It is not the textbook definition, because what Anthropic is doing is not sabotage, malicious, or subversive. Those are the key words in the definition. They are just refusing to add a feature to the military's specification. So their bid falls short of requirements.
> Whatever paradigmatic examples individual members of Congress may have had in mind, the statutory definition is not limited to “adversar[ies],” 10 U.S.C. § 3252(d)(4), and instead covers “any person,”
I tried to hint in my comment that the argument is completely different. the supply chain risk is just what the media runs with. (yes, it's in the opinion, but that is the weaker part. and the court agrees, that it basically does not apply to Anthropic.)
there's section 4713 which is roughly "Secretary of War can pull the nat.sec. card, bye"
> They are just refusing to add a feature to the military's specification.
That fails to accord with the claim:
>The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary
That isn't sabotage, that is simply product design. Anthropic is free to create their products that refuse to kill people, and the DoD is free not to buy those products if they don't fit their needs.
However, that's not what a supply chain risk is. It's not an order to "don't buy these products if they don't work the way we want them to", its designating Anthropic as a national security threat because they might intentionally sabotage US military operations.
As I said elsewhere, it's utterly preposterous that the DOD actually considers this a reasonable threat, because it's simply not a reasonable possibility. There's no way Anthropic would do that, precisely because of the consequences that would follow if they did, and got found out. Moreover, they already clearly stated their terms and preferences. It's all out of the open. There's no supply chain risk, that designation is purely political.
I work in the space industry and regularly use parts in our designs that are unapproved from space flight. Sometimes it's because it's a commercial part that we seem acceptable for flight, other times it's an unscreened or engineering model that doesn't go through the proper testing that space-qualified parts do. One vendor even dents the lid of a part to invalidate the hermetic seal guarantee that they claim for the space-qualified version (it still works fine). Many will have fine print in the data sheets saying the part is not to be used for critical applications like aerospace or medical devices. Sometimes we tell a little fib to our vendor that we are just developing non-flight devices so that they don't get upset and refuse to sell the lower-grade part to us. These vendors are scared of having something fail in an unapproved environment and are unaware of how much risk the customer is tolerating by the use of these unscreened parts.
It would have been incredibly simple for Anthropic to say "we cannot guarantee performance in a kill-chain application due to an unknown level of safeguards implemented in the baseline product and cannot estimate a cost for developing a new product capable of such application." and leave it at that.
>The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary (emphasis mine)
They didn't "reasonably" fear anything. There is absolutely no evidence to support these allegations. Anthropic has the right to impose licensing terms. Merely disagreeing with the government is not evidence of wrongdoing.
If Anthropic wasn't allowed to say what they said, how would they be allowed to object to their government's illegal use of their products at all? It sounds to me like their only choices were "shut up" or "be punished", which is a clear-cut violation of their rights.
Anthropic, in the original negotiations, said the can't answer every hypothetical use case. And the DOD should just come and ask as they come up (during an operation).
Which means the exact use limitations WOULD NOT BE DELINEATED IN WRITING in advance.
That fails only if you believe and agree with the government's argument, which I don't.
I don't think it's reasonable to fear that Anthropic would change the deal after contractually agreeing to terms of use. The government is using that as an excuse because they know that Anthropic hasn't actually met the definition of a supply-chain risk.
The department feared Anthropic would refuse if it was used to mass surveil on Americans or kill people without human oversight. Facts already laid out in the terms. Instead of simply canceling or negotiating, they used overwhelming government force against it to apply a designation never before applied to an American company. When its an interaction between trump/trump's government and any other party, it is a good first approximation to assume Trumps side are wrong.
Yes certainly, I can sell highly corrosive concentrated hydrochloric acid to the government as part of some contract for the synthesis of certain chemicals but I am fully within my rights to write that the acid should not be sprayed on people from a pump.
But that is not at all a reasonable fear. Is it really reasonable to believe that Anthropic, after receiving a government contract, would then proceed to sabotage their own product to not function as contracted? That seems like an utterly ridiculous claim to me, nothing close to "reasonable". There is no charitable way to view this designation except as political punishment and/or as a favor to Altman and Musk.
> would then proceed to sabotage their own product to not function as contracted?
Claude terms here: ANTHROPIC EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
Like most so-called AI, the Claude program is inherently unreliable. I doubt Anthropic would ever agree to "function as contracted".
My response was re the not functioning as contracted issue, not the supply chain risk. Having said which, I can well imagine possible cause and effect here.
Yes, but degrading capability on purpose is entirely permitted by a No Warrantee contract, and hence not at all the sabotage their own product to not function as contracted as feared by to DoD. Unless there's a very different and unusual contract in this case.
I don't think you understand what "No warranty" means in a software license. It means Anthropic cannot be held liable for results if the software misbehaves and instead of bombing a terrorist compound it bombs a wedding (I chose this example because the US has a tradition to bomb weddings in Iraq and Afghanistan). But in no form does it mean "yeah, I don't feel like doing what you prompted me".
Hence, Anthropic sabotaged the models on purpose to not respond properly to all prompts.
> It means Anthropic cannot be held liable for results if the software misbehaves
Actually I think it means what is says - which does include no warrantee of FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. This lets Anthropic block any purpose it likes.
There’s an argument that a private citizen operating a Flock-like device is exercising a constitutionally protected right to gather news and observe public events, and sharing those observations is constitutionally protected free speech. And, unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment is worded to restrict government invasion of privacy, not citizen invasion of privacy.
I expect the Supreme Court to eventually rule on the constitutionality of mass surveillance of public places, at least by the government. Maybe also by random citizens.
The US is roughly 30% of the world’s car spending, and if Toyota made a car only for the rest of the world, it would be more expensive than a competitor’s platform which is sold in EV and non-EV forms everywhere. An EV is still more expensive than the equivalent ICE and it would be even more expensive if it doesn’t share a platform.
An EV built on a dedicated platform doesn’t become more profitable than the shared platform version until it sells about two million copies. That’s because it costs $1B more in fixed costs for a dedicated EV manufacturing setup. If that car isn’t going to sell that many, it’s not worth making dedicated. In Europe EVs are still outsold by ICE 4 to 1. Even if I did sell two million copies, all you have done is recouped your $1B, not made any more profit than if you did the shared platform.
That’s because that car is made in China and has already sold 1.45 million copies, many heavily subsidized elsewhere. So it has recouped its development costs. EVs are simpler and cheaper on a per-unit basis, only the development costs are more expensive. And BYD uses the same platform for a bunch of other subsidized EVs, too.
I don't get why it matters that it's made in China but if you don't like that you could buy a European made Dacia Spring for around US$15,000 on the road.
1 in 3 new cars sold in the UK is electric and that number is growing. Spurred by the growing price of fossil fuels I think it's a safe bet it will be higher next year too.
It was 30% in the early 2000s, now it’s around 24%. Hence what I meant by falling. By volume it’s even worse: China is basically allowing many people in the developing world to own cars for the first time, as well as fuel them without expensive oil imports.
Yes. Just because this forum is frequented by loud Musk incels doesn’t necessarily color the whole community with some other label. This is a classic forum problem where extremist views are amplified merely by the enthusiasm of the extremists.
Tfa only spend a small amount of time using grok threads as a case study of the general views and actions of HN though.
I think this assessment is fairly reductive and doesn’t consider that the realm of start up tech is massive, the political affiliations and views of those at YC and the inherent stance that being “apolitical” actually ends up being.
I also feel that HN attempts to avoid these classic forum trappings and in my personal opinion it has failed. Either you are correct and this is a minority of people or it’s not a minority and HN is pervaded by extremists. Both are bad and if HN wants to continue to be good it needs to be solved imo.
It costs at least 50x more to put a GPU in space than it does on Earth. For that price you can have dozens more capacity in bunkers, under the sea, or on remote islands. Do you think your insurgents are going to get all two dozen? They could travel to the far corners of the earth, destroying 22 of them, and you'd still be ahead. Further, I wouldn't be surprised if a satellite with such a monstrous solar and radiator footprint wouldn't be susceptible to a laser based attack from the ground; either frying it or pushing it into an unstable orbit by vaporizing a few bits.
It costs much more than 50 times because there are no GPUs in space yet. Google is only planning to have some sort of space data centers mid 2030s, if everything works out. A big if, but if they don't start now then we'll never know.
To give a datacenter in space constant exposure to sunlight, the orbit must be either very var away, or occasionally be on the other side of the earth from you. Either way, the latency is terrible. You can put them in a ring and only choose the one closest to you, but are you really going to keep moving your data from satellite to satellite? So, bad for interactive use, maybe OK for non-interactive use, if you can afford the 30 foot by 30 foot solar panel and a similar size radiator for an 8x B300. That will be about $15M for your $500K GPU set. Plus $7M for the launch at SpaceX public rates.
I think these are mostly for llms or long-term storage where they are mostly concerned about latency within the data center and not latency between you and the data center.
The engines have proven repeatability and some have re-flown on a orbital rocket. By the standard of any company outside SpaceX, the Raptor has achieved remarkable things. Its at minimum the second most reusable engine in the world.
It has not yet proven to be as reliable reusable as Merlin, but the test programs they have put Raptor threw are considerable.
Raptor has successfully landed a rocket, and has successfully landed even an upper stage. Making it the only engine ever to achieve both.
If at this point you call that 'premature' then you must be an Asian parent in terms of your exception.
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