The labs will not just ignore the order, there are too many other levers they can try to pull to mess with those companies. Just for some examples, think about the number of employees reliant on visas that could be revoked, the government contracts that the hyperscalers hosting them that could be canceled, the certifications that all the data centers need to be hooked up to the grid, the tariffs that could be put on critical components, the IPOs that need to be approved by regulators, the bill introduced in Congress to seize 50% of their equity...

Lots of these moves would and should be struck down in court as an arbitrary and capricious use of administrative power. Some of them might not be, and in the meantime you're signing up for tons of trouble. A trillion-dollar company does not simply go to war with the US government.

A more mid-sized company that's not so intertwined, but not so small that they can't get a good legal team, might be another story.

These regulations have been in place since the 1990s and have been applied by every administration. It isn’t a new authority and many companies have had the opportunity to fight it. Anthropic’s lawyers will know this.

Yes he does. They could ignore the US government, but will likely quickly find themselves in court fighting a fight that they are likely to lose and isn’t worth fighting anyway.

Ignoring US export control laws that have been on the books for nearly 50 years is a good way to pay millions of $ in fines and/or land in pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

Ask every satellite launch company in the 90s how that worked out.

Aside from how brazen and stupid this would be, the executive branch does have ways of limiting them and their sharing of tech, as we've seen.

They'd need to build an army of automated AI killbots that could rival the entire US military before they could even begin to think of defying Trump.

> They could just ignore Trump as he has no authority to so limit a private company.

Ignore export control regulations?

I think you’re trying to say you really feel it’s not fair, and you’d like so and so meany and bully to go and pound sand. And yeah most people feel the same way here but ignoring export control regulations is not a joking matter and not something to play around with. Especially for a company that feels they are having extra eyes on them.

If you have power and are willing to use it, you don't need legal authority, it turns out.

Trump does many things he lacks the legal authority to do.