alt Hacker NewsI feel like in this thread no one is understanding what supply chain risk designation is. The government can just not use Anthropic, and that's exactly what they're doing, and they are not using it so much that they don't want Anthropic anywhere in their chain of supply. It's not necessarily punitive, the government is just covering their tracks so that if somewhere in their supply chain Anthropic exists, they want to remove them. They are complying with Anthropic's demands to not be used in war and the DoD says, okay, we won't use you anywhere and also enforce that we won't use you, just like you wanted.
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> They are complying with Anthropic's demands to not be used in war
There was no such demand from Anthropic. Why are you making things up?
EDIT: Honestly, the rest of your comment is even stranger. You're starting from a false premise, a strange belief about what the designation is meant for, but you do end up providing a wonderful demonstration of your opening sentence for yourself at least. You definitely don't know what you're talking about.
> It's not necessarily punitive, the government is just covering their tracks so that if somewhere in their supply chain Anthropic exists, they want to remove them.
This reminds me of an old comment here where some idiot claimed that suicide is illegal so police are allowed to stop people from killing themselves. No, if Anthropic doesn't want their systems involved in war (that's a thing you made up, again, just to be clear) then they do not need to be designated a supply chain risk to "protect them" or whatever drivel you come up with next.
The correct response from the DOD would be to terminate contracts with Anthropic, and that's it. Then Anthropic would be responsible for ensuring that any contracts with other parties keep them out of war (again, not a thing they said they want, just your fiction). This is how it works for all other software systems where people don't want their work involved in wars or used by the police or whatever.
Designating them a supply chain risk was punitive. Only fools think otherwise.
> I feel like in this thread no one is understanding what supply chain risk designation is.
I wouldn't say "no one" understands, but you certainly don't.
It's going to make things complicated w.r.t. software used anywhere within and by the DoD:
1. the linux kernel has patches created by and security vulnerabilities identified by Claude/Anthropic;
2. same with other software like SQLite and rsync.
Anthropic said "we don't want to be used as part of kill chain decision-making" (actually it may have been even more specifically autonomous/unmanned kill chain decision making)
The DoD responded not by saying "alright, we will use OpenAI for our kill-chain uses" but by saying "Boeing is no longer allowed to use Claude Code".
No. They can do that with an order covering the specific parameters under which they care about it. Supply chain risk definition is about adversaries and sabotage, not companies dictating contract terms.
Designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk means that no one in the federal government can use Anthropic's products for anything. Outside of the military, there are tons of places where Anthropic's products are a good fit for the needs of many other federal government agencies.
The DoD is perfectly free to say "no one in the DoD can use Anthropic products because we believe their products are not fit for our needs". That would 100% solve the problem.
Designating them a supply-chain risk is just political retribution for not caving to the DoD's contract negotiation demands. That's all. It's not necessary to ensure the integrity of the US military's goals and objectives. It's just punitive, elementary school grade bullying.