alt Hacker NewsThis has much broader implications for the US economy and rule of law in the US.
If government procurement rules intended for national security risks can be abused as a way to punish Anthropic for perceived lack of loyalty, why not any other company that displeases the administration like Apple or Amazon?
This marks an important turning point for the US.
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turning point? The episode is literally playing out the AEC's (read: war-footed government) 1954 Oppenheimer security-clearance hearing in real-time for a fresh modern-day audience.
this entire administration has been a constant stream of "important turning point for the US" moments
Yep, where does your trust lay now? It's been a minute of pretending it'll be okay.
Rather it's business as usual.
The turning point happened when Trump was reelected. One could argue the turning point happened Jan. 6 2020 and nobody truly cared. The consequence should have been for all insurrectionists and Trump himself to be tried for treason and be imprisoned indefinitely. Yet here we are.
The same is true about Meta and US antitrust law, or the GDPR and DMA in Europe.
Governments should not be permitted to introduce regulations against companies of this kind if the regulations can be enforced selectively and with regulator discretion, as the GDPR and antitrust definitely are. The free-speech implications are staggering.
Trump was threatening Netflix for having a democrat on the board last week. They seized 10% of Intel. They forced Nvidia to tithe 25% of China revenue into a slush fund. The FCC has been used to censor comedy. The ship has sailed and the only consequence has been hand-wringing.
Its called corporatism and is a part of classical fascism.
Corporations learn about “first they came for [Apple Inc.] but I am not [Apple Inc.] so I didn’t do anything”.
outside of just the tech sector, this country has already crossed MANY irreversible turning points. also, good luck with your midterm elections. we have started war with Iran. cheers from Barcelona from this American refugee.
Not really a turning point, the US has been turning for months, ever since the felatio of inauguration. This is just another rung on the ladder
This isn’t new. Maybe some people are just now realizing it.
Take the stated tool for this action, the Defense Production Act ("DPA") [1]. It was passed in 1950. What does it cover? Well, lots of things. The DPA has been invoked many times over 76 years.
Notably in 1980 it was expanded to include "energy", I guess in response to the 1970s OPEC Oil Crisis.
Remember during he pandemic when gas prices skyrocketed? As an aside, that was Trump's fault. But given that "energy" is a "material good" under the DPA, the government could've invoked it to tackle high energy prices and didn't.
So, the government is willing to invoke the DPA to protect corporate and wealthy interests, which now includes military applications of AI for imperialist purposes, but never for you, the average citizen. IT's weird how that keeps consistently happening.
The US government has consistently acted to further the interests of US corporations and the ultra-wealthy. You probably just haven't been paying attention until now.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950
I would argue we're miles away from an important turning point, it's been turning so much since then, its basically a full circle now
Im sorry to say the turning point has well passed. The US is a facist country with leaders who will flaunt the rule of law.
Please memorize the 14 points of fascism, you will see examples of this multiple times a day. Its ecerywhere.
i genuinely do not understand why anyone is acting like this is something new; has this not been the status quo since forever?
futhermore this is kind of a naive framing painting the state as somehow separate from majority of the capital...
> much broader implications
Setting aside the spectacular metastasis of a lawless kakistocracy that is literally rewriting the facts on record...
Anthropic's leadership has wisely attempted to make it clear that its product is not fit for the US DoD's purpose/objective, which is automated killing at scale.
It would be (is) grossly, historically negligent to operate weapons with LLMs. Anthropic built systems for a thuggocracy that only understands bribery, blackmail, and force.