I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk

[jacobedawson]

https://xcancel.com/secwar/status/2027507717469049070

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/27/trump-anthropic-ai-pentagon....

[_fat_santa]

The disconnect here for me is, I assume the DoW and Anthropic signed a contract at some point and that contract most likely stipulated that these are the things they can do and these are the things they can't do.

I would assume the original terms the DoW is now railing against were in those original contracts that they signed. In that case it looks like the DoW is acting in bad faith here, they signed the original contact and agreed to those terms, then they went back and said no, you need to remove those safeguards to which Anthropic is (rightly so) saying no.

Am I missing something here?

EDIT: Re-reading Dario's post[1] from this morning I'm not missing anything. Those use cases were never part of the original contacts:

> Two such use cases have never been included in our contracts with the Department of War

So yeah this seems pretty cut and dry. Dow signed a contract with Anthropic and agreed to those terms. Then they decided to go back and renege on those original terms to which Anthropic said no. Then they promptly threw a temper tantrum on social media and designated them as a supply chain risk as retaliation.

My final opinion on this is Dario and Anthropic is in the right and the DoW is acting in bad faith by trying to alter the terms of their original contracts. And this doesn't even take into consideration the moral and ethical implications.

[1]: https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war

[pinkmuffinere]

Wow, and the only restrictions Anthropic asked for are (1) no mass domestic surveillance and (2) require human-in-the-loop for killing [1]. Those seem exceptionally reasonable, and even rather weak, lol :|

[1] https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war

[techblueberry]

So they are such a risk to national security that no contractor that works with the federal government may use them, but they're going to keep using them for six more months? So I guess our national security is significantly at risk for the next six months?

[lukewrites]

I admire Anthropic for sticking to their principles, even if it affects the bottom line. That’s the kind of company you want to work for.

[labrador]

Good. I'd rather not have my favorite AI from a company working on AGI to have murder and spying in it's DNA.

In fact, as a patriotic American veteran, I'd be ok with Anthropic moving to Europe. It might be better for Claude and AGI, which are overriding issues for me.

Rutger Bregman @rcbregman

This is a huge opportunity for Europe. Welcome Anthropic with open arms. Roll out the red carpet. Visa for all employees.

Europe already controls the AI hardware bottleneck through ASML. Add the world's leading AI safety lab and you have the foundations of an AI superpower.

https://x.com/rcbregman/status/2027335479582925287

[Someone1234]

Topics like this are where I struggle with HN philosophy. Normally avoiding politics and ideology where possible, created higher quality and more interesting discussions.

But how do you even begin to discuss that Tweet or this topic without talking about ideology and to contextualize this with other seemingly unrelated things currently going on in the US?

I genuinely don't think I'm conversationally agile enough to both discuss this topic while still able to avoid the political/ideological rabbit-hole.

[0xbadcafebee]

McCarthyism began in 1947, with Truman demanding goverment employees be "screened for loyalty". They wanted to remove anyone who was a member of an "organization" they didn't like. It began with hearings, and then blacklists, and then arrests and prison sentences. It lasted until 1959. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism)

This is the new McCarthyism. Do what the administration says, or you will be blacklisted, or worse.

[nickysielicki]

This could kill Anthropic.

The designation says any contractor, supplier, or partner doing business with the US military can’t conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic. Well, AWS has JWCC. Microsoft has Azure Government. Google has DoD contracts. If that language is enforced broadly, then Claude gets kicked off Bedrock, Vertex, and potentially Azure… which is where all the enterprise revenue lives. Claude cannot survive on $200/mo individual powerusers. The math just doesn’t math.

[rushcar]

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

This is authoritarian behavior. You're having trouble negotiating a contract, so instead of just canceling it - you basically ban all of F500 from doing business with that firm.

[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.

[NickAndresen]

"They have threatened to remove us from their systems if we maintain these safeguards; they have also threatened to designate us a “supply chain risk”—a label reserved for US adversaries, never before applied to an American company—and to invoke the Defense Production Act to force the safeguards’ removal. These latter two threats are inherently contradictory: one labels us a security risk; the other labels Claude as essential to national security." from Dario's statement (https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war)

[eckelhesten]

Hard decision by Anthropic, but at least they can sleep well at night knowing their products doesn’t kill human beings around the world.

[kilroy123]

Strange times. I truly feel these are the last days of our Republic. Especially if more aren't willing to take a stand.

[readitalready]

I’m just laughing at the possibility of it he US military being forced to use Chinese open source AI models because every US model provider refuses to work with them.

[hoppoli]

American people: latinamerican here. Maybe it's silly to root for a country in the world hegemony arena. I've usually been partial to the USA over China. Now I'm not rooting for your country anymore. As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather have China being the foremost power, at least they seem to be less keen on invading or heavily strong-arming latinamerica

[general1465]

Ukrainians and Russians are experimenting with FPV drones using AI for target acquisition and homing. Not yet economically viable because it is cheaper to give your FPV fiber spool instead of Nvidia Jetson to bypass jamming.

When we have first politician blown to bits by autonomous AI FPV there will be sheer panic of every politician in the world to put the genie back into the bottle. It will be too late at that point.

Anthropic is correct with its no killbot rule.

[cmiles8]

As written this would be the end of Anthropic. AWS, Microsoft et al are all suppliers of the DoW and as written they must immediate stop doing business with Anthropic. Will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

[agmater]

https://xcancel.com/i/status/2027507717469049070

[getpokedagain]

Why does everyone associated with this administration sound like a 17 year old who got dumped when they post on twitter.

[avaer]

Remember to vote in this year's midterms (Nov 3) if you're eligible. I don't think it's off-topic.

[linuxhansl]

Hats off to Anthropic for not wavering here.

Supply-chain risks means "the potential for adversaries to sabotage, subvert, or disrupt the integrity and delivery of defense systems, including software, hardware, and services, to degrade national security".

So now Anthropic is an adversary, because it does not want "fully autonomous weapons" or automated mass surveillance? Sure thing, DoD. Go use Grok or whatever, I'm sure that will go great.

[cube00]

Sam Altman says OpenAI shares Anthropic's red lines in Pentagon fight [1]

So OpenAI will also be marked as a supply chain risk too, right?

[1]: https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/altman-openai-anthropic-pen...

[txrx0000]

This is why you can't gatekeep AI capabilities. It will eventually be taken from you by force.

Open-source everything. Papers, code, weights, financial records. Do all of your research in the open. Run a 100% transparent organization so that there's nothing to take from you. Level the playing field for good and bad actors alike, otherwise the bad actors will get their hands on it while everyone else is left behind.

Stop comparing AI capabilities to nuclear weapons. A nuke cannot protect against or reverse the damage of another nuke. AI capabilities are not like nukes. Diffuse it as much as possible. Give it to everyone and the good will prevail.

Build a world where millions of AGIs run on millions of gaming PCs, aligned with millions of different individuals. It is a necessary condition for humanity's survival.

[leapis]

Decades of speculative science fiction, thought experiments, and discourse led to this. It’s gratifying to see that we’ve garnered enough concern, a major AI lab risking this to reign in the potential of runaway AI disasters. Hopefully we see other labs follow.

[dang]

Recent and related:

Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47173121 - Feb 2026 (1508 comments)

[bnycum]

It's nice to see Anthropic sticking to their terms. I just have one question in all this. Why is Anthropic being singled out when it seems all the other big players are down to play with the DoD? Is this just a pissing match, or have the Anthropic models been proven the real winner for them?

[phs318u]

The discussion here underlines the reality that one can never make a “deal” with a powerful state, just as Lando Calrisian famously found out in Empire Strikes Back.

Dario is Lando, complaining “We had a deal!” Only to be told, “I’m altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”

[cannabis_sam]

A drunkard, ex-fox news host, wants mass surveillance and automated killing, what could go wrong?

I wish I thought enough Americans had the spine required to stand up to this, and I know for a fact that a lot do... the solution is literally written into your constitution.

[cpeterso]

Good PR for Anthropic: the DoD already has contracts with OpenAI and xAI, but is still so eager to use Claude that they must threaten Anthropic.

[garbawarb]

This sounds like a message to would-be founders: don't base your company in the US. The strongest markets to do business are the ones with the most freedom from government meddling. In the US, big government is happy to use its power to crush private enterprise that it doesn't like.

[liuliu]

It may not be obvious. But this is actually a good thing when we looking back in a few years. I always feel weird that executive branch can just destroy private enterprise with "Supply-chain Risk" / "Terrorist List" without Due Process.

[kylecazar]

There is clearly a need to codify into all of these historical acts that they can't be invoked unless there is a declaration of war (or some other appropriate prerequisite).

This administration consistently exploits what were designed to be emergency powers because no such requirement exists. Leave no room for interpretation.