alt Hacker NewsEvidentially not - Anthropic want to do business with the US military, but on their own terms, telling the military what they can and cannot use it for.
Replies
Every private citizen or corporation gets to do business (or not) with the military on their own terms. This is the difference between totalitarianism and a free country.
Anthropic’s position is also known as “having terms of service”.
To be clear the existing, signed ToS terms that Trump balked at were:
1. No mass surveillance of US civilians - illegal but we have all read the Snowden papers.
2. Fully unmanned kill chains on autonomous weapons - Anthropic have even stated they will support this eventually, they just didn’t think their models were ready and didn’t want the obvious, inevitable blowback.
The DoD is within its rights to cancel the contract if it doesn’t like the terms that it previously signed.
Is that a problem? Are there any special rules (genuinely curious) that allow the military to hijack the management of a private firm?