US Calls Anthropic a 'Supply Chain Risk'

What happened?

Anthropic, one of the major AI companies and responsible for the creation of Claude, is suing the US government. They are doing this because the Pentagon labelled them as a ‘supply chain risk’. This prevents them from doing any sort of business with any branch of the US government. Anthropic has promised to fight it in court and is keeping that promise. Anthropic has already made cases in 2 different courts, but there have been no results unsurprisingly (courts take forever). To be clear, a supply chain risk is used when there is a “risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert a system in order to disrupt, degrade or spy on it.”  

Why?

There are a couple of reasons that are widely known by the public, and probably a couple kept private by the Pentagon but the most likely one was that the US didn’t like that Anthropic would not consent to any use of its AI for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. The Pentagon released a statement on the matter saying “this has been about one fundamental principle: the military being able to use technology for all lawful purposes. The military will not allow a vendor to insert itself into the chain of command by restricting the lawful use of a critical capability and put our warfighters at risk." Now, I'm not going to go into detail yet, but this is absolute BS. Anthropic responded saying they did “not believe this action was legally sound. 

Is it legal?

Now, it might not be my place or anything because you know, not exactly a judge but NO, IT IS NOT! As I stated, a supply chain risk is only when there is a “risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert" a system in order to disrupt, degrade or spy on it.” There has been no evidence of this, they just don't like that they can't use Anthropic for their own personal needs at the cost of lives and privacy. This has nothing to do with foreign adversaries, nothing and I believe that Anthropic has grounds for a lawsuit (again, not a judge, not a lawyer, haven't passed the bar). 

My take:

Go Anthropic! Anthropic set a line and stood by it, even when it didn't go their way. That is more than I can say for the rest of the world (hello, international law and Iran, just saying). The US sucks. Just because they don't like it doesn’t mean they can take out the company. Because obviously you need autonomous AI weapons on Iran when the only people you're killing are civilians and that is with humans. Of course you feel the need to put a robot in control of who dies. That makes sense. And yeah, there is most certainly a need for mass surveillance of the American population when trust in the government is at an all time low. This is all completely logical. Anthropic, you’re the best, US, you suck but hey, what else is new.