business to assert they do not agree with those expressions. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

[rdtsc]

> these laws cannot be used to compel a business into expressing speech they do not agree with

I don’t think they are preventing them. You can still buy some Anthropic. Heck, maybe you’re now doubly motivated to buy some out of spite. What Uncle Sam is saying is he doesn’t want anything to do with it. But Anthropic can produce whatever and others can buy it.

In their view just like businesses cannot be compelled so are the customers, they can’t be compelled to buy.

[bloppe]

> You can still buy some Anthropic.

If they're designated a "supply chain risk", then any company that does any business with the military cannot be a customer. That includes basically all the largest companies, many of which have already adopted Claude. So the Pentagon is threatening Anthropic with terminating most of their private enterprise revenue and basically ruining their business model.

That's a little different than just denying someone government contracts.

[dragonwriter]

> If they're designated a "supply chain risk", then any company that does any business with the military cannot be a customer.

Wrong.

Companies with military contracts cannot rely on Anthropic-supplied products and services for those contracts. (Yes, the cabinet member who misrepresents his own title and name of his department also publicly misrepresented the legal consequences of the designation. It's almost like ignoring the law and just making things up is a pattern with him and his boss.)

[bloppe]

If you were a customer, what would you do? Keep paying for Claude but be extra careful about preventing all the people working on anything that might potentially be construed as related to the DoD work from using it, for fear of a retributive Hegseth? Or just use codex company-wide and not worry?

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/26/incoherent-hegseths...

> The designation, typically reserved for foreign firms with ties to U.S. adversaries, could ban companies that work with the government from partnering with Anthropic.

> “You’re telling everyone else who supplies to the DOD you cannot use Anthropic’s models, while also saying that the DOD must use Anthropic’s models.”

I wouldn't put anything past this administration in terms of twisting rules and acting in bad faith to excerpt as much leverage as possible. They do it all the time. It's basically a government of patent trolls threatening everyone with meritless lawsuits that are nonetheless extremely effective.

[rdtsc]

> If they're designated a "supply chain risk", then any company that does any business with the military cannot be a customer.

That's not how it works, they'll just have to show how they mitigated the "risk". That doesn't mean not doing business with Anthropic that may mean not using Anthropic for any deliverables or any projects involving the specific contracts.

[bloppe]

> they'll just have to show how they mitigated the "risk"

If Hegseth is the one who decides whether the risk has been mitigated (he is), you think he's gonna be overcome by a sudden spirit of good faith and make impartial judgements? Or just do the thing that maximizes his leverage, gratifies his ego, and pleases his boss.

[donkeybeer]

If its not hypocritical lying, its not maga. Its a very simple rule of thumb.

[rdtsc]

> of "a baker should not be forced to bake a wedding cake for a customer that they ideologically/morally disagree with."

> I guess the rules are different if the customer is the government?

Hmm, I don’t see the inconsistency? They are saying one baker is not to their liking and they are refusing to buy it and are returning the already bought cakes back. Also looks like they just found another baker not too long ago with a better “deal”.

[somethoughts]

It was mostly in response to the secwar tweet:

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

If this tweet is taken to the nth degree that'd effectively put Anthropic out of business since they have pretty significant Amazon[1] and Microsoft[2] cloud provider/funding relationships that would need to be nullified within 6 months.

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/federal/defense

[2] https://military.microsoft.com

[rdtsc]

Microsoft is probably not going to use Anthropic they went all in on OpenAI. Amazon gov stuff is already mostly separate. And in general it’s not clear what “supply chain” means for an LLM. Does it include code written by that LLM used on gov projects? What if it’s already written, rewrite it with OpenAI?