[kolbe]

I remember neither that happening in 1984, nor is that a description of what is happening to Anthropic. Or is this is an Animal Farm reference instead?

I remember Winston having a private conversation about political beliefs, and then being literally tortured into submission. And I remember Anthropic refusing a government order (albeit a stupid government order), and then being labeled a "supply chain risk." You can twist reality however you'd like though.

[vlovich123]

You don’t remember the concept of thought crime in 1984? Or you don’t recall how thought crime gets you branded an enemy of the state? The former was a term literally introduced in 1984 and the thought police is tasked with locating and eliminating thought crime. Throughout the book there are news reports of the thought criminals caught and arrested who are now enemies of the state. The book ends with him being tortured until he completely succumbs to the thought control and is then murdered.

If you can’t see the allegory in that story to an administration that actively goes after those it labels as enemies because they dare to voice their own opinion or oppose their political goals in any way, either you’re not cut out for literary analysis and trying to apply metaphors in literature to the real world or you aren’t seeing the real world for what it is.

[kolbe]

Didn't label them an "enemy." Didn't accuse them of crime. And the decree was due to Anthropic's actions--not their thoughts.

[vlovich123]

Ok, just labeling them a supply chain risk while also claiming they’re critical to national security for insisting the government stick to the powers to the model they agreed to in the contract and not expanding it.

> Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military. That is unacceptable.

Yup, definitely not an enemy.

> Instead, @AnthropicAI and its CEO @DarioAmodei, have chosen duplicity

Don’t you call your friends duplicitous?

> Anthropic’s stance is fundamentally incompatible with American principles.

Oh boy. Doubleplus ungood.

> I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic

Oh yeah, totally not an enemy. Just no one can do business with them. Doubleplusungood behavior.

They’re both a danger to US troops with their behavior and also critical to the supply chain of said troops. Very important to understand and accept that doublethink.

[kolbe]

This doesn't require the slightest bit of doublethink. Their technology is fantastic and would be an important military tool if Anthropic allowed it to be used as such. Their choice to disallow it makes them a supply chain risk, but the existence of the technology makes them important. This isn't hard.

[striking]

There's no need to read it that literally, we're not making Borges' map here. 1984 is both about the visceral horror of the authoritarian state and the existential horror of being unable to fight an opponent who controls the very language you speak and the concept of truth. The former grounds the latter, turning an interesting philosophical treatise that might otherwise not land with readers into an approachable work of fiction.

[kolbe]

They got labeled a "supply chain risk" in order to prevent the government from contracting with them. They didn't disappear or arrest or even charge Dario. He's a billionaire with more freedom and opportunity than Orwell could have even imagined.

[striking]

I would love to hear your perspective of how the label "supply chain risk" and its definition aren't in accordance with the concept of being branded an enemy of the state. I'll reproduce the definition below:

> “Supply chain risk” means the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of a covered system so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise degrade the function, use, or operation of such system (see 10 U.S.C. 3252). (https://www.acquisition.gov/dfars/subpart-239.73-requirement...)

There's a little bit of leeway here, but this definition means either the company is an adversary (or an extension of one, e.g. Huawei/the CCP) or is under threat of being compromised by an adversary.

So which is Anthropic? Well, neither: the government's court filings and public comments in the media claim that Anthropic has an "adversarial posture". They want to simultaneously get away with bucketing Anthropic under the statute for adversaries, but without calling Anthropic an adversary directly in a court of law. They want to apply the statute without needing to follow the actual definition of an adversary.

From a CNBC interview:

> We can't have a company that has a different policy preference that is baked into the model through its constitution, its soul, its policy preferences, pollute the supply chain so our warfighters are getting ineffective weapons, ineffective body armor, ineffective protection. That's really where the supply chain risk designation came from. (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/12/anthropic-claude-emil-michae...)

That's why the judge rightly called this situation Orwellian: we're looking at linguistic sleight of hand designed to allow the government to turn what is a simple contract dispute into a company-threatening classification that threatens to uproot them entirely from any company that does business with the most powerful entity in the United States. Because Anthropic doesn't want to do the government's bidding despite being allowed to as a matter of freedom of speech, they are being threatened with a punishment that goes beyond just not being able to contract directly with the government. And that's not fair.

I would also love to understand why you keep going back to the literal events of the book. You don't need to be locked in a room and forced to claim that 2+2=5 for your situation to be Orwellian.

[throw0101c]

> I remember Winston having a private conversation about political beliefs, and then being literally tortured into submission.

I remember Winston being forced to accept that 2+2=5 and believing it.

> In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?

* https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/321469-in-the-end-the-party...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_%2B_2_%3D_5#George_Orwell

> And I remember Anthropic refusing a government order (albeit a stupid government order), and then being labeled a "supply chain risk." You can twist reality however you'd like though.

I remember when American companies could do domestic business, or not, with whomever they wished without having to worry about being punished by the government for their choices.

If a government orders a pacifist to pick up a gun, is that allowed? If a government orders a pacifist to manufacture a gun, is that allowed? (There's a spectrum of 'complicity'.)

[kolbe]

> I remember when American companies could do domestic business, or not, with whomever they wished without having to worry about being punished by the government for their choices.

No you don't, because that time as never existed.

> If a government orders a pacifist to pick up a gun, is that allowed? If a government orders a pacifist to manufacture a gun, is that allowed? (There's a spectrum of 'complicity'.)

Yes. It's called the draft. It's called wartime manufacturing decrees. These all existed at the time of Orwell, and he never alluded to them being thoughtcrimes. Compelling people to act against their beliefs is common and distinct from throughtcrime. And if you cannot see that, then I don't even know how to talk to you. Government has always controlled your outer life. Orwell introduced thoughtcrime as the next step in totalitarianism, as the erasure of inner life.

edit: I asked Opus to analyze this thread, and I agree with it.

> That said, Orwell would probably also note that the people arguing against you aren't entirely wrong to be alarmed — they're just reaching for the wrong literary reference and overstating the analogy. Government retaliation against companies for political speech is concerning on its own terms without needing to be dressed up as dystopian fiction. The 1984 framing actually weakens the critique by making it easy to dismiss as hyperbolic.

> He'd probably tell everyone in the thread to say what they mean in plain language and stop hiding behind his book.

[ailun]

And so can you.