[muse900]

Yes! I mean everyone is speaking about this in a boxed manner.

For all we know there are might be several reasons for that ban e.g.

1) There is an actual security threat and its just simple as that.

2) Someone wants Anthropic to be valued way higher and the companies that have invested in Anthropic already... This ban only validates this product and will move the market in higher valuation of Anthropic due to their model being "so good gov had to ban"

3) Someone doesn't like Anthropic and just wants to shut down its current edge (highly unlikely, if there was no IPO filing in place it could be possible but now the valuation just goes up, same as the 2 As that have invested in them)

4) Someone freaked out that we'll be left out of jobs soon so wants to slow down progress, tbh using fable so far I can tell that a lot of jobs can be made redundant cause of that...

For me the most likely for now is 2, then 1 and then maybe 4.

On June 22 Chatgpt will most likely come out with their new model too, which as I understand will be an answer to mythos. Lets see if the US gov goes the same route.

[ilaksh]

It's not that complicated. Probably what happened is just that a former Fox News host read part of a security report that he did not understand and overreacted.

[saurik]

I do not understand why it being mandated that the vast majority of the people in the world will not allowed to use -- or pay for -- your product (and that the ones that can will have to jump through excessive hoops) could ever make your valuation go up; can you walk me through that one?

Even if this is just temporary, your #3 is more in direct conflict with #2 than you seem to be willing to admit: if you were to own stock in a company that you know has a powerful product and a market lead, but they have been required to take a time out in the market for a year, that should be devastating for their valuation.

[muse900]

Because nowadays the stockmarket is build upon hype, this is why we are having the market caps and valuations we are having that are in any way shape or form reflecting anything that is real.

For the Gov to come out and block a model for national security, its gonna swing the market into thinking "oh anthropic really has the next generation of LLMs out there, its that good Gov banned it, this company is going to the moon".

The part of banning non US nationals, I believe is a legality, as in they have to trust US citizens to do right by their country. I don't think in court a whole ban on a product for security reasons would stand. (The judge would ask for the gov to explain why all US nationals are a security threat to their country)

Nevertheless, again I am standing behind number 2 personally as the main reason for such a thing, market manipulation is not new and its currently at its all time high. Also anthropic is part of this manipulation so far, with every other AI company out there.

Again I am just presenting my POV, it could as well just be number 1... A gov became competent enough to find security threads before they happen :)

[altmanaltman]

I get what you mean but you are very wrong about the stock market and how people react to export bans. Everytime US had restricted control for Nvidia chips in the news over the last few years, the stock price went down not up.

It might be a good marketing trick but it is not a good thing in the stock market given historical trends.

Your view highly screams you only have a superficial understanding of financial markets and you shouldn't extraploate that to "this is how market works because its all hype and everything is vapor"

[bonesss]

Anthropic is chasing an IPO, Nvidia is not, creating very different market reactions and incentive structures for the companies. Apples and oranges.

Anthropics reputation as a near-term world-ender boosts their IPO directly.

[altmanaltman]

No, its not apples and oranges. How/why does it boost their IPO directly? Elaborate on this please instead of stating it as an universal fact (because it isn't).

I feel you are just talking a hypothetical without having any basis. You think it'll have an impact on IPO directly and that it will be a positive one. But you have no proof or historical precidence for the same. Meanwhile we have historical proof that markets reacts negatively when a company is blocked by the government on selling their top products freely. And that is most likely going to happen here as well.

Public perception might be changed by these "ohhh its so scary guys" marketing but these don't translate to actual market perception when it comes to actual facts and numbers on the financials.

[dandellion]

You can't justify trillions of market cap just serving the US market, and they've just kneecapped their ability to compete anywhere else, it would be delusional to invest on something like this thinking it's going to be a free market, you'd just be indirectly funding the US government ability to use AI against others, especially if you are a non-US citizen (or a subgroup of US citizens they don't like). The near-term world-ending is just pure marketing, they haven't shown anything nearly as impressive as they've been promising, and the software they've produced so far with near infinite access to agents has been very impressively bad.

[throwaway7356]

> I don't think in court a whole ban on a product for security reasons would stand.

There are lots such products, like weapons-grade radioactive material, weapons outside the toy gun range, various biological material, ...

So it seems perfectly possible to bad products for security reasons.

[adamsb6]

It could be the case that we’ve reached the last generation of frontier models that can be accessed by the general public. That eliminates a risk that Anthropic could be leapfrogged by a competitor.

Now it’s a competition between products on the near frontier. Anthropic has executed well on products so far. They blew up thanks to Claude Code, not Opus by itself.

[throw-the-towel]

Trump always chickens out, he just might do it this time too.

[petre]

5) Someone freaked out China might use the model to advance its own tech. It's always China with this administration. The guy has an obsession with China since he had to hire feng shui consultants to make his tower appealing¹ for Chinese customers.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/13/donald-trump...

Also, might be a way to further screw with Anthrophic because they refused to remove their guardrails Pentagon, getting the opposite result of what was intended.

[holmesworcester]

If (1) then somebody in the administration messed up badly. Glasswing has been a thing since April, and it's common knowledge that there would be some fuzzy edges around whatever restrictions a model has in place. There's no reason to let it launch and then pull it back.

(2) This "hype" meme is overrated. Enterprises (ones without a horse in the race, at least) will choose the model their best engineers ask for, or their competitors will lap them. I have been finding Codex more useful (even than Fable) but for a lot of tasks it seems that Claude Code is faster. This is one customer base where the general consensus here on HN is more influential than anything the Trump administration could do or anything Anthropic could say.

(3) "US government seems out to kill you" does not necessarily make valuation go up, and we've already seen this administration in an avoidable spat with Anthropic.

(4) This seems way less likely than a mix of (1) and (3) to me. The arguments for banning a useful technology to save jobs haven't really made sense since cars or indoor plumbing and don't get taken too seriously in either party at senior levels. That could change but it will take a lot for it to change.

[BikiniPrince]

Eh, chatGpt coming out with a new garbage model. Great.

Fable had some really good cross project awareness. My only complaint is it backported a feature to my test application and then they killed it before I could finish debugging it. The new model behavior in the replacement application was 100% superior. I just didn't know it was going to start porting fixes so readily between projects. Awareness in the new model is amazing and the feedback I've had from other developers is the same. It feels like ultrathink with double the agents of xhigh effort. The real issue is they shipped it with incomplete guardrails and someone likely found an exploit.

[jknoepfler]

The Trump administration has exactly one motive, and that is accumulation of wealth. There is literally no other reason they would do anything. Even if there were legitimate economic or security concerns, those aren't motivating to the Trump administration.

This is about grift, somehow, full stop.

I neither like nor support Anthropic, but there's just no sense in pretending the Trump administration is anything other than a kleptocracy or interpreting their actions under any other lens.

[Natfan]

stephen miller also has exactly one motive, but it isn't wealth accumulation