Administratively, Anthropic seems to misunderstand politics. You don't get to wear the "people's champion" and "government sweetheart" hats at the same time, when push comes to shove you'll be forced to pick a lane. We saw it with Microsoft, we saw it with Apple and Google, and now we're seeing it with OpenAI too. You can't drive down both paths at the same time.

As a member of the target audience for Claude, their messaging just leaves me confused. Are you a renegade success, or do you need the government's help? Are you a populist juggernaut, or do you hide from competition? OpenAI, for all their myriad issues, understood this from the start and stuck to the blithely profitable federal ass-kisser route.