If Pete Hegseth, who is albeit highly incompetent, decides that Anthropic's values don't match with those of the DoD, isn't that entirely his call to make? Unless there's very specific circumstances at play, Hegseth is at least a public official, and gets to decide to do what he thinks is best for the public. Although he is wrong and Anthropic is right, no judge should force the government to use Anthropic products.
Does anybody have the legal analysis? I'm (clearly) not a lawyer, but I'm more interested for now in the question of whether this is allowed rather than whether it's morally right (it's obviously not).
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.46...
For other things that have gone to court see DoD JEDI and the NASA HLS.
Also, judges are political appointees -- This one has ruled against the Trump administration repeatedly and it's why this case was brought here. She was appointed by Joe Biden, was born/lives/works in the Bay Area and has a track record.
As for your legal arguments, it doesn't seem like they are currently correct, but I guess things can always change.
This is also a reminder that, contrary to popular understanding, judges are indeed political appointees. This one was appointed by Joe Biden, works in the Bay Area and definitely has a political bias in both the track record and in activism.
BUT! The judge’s opinion that “The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," is actually false. In the current administration it’s absolutely a blank check to punish and retaliate and I’m not sure under which authority a federal judge would stop them at this point.
Current Supreme Court had made it clear they don’t have many controls here…
Furthermore, Anthropic isn’t likely to recover any funds after this. So what if it happens to your small hardware startup? It’s a terrible precedent for Hegseth to set, and will lead to future harm. But he’s not the brightest bulb. Keep on talking up “Lethality” buddy… :/
If this article is accurate, it sounds like Mythos via Anthropic had proven itself to be a security risk. This explains the dual speak around it being both essential and a supply chain risk, since if it were hacked by another country it would compromise security.
Not being any riskier than any other "blackbox" AI is still sufficiently dangerous and I suppose the difference, without knowing more about what the government tested, was that they knew Mythos could do these things as they had evaluated it themselves.
Prevent everyone from doing it or don't prevent anyone. You can't single out and cripple only one country.
I don't imagine that this was Anthropic's intent anyway. They were just trying to say that it shouldn't be used for warfare. Respectable, but short sighted considering that they couldn't stop other people from using it for that same purpose.
Anthropic had two red lines: 1) no lethal autonomous warfare without a human in the loop, and 2) no mass surveillance of Americans. How is that something the average user is capable of? How are those red lines creating a national security risk?
These were not special terms for the U.S. government, they were a part of the usage policy since 2024. Governments are not in the same class as the average user, their capability and potential for misuse of the service is not comparable. There is no reason why the U.S. government should dispute those terms, and their reaction was dystopian.
Are they going to sue in Iran?
>How is that something the average user is capable of?
Do you really not know? Must be nice.
>How are those red lines creating a national security risk?
It's a policy banning nations (national) from using a technology as a weapon (security).
>There is no reason why the U.S. government should dispute those terms, and their reaction was dystopian.
Yeah it's dystopian! They are using it as a weapon. They told us that. Anthropic obviously knew that they would. They have a policy about it, because the tech itself is dystopian!
The 'national security risk' is imaginary and exists solely in the minds of the government morons in charge of AI policy
And they'll continue to do so, because it takes months to unwind this shit, and the damage was done immediately.
Great for fleecing those end-payers, however.
Can't indict the President for unlawful acts during his term. Can't post pictures online about the President. Can't lawfully protest against ICE agents abducting people off the street.
It's in failure mode (intentionally, is my read) because while it might eventually declare "x is not legal" at no point is it discouraging the people who did X (and have now also done y, z, 1, 2, and 3 - all also likely illegal) because there is zero actual accountability at the personal level.
If your house is flooding from a broken pipe... you don't bail. You turn the water off.
I'm seeing the gov capitalize on the lag time of the US judicial system reacting authoritatively to illegal gov behavior.
To me this is a continuation of a Win At All Costs strategy.
Because he is a shameless crook who heads up a corrupt administration
> These rulings are typically overturn at some point in the appeals process up to the Supreme Court, which has mostly upheld them as legal.
Gee I wonder why that is!!
The modern method of "ruling by Executive Order/Action" is a clever political ruse. It garners a lot of attention to decree an EO on some wedge issue, doesn't it? It stirs the pot quite effectively, even if the EO isn't, in fact, effective to do anything at all.
Ruling by EO is a way to keep campaign promises. It's a way to assuage constituents and donors and benefactors, "hey, I'm doing what you wanted from me!" and it's a way to keep ahold of the narrative. What it isn't, is effective governance. The USA is not ruled by decree. The EOs, if they are on subjects that are normally the remit of the judicial or legislative branch, may not do much, if anything at all. The President can say he's meddling with the national budget; the media can say he's meddling; the citizens can all complain that he's meddling, but only Congress can actually do budgetary things. The "#nokings" protests are attacking a straw man, because the USA has no king indeed. We uphold the Constitution in this house.
A lot of EOs simply get blocked or countermanded or never take effect, and remain as Presidential Suggestions or Presidential Wishful Thinking entirely. And nobody notices when they fizzle: they only notice when the pen hits paper and they supposedly take effect. They fulfill his promises. They galvanize the base. They assuage benefactors.
Don't be fooled, though. Ruling by EO is simply another layer of lawfare. It's not effective governance and it's not intended to be. It's intended to confuse and beguile you. What is it that Sun Tzu and Saul Alinsky said about having power? Check on that first.
You’re point about /effective/ governance makes sense. To that I agree, often the EOs are overturned or have little affect.
However, the damage EOs cause is very real, lasting, and can be disastrous. For example Trumps tariffs, while ineffective at their (stated) goal, were eventually overturned. But the damage they caused will be very long lasting. Supply chains are organic, they respond to outside forces, when those forces cause them to shift and change. Rarely do they on their own shift back.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.46...
You might get a petty win against the current administration, but lose big when next time a judge decides that $random_department must use Oracle for ERP and not SAP for example because Oracle has better lawyers and wants money from the government. You get the idea.
"The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics"
Soldiers don't need to die because a company is stubborn.
I understand this community largely disagrees with Trump, but the only people who win overall from these scenarios are people who support the status-quo and don't like the idea of a leader having significant power to change things. Any leader who is elected on a mandate to govern differently will face similar legal challenges.
I'm also not saying there's no place for legal challenges either, but there is a balance to be found there. The idea the Pentagon can't blacklist a US company for whatever reason it wants just seems absurd to me regardless of whether this specific ruling is good or bad.
So it requires a critical mass of very local reps to care about executive accountability. Which is exactly why Project 2025 / Trumpism plays the endorsement game so heavily. Fealty.
If we can't do that then we are just stuck as a body politic.
(NB: this is meaningfully different in the UK which has really multi-party elections despite Westminster elections being FPTP)
Choose the worst Democratic politician currently in office and please explain what they’ve done or said that is in any way comparable to what the Republican Party is doing.
But that aside, as noted upthread, it doesn't actually require an amendment, it just requires the existing Congresscritters to do their dang jobs. Not holding my breath.
And by supreme court, I mean right wing justices specifically. Who got there thanks to their heritage foundation connections. Which made project 2025.
I also think the supreme court immunity decision that gives the executive essentially no criminal liability has awoken then worst impulses.
So laws that specifically target those charged with enforcing law with liability for willful violation of law will stop this bs
There's been a ton of this sort of discussion over the past three hundred years, and the consensus which was particularly strong in the Federalist Papers was explicitly that there should be no _one_ person with significant, arbitrary powers.
The people vote for a lot more than just the president. This isn't the president's job. That's what the judge says, not that nobody can do it, just the president/executive can't.
The people also vote for the people who's job it is to have done the same thing but legally.
Recall the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act". The legislature _did_ pass a law banning software then and the executive just ignored it.
Due to some decisions made to protect """free speech""" - specifically, the free speech of moneybag men - capital interests are free to puppet our two parties around with abandon. The DNC in particular saw the new fundraising environment as an opportunity to completely sell out and ignore voters, and they're now hilariously unpopular with their own base despite being nominally in opposition to one of the least popular presidents of all time.
The environment this creates is one in which electoral politics is less than useless: it is actively harmful to the exercise of power on behalf of the people. We are actually seeing unusually high levels of activism in this country, and we actually do have a lot of issues with bipartisan support from voters. People don't want data centers built in their backyard, they don't want Flock building a private Stasi, they want the child rapists running our country to be brought to justice, they want right-to-repair, etc. But all of those issues are also antipartisan: they have bipartisan opposition from politicians, because they all imperil the funding sources you need in order to get into office. Compare the things MAGA people are saying to the things Trump is saying and you'll see the split.
I think you might have also mischaracterized the ruling. The Pentagon is still allowed to sanction supply chain risks, it just has to provide an actual reason for doing so. The Trump administration (really, just Pete Hegseth) tried to sanction Anthropic with no evidence. The actual reason was simple and straightforward: Anthropic had principles other than "doing what Pete Hegseth wanted" and everyone in this administration demands absolute and unfettered loyalty. I can see the value in "governing differently" but this government isn't just "different", it's demonstrably worse even on its own terms.
But they're a mixture of exclusively cultists or cowards so they won't do it.
They need to be charged with any and every crime they can credibly be accused of so this calculus changes in the future.
depends what the definition ...
Care about third party options? There are current Democrats advocating for ranked choice voting. The RNC rejects ranked choice. And there are many GOP states that have outright banned ranked choice voting. There’s a party that’s clearly better for your interests.
The Biden administration left an economy that was the envy of the world. Leadership that was trusted and a series of impressive bipartisan legislation from the CHIPs act to the infrastructure bill that set us on a good trajectory for the coming changes. Obama did the same, if we had continued the emphasis on building a solar industry our AI build out would be better positioned now we are behind China by a massive degree.
But hunter Biden sold a few painting? And democrats take corporate contributions so it's all equally bad? That doesn't match the data, results or predictions people make before administrations take over.
Three Republicans started three wars in the middle east and caused three spikes in oil prices.
Three democrats started 0 wars and over saw reduced deficits, landmark legislation like Obamacare, build back better, CHIPs, etc. And would have had even more accomplished if the Trans pacific partnership trade area had been continued the Iran nuclear agreement remained in effect, the solar investments been expanded the EVV subsidies expanded.
How can you equivicate these records?
If your people want bad things to happen, there is no text anywhere that can prevent it.
You cannot constrain people with laws without enforcement, just as a rule. Real life isn't like code where you write it and it just happens. If you want to restrain Trump to the rules, then the people in power have to believe the rules are more important than campaign promises, and for that you need the voting public to believe it is more important to maintain rules than it is to get your pet policy goals executed on.
The entire problem is that tens of millions of Americans think rules are bad and don't see any problem with there being no rules because they often believe that everyone has the same beliefs they do. And if they don't, they should be gulag'd for being unamerican.
A democracy can agree on rules ahead of time, but that cannot ensure future compliance. As long as people have more support from "Getting things done" compared to "Breaking literal law". This administration breaks very clear cut laws. What could possibly be a law they wouldn't dare to break with their current supporters?
Those supporters don't believe in a rule of law. It's simple as that. It kills democracy. You cannot have a democracy when compromises cannot be relied on.
This was predicted when the Republican party started to court the religious fundamentalist vote. They internally complained that it would kill the party.
Bush's speech writer is cited as saying: If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy
America has a very large, very organized, very passionate body of people who toe the line of their fundamentalist "Christian" organizations. There are lots of different surveys on this, but the general minimum is that 10% of Americans affirmatively believe that god created the earth as it exists today, unchanging, within the past 10k years.
that belief requires you to believe all of science is a giant conspiracy in league with Satan himself to make you turn away from god. A minimum of 30 million Americans are firm believers in the conspiracies and anti-reality beliefs espoused in Chick Tracts.
The entire Satanic Panic was these people acting on this stupid belief. Chick Tracts are demonstrably false in everything they espouse, but when you have homeschooled your child and bought only the stupidest "textbooks" for them to learn from that state matter-of-factly that science is a conspiracy, of course people end up believing that earnestly. These people believe at all times that they are in a literal war with the devil. In war, all things are permissible of course. They believe, against direct evidence and literal text from the founders, that America is a Christian nation (but notably, not any of the christian faiths that existed when America was founded). These people have spent generations cultivating an entire parallel media ecosystem, an entire parallel education system, that will never ever ever confront them with reality. Go watch christian media, it's utterly insane the things it believes. Every single popular teen movie gets remade with the plot replaced with a surface level similar one where the government is executing "Christians" for being "Christian". They live in perpetual victimhood. If you have convinced yourself that equal treatment is persecution, you will do horrible things.
The CIA quite literally played on these fears as part of the red scare, playing up Communism's atheism. This is still taught by parents to children to this day.
The reason our currency says "In god we trust" and the reason we have "Under god" in our pledge is directly down to this bloc being extremely powerful and having an utter disrespect for the rule of law.
You have a generation of Americans who were told repeatedly and often in their teenage years that if they wanted to be able to compete in the global job marketplace, they'd need, at the very least, a bachelor's degree.
As it turns out, employers were going to offshore those jobs and cut those wages regardless of your education. The value of degrees was wildly over-inflated compared to the economic reality, particularly after the Great Recession and COVID. The result has been an entire generation of people who aren't able to attain the same life milestones as their parents' generation, which is inherently destabilizing to a society. Corinthian Colleges wasn't the main perpetrator of this; the entire system was. By their shutdown in 2015, most people born between 1980 and 1995 were out of college and were paying massive loans to legitimate schools.
When you have a party (in this case, the federal government) obtaining something of value (student loan interest payments) via statements that are materially not true, there's a word for that: fraud.
Student loan forgiveness was a targeted effort on the behalf of a lending institution's head officer - in this case, the President of the United States - to try and renegotiate the terms of the loan serviced by that institution as to give some remedy to the problem.
This would have required a write-down of the foregone payments that would be approximately equal to what the US government spends on providing OASDI checks to retirees for one year, and most retirees do not rely on OASDI checks to avoid homelessness, starvation, or other destitution. It's basically a bonus that you get for living over the age of 65, at this point being paid in part by loans taken out by the US government that will have to be paid off long after the recipients of that money are dead.
The problem comes from the fact that a lot of Millennials were told by their parents that having a degree was what mattered, not what the degree was for. That was probably true in their day; it wasn't true in the 00s. Kids were told to follow their dreams. Now those same parents scoff at the idea of meeting their now-adult children halfway in order to let them gainfully participate in the economy. It's insane.
If people think that all majors tend near the average, they are mistaken. Some do very well, others are of dubious value to a career. Averages hide ugly realities.
I think the whole problem is that they don't. Their systems are wholly unsuitable for _fully_ automated killing. Random schools and fishermen don't need to die because an administration stubbornly refuses to properly confront reality.
Well, the US does have this whole "freedom" thing. Which said soldiers presumably fight for companies like Anthropic to have.
Are you seriously saying the US government should be able to compel individual companies to make things?
I am not saying it should be able, it already is.
Your argument would be more reasonable if you didn't handwave genuine and difficult moral and ethical decisions under those dismissive terms.
Civilians, including certainly 120 school girls, don't need to die because an AI hallucinated. Anthropic engages its responsability if their tools are used to designate targets. They have a right not to be implicated - or the Trump administration has to be open about requisitioning their tools and drafting their engineers in the name of a warm against Iran, which is another status altogether.
As it stands, there is no war against Iran, especially not one approved by Congress, and the only ones putting soldiers at risk are a senile reality show conman who was elected on the explicit promise of no new wars, and his gung-ho, racist, alcoholic TV host secretary of defense.
Anthropic willingly got itself into bed with the Pentagon. What did expect to do there, use their models to find the best locations to plant flowers?
As a company, you are to do what the client asks you to do or have your contract cancelled. Now it is bad luck that Anthropic decided not to do what the US government asked it to do and it is suffering the consequences. Maybe they should have used those fancy models to figure out that if they decide to say no to something, then every US government agency can say no to them. Suing to do business with the government again is poor business.
Maybe things are a little more complicated than your simple rules.
The invalidation comes from the fact that this is clearly retaliatory behavior for speech; and the evidence for this is fairly strong since the administration has made public statements to that effect.
The evidence being weak means that it is clear that there is no reasonable belief that the cause of action is anything but an attempt to apply a penalty for the use of protected speech.
The underlying legal principle is that groups of individuals banding together don't lose their fundamental rights. That applies to unions, non-profits, clubs, churches, political parties, small businesses, and yes, corporations.
Courts do allow more government control over "commercial speech" than, say, political speech. But that discriminates based on the type of speech, not the type of speaker.
> Defendants have now submitted the administrative record justifying those actions. The record is slim. A four-page memorandum, which post dates two of the three challenged actions, provides the entirety of the government’s rationale. Defendants have now backed away from the thrust of their risk assessment, which relied on Anthropic having backdoor access to its technology once deployed in a national security system. It is now clear that Anthropic undisputedly lacks any such access and that, as Defendants concede, Anthropic’s technology is itself no riskier to the national security than any other “black box” artificial intelligence model
The Tucker Act allows for a company to claim damages related to the seizure of property. That is not the same as having a product being stopped from 'shipping'[0].
Also, despite the US Concept of 'Corporate Personhood', Even the Citizens United decision did not set the bar for civil damages to be awarded for a civil rights violation to a 'corporate personhood'. i.e. While they were ruled to have had their First Amendment Rights Violated, there was no financial compensation to be had. The bar for waiving sovereign immunity for an individual/bureau/branch is very high and AFAICT requires specific action from congress.
[0] - The Tucker Act was written in the late 1800s, long before even the concept of Nuclear tech 'Born Secret' doctrine became a thing.
I'm almost upset at the notion only being invoked. Let's hope we don't see such a precedence emerge, especially around a company touting to be selling "intelligence".
Law firms blackmailed into doing pro bono work for Trump's pet causes, intelligence analysts not able to tell the truth, energy companies giving up wind leases and switching to fossil fuels. And of course the constant shakedowns for cash.
This is the federal government. When they collect taxes it is the minus operation that corresponds to the plus operation when they spent it initially.
(sarcasm intended)
From a practical/business perspective, I can see the government's position. It's very simple and it makes sense. Here's an analogy that I think is apt:
We use Solidworks, Altium Designer and JetBrains tools for our work. Imagine a scenario where each of these companies has license terms that restrict their use to certain domains or types of products they --for whatever reason; it does not have to be political-- do not agree with. Further imagine that the restrictions are different for each product, creating a virtual mine field of sorts.
Now imagine that every supplier adopts this philosophy over time; hardware, software, tools, components, fabricators, contractors, consultants, etc.
Well, very soon you will have to conclude that the only job you will be able to do is drive for Uber, if that.
The DoD/DoW is massive and massively multidisciplinary. They simply cannot afford to have vendors create no-go mine fields for them. It quickly becomes an unmanageable pain in the ass.
So, yeah, under those circumstances, I would not touch Anthropic with a ten foot pole duct-taped to another ten foot pole. It simply would not be a reasonable decision to work with them.
Not just for accountability sake, but if that gentleman could come back in here and outline what he thinks is going on that would be quite interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzwRflcLPAA&t=2479s
Super interesting pov from the person who recommended the supply risk designation.
Can it be at all lawful to retaliate though?
I hope I’m wrong…
People can just go in front of a congressional hearing and ... lie. Just plain faced bold provable lies. Nobody can call them a liar because of The Code, but there's also no penalty for them for lying, zero.
To a certain extent this exists, but given that SCOTUS has been stacked with GOPers…
> The shadow docket is a break from ordinary procedure. Such cases receive very limited briefings and are typically decided a week or less after an application is filed. The process generally results in short, unsigned rulings. In contrast, merits cases take months, include extensive briefing and public oral argument, and result in lengthy written opinions detailing the reasoning of the majority and of any concurring and dissenting justices.
It should be noted any justice can write a dissent in a "shadow docket" ruling. If a justice finds a ruling incorrect, nothing hides their criticism of it from the light.
The SCOTUS is stacked with reactionaries, people that want to take us back in history. They quite literally undid 60 years of civil rights legislation!
This is not a Democrat vs. Republican thing, this is is a very small minority that has taken control of an entire branch of government and is abusing their power.
Many Americans take for granted the idea that the US is a "nation of laws" and that "rule of law" governs above all else. But the reality is this: there is no such thing as a perfect legal system.
You can have a strong legal system by design (good oversight, various checks and balances, etc.) but in practice, any system is only as good as the most powerful people are decent and respectful of it.
If you have someone in the most powerful position (the executive) who doesn't respect the law and who isn't willing to, with wisdom in his or her heart, exercise restraint with the understanding that protecting the integrity of the system is ultimately more important than getting your way, the law stands no chance.
injunction in question: https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rYKRX7EU...
Such an injunction is granted when a party can show they have "irreparable harm" if not for the injunction and would likely succeed on the merits of the case.
> Anthropic has submitted concrete, non-speculative evidence of the ongoing harms to its liberty interests. Within days, many large enterprise customers signaled that publicly doing business with Anthropic over competitors was not worth it. (Dkt. No. 6-4 ¶ 16.) Three government contractor customers terminated their contracts with Anthropic, or were instructed to do so by Defendants; three deals valued at over $180 million fell apart despite being on the verge of closing; potential partners demanded additional protective contractual provisions such as unilateral termination; customers asked to cut short their contracts or reduced their amount, in some instances specifically mentioning the Challenged Actions; and others switched from Claude to competing generative AI tools. (Dkt. No. 6-4 ¶¶ 11–19; Dkt. No. 6-3 ¶ 33.) Anthropic’s Chief Financial Officer, Krishna Rao, projects that, depending on how broadly Anthropic’s customers interpret the Challenged Actions, Anthropic could lose between hundreds of millions and multiple billions of dollars in 2026 revenue. (Dkt. No. 6-5 ¶ 6.) Moreover, Defendants do not contest that Anthropic will be unable to obtain compensatory relief from the government, making its economic harm likely irreparable. E. Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Biden, 993 F.3d 640, 677 (9th Cir. 2021); California v. Azar, 911 F.3d 558, 581 (9th Cir. 2018).
The current decision discussed in the article was also expedited since it is Anthropic winning a motion for summary judgement.
That is, before a trial even happens to assess who is correct about a factual dispute, parties are allowed to try to win entirely on legal grounds. The judge assumes everything the United States alleges is true, then sees if Anthropic would win anyways.
From the current decision:
> Under the APA, an agency action must be set aside and held unlawful if it is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion,” “in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right,” or “without observance of procedure required by law.” 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A), (C), (D). Anthropic has shown that the Hegseth Directive and the Supply Chain Designation were in excess of statutory authority, contrary to law, and arbitrary and capricious.
They can, the preliminary injunction is a thing that can be invoked very quickly to stop actions before the law decides.
Anthropic didn't suffer any irreparable harm and they're free to seek damages if they wish, but they won't because it doesn't really matter to them. This whole mess has just been advertising that has kept them in the headlines and very likely has been more beneficial than harmful.
Anthropic didn't suffer any irreparable harm
Edit to add: Anthropic did show a risk of irreparable harm because their opponent is the government, and the government typically can’t be forced to pay damages (subject to limited statutory exceptions).
Factually wrong. Many people on defense contracted projects (you can find at least a few of those in every big company you have heard of) are banned from using Anthropic models. They need to use GPT, Gemini or something else. That is a LOT of business lost.
Also, the current administration doesn't care much about the law but what Trump and his people like and dislike. They made it very clear that they don't like Anthropic, so they won't get any contracts now, this ruling doesn't really matter until Trump is out of office.
None of this provable, of course.
They even fired people for investigating the storm on the Capitol. The message was pretty clear: we don't care about the law or what your job is, if you do something we dislike we retaliate, so you better become corrupt and stop caring as well or quit now on your own terms.
If only it were them "giving up" leases -- we *paid them billions* to halt developments.
In his recent interview Emil Michael (DoW undersecretary, "AI czar") even mentions that the Anthropic case served as motivation for Google folding.
It is a shame that Google's leadership is so spineless. On the minuscule off-chance any of those VPs are reading HN - you are bad and you should feel shame for increasing x-risk for a percentage point of profit.
This is wrong, just like the article you linked. Google has been a proud member of the military industrial complex for many years.
Alex Turner is naive when he thinks big psychopath corporation may have internal regulations to protect us from big psychopath government. He's somewhat deluded when he thinks this is a new problem and he personally has power against this. The only way we workers can enforce some level of ethics is via powerful unions (with strikes/sabotage), not as lonely individual "threatening" to leave the company.
I'm sorry he had to learn this the hard way. There's still plenty of time for you to realize that no or few company will grow a spine, because that's not what companies do, what they are for, or what they're directed to do (except maybe a small mom and pop shop).
And that friends, is capital-F Fascism.
The recent trip of the Canadian PM to China is but the most visible part of this shift. That's at govt level, but I've seen it happen all the way down to individual level.
US products are typically more expensive here than Chinese. But at least you were buying from a friendly supplier. That distinction is eroding quickly. In my experience it's forced people to try Chinese, and generally been surprised (in a good way) over quality and features.
And yes, the price of oil has focused people much more at the EV market. (Not least because people with an EV already aren't shy about gloating). Pretty much everyone I talk to, who would buy a car "new" tells me their next one will be electric. The tipping point is coming much faster than most people think.
Trump has been the best promoter of electrical vehicle here in Europe.
He 'helped' his Arabian allies twice, first he brought war to their countries and then he made sure that people wouldn't need their oil anymore (at least much less).
With allies like that you don't need enemy lol.
Good show!
But to prohibit anyone else from using it is a much bigger and more questionable step.
What do you mean? You and I are not prohibited from using Anthropic products unless we do work for DoD/DoW that collides with their usage restrictions.
I don't know what analogy would drive the point home. Imagine a password management system where the people running the company have an ideology that leads them to believe that their system should not allow anyone to secure anything used in military applications. Well, that's a security risk. And no contracts should be granted. Cause and effect. There's no confusion here.
.. but do limit their liabilities. It's not unreasonable to claim that limited liability should come with limited rights.
The only hope I think we have is education, good education so children have a brain and know when people are lying. For me it's not the lies that are the problem in politics, it's the massive number of people that believe the lies.
Anthropic’s reputation was enhanced by this
Fixed that for you.
However it is true that there were some defence contractors who probably took Codex deals instead of Claude deals when this happened.
(I agree that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the even more recent trend of shadow docket decisions that do come with opinions attached, and perhaps law students in the 2030s will learn about the "expedited docket" as a normal way to handle cases.)
Basically lie so much and so fast that the fact checkers can't keep up. It also helps when their voter base literally couldn't care less about "truth".
I'm sure they got MORE government contracts because of it by turning themselves into headline news for weeks.
So being in the news for such things surely didn't help.
You and I get an email box often full to communicate with officials over
Rich people call and text them
In the US we have had legitimate separation of powers between executive, legislative and judicial branches through much of our history and some of my lifetime (I'm almost 53).
We don't anymore.
The Republican-majority Congress has completely abdicated all of its power to the Republican executive and the Republican-majority Supreme Court barely tries to act like it is non-partisan anymore.
The non-Supreme Court judicial system is still (as can been seen by this ruling) functioning as intended, but there's a limit to how helpful that is when the top court is clearly in the bag, and if the other systems of checks and balances aren't repaired quickly it is only a matter of time until enough hyper partisan judges are installed at the lower levels to end that too.
The beginnings of the crumbling of our checks and balances pre-date the Trump era, though they've accelerated greatly during the Trump era. Even before Trump Congress had abdicated much of its power in matters of declaring war, for example.
If you have the majority, you can’t even be removed through a vote of no confidence.
That was the claim. I know in theory it is different, but also in reality here in germany I remember a scandal, where a minister of transport stopped a rule breaking other driver - big problem for the minister, because he was not allowed to do so (we have nice german word of "Amtsanmaßung" for this). So that sounds pretty separated to me.
More than 50% of voters voted for Trump. Even today >30% (of everyone) think he's doing a good job. (Ie about equal to the voters in absolute number terms). Lots of people believe eat he is doing is legal simply because he is doing it.
How it works is that the complainant makes an argument with an amount attached, the argument is reviewed and discussed by all parties, and the judge decides. The law system is amazingly free-form in some respects, which is why precedent is so important: there's not much else constraining things.
This requires a lot of work to estimate and reason and argue and adjudicate, you're not going to get a napkin math answer on an internet forum.
Yeah, god forbid they drive right down the middle of the lane rather than drive right up to the line of what the public will tolerate.
There is a direct causative line between government actors feeling like they can get away with unpopular things and the populist politics we've had brewing in this country for the past 20yr. The tea party, the Bernie bros the ron paul era libertarians, even MAGA, they were all ultimately captured by the establishment.
The establishment wielding progressive (lowercase p) types would do well to understand that on some level you, the peddlers of government, must cater to the demands of the people, because if you don't eventually the pressure will build until a populist movement you cannot contain comes around and stomps you. And what that could look like is a serious power transfer away from the feds and toward the states. So if your policy goals involve people in other states, which just about all progressives do, this would be bad for you.
Which is to say turn down the damn heat on the frog, this is all happening because you're going too fast.
That does not seem like a feature unique to progressives? Conservatives are trying explicitly to involve other states, they'd happily put us all under the thumb of a Evangelical theocracy if they had the power to do so.
Those jerks in NC to cram Christian values down everyone's throat via the federal government are no different than the jerks in CA who think that if they have to suffer through a low flow shower head some guy in Alton Missouri ought to as well. They're all progressives. We can debate the merits of the directions in which they seek to progress but they're both progressives on a fundamental level. They're seeking to use government to shape society, to what they think is everyone's benefit but in reality that's not so clear.
"Don't be evil" was never removed. But even if it was, the idea that Google just was champing at the bit to do all this evil but was held back by the pesky slogan is ridiculous.
And no, the slogan didn't prevent evil, but both its initial adoption and change might have reflected leadership intent (or maybe it was just PR?).
The whole thing. I spend way too much time in the politics/political-philosophy rabbit hole, and it still whooshed right by me. I bet you got like a 2% hit rate on people understanding what you meant.
All of it, apparently, I've never heard the term progressive used to describe conservatives. I gather that you don't like the divergence between the dictionary definition and the practical one? That's valid, but in a discussion it helps to use terms in the most commonly accepted way to avoid that confusion. I don't think modern conservatives are very conservative at all, but I have to stick with the terminology other people understand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...
> But you have a head of state
Yes! Our president.
> who can, in theory, remove the head of government at their own discretion
Ah. No.
They moved where it appeared in the document. That’s not removing it.
This is a dying vestige of the greatest generation who passed it onto their boomer kids who blindly believed it despite evidince to the contrary. We're moving back toward a late 19th and early 20th century understanding of how government and laws work.
Presidents are not historically all powerful within their own parties and the nature of the big tent systems means usually it is fairly difficult to get agreement on everything within a party without some compromise. Trump has managed to defang everybody else in the GOP.
And (2) if the law hasn't been used then WTF did we even consider signing it into power, let alone actually doing it? Something like this should never be done, but if done one would think it would only be in the face of an imminent and urgent need. Instead we seemed to have just casually signed unconstitutional executive tyranny into power 'just in case.'
The only way we're ever going to reign in executive power is if one party or the other starts rolling back executive power while they're in power. But when people are in power they seem to convince themselves that it will always be like this, and so when it comes to power all they can say is 'more, more, more.'
[1] - https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/president-obama-signs-in...
Someone has to get things done, and if Congress won't do it, maybe the President has to.
The people who called it a cult were basically right. Trump has overwhelming control over republican voters and has proven he can easily end the careers of republican politicians who oppose him. I do not recall a single politician of either party in my lifetime who has held this level of uncritical support.
It will be fascinating to see what happens when his grip on the party is removed. None of the current crop of potential successors appears to have even remotely the right kind of support to maintain the coalition. That does not seem surprising, he cannot really abide having someone close to him who looks like a powerful successor because he would see it as a threat. So he will anoint a weakling and the base will fracture.
Prediction: he will never anoint anyone. He is pathologically incapable of stepping aside, sharing, or caring one iota of what happens to anyone after he dies. He may not even be capable of conceptualizing his own mortality.
I fucking hate living in interesting times.
They have literally no excuse to be this cowardly. They will still be alive and rich if they go against Trump.
What happens then will be very interesting!
I don't see anyone who can keep wielding Trump's power.
They can't even get the SAVE act passed.
The SAVE act status probably has more to do with some Republican legislators who think it will harm their re-election chances by impacting their own supporters.
It is going to take literal decades, if it is even possible at all, to repair the damage Trump has done in 18 months.
...and lives. Musk is now up there as one of the individuals with the highest kill counts in history - at least 500,000 to 700,000 so far. Analysis suggests that by 2030, this could reach as many as 14 million, including 4.5 million children under age 5. Musk is going to have to come up with his own salute, because he's no longer playing second fiddle to that other guy.
Sources, with details of methodology, here: https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2026/07/how-pulitzer-final...
You are in very good company, I expect. There are so many interesting aspects to the time we live in and I find it exhausting.
Designed and made in China.
Right from the unpacking to first print the experience was top Apple-style quality.
Indeed I was agreeably surprised.
Caveat: (Yes I know geeks here will say apple users are just dumb and want a status symbol....they'll never get it)
To each their own I guess.
BTW I know nothing about 3D printers, but the Bambulab was recommended to me by a German friend who lives in Germany and is all about open-source ... He had printers since a long time and knows the ecosystem very well.
He told me the BambuLab printer was better for me because less tinkering, and much cheaper, at similar quality... which is what i was looking for.
We both are embedded systems engineers who work with Linux daily, so I trusted him. The results I get from the printer do not disappoint.
However I totally get the Prusa vibe. Just not for my specific use case.
To each his own indeed !
This was predicted in The Economist awhile back, that if the US blocked Chinese imports a tsunami of Chinese goods would flood other countries and now it's happening. Those countries will also, in turn, erect trade barriers, or suffer the devastation that massive Chinese dumping causes.
So it's a nice protest gesture, but it's a cutting off your nose to spite your face gesture.
Most actual cases have been of raw materials (eg steel, yarn) and industrial chemicals.
I think this is a long way from the alleged "tsunami of Chinese goods".
It's also worth noting that many Chinese manufactured goods would mostly substitute for US manufactured goods (eg cars). That's actually the whole point.
The quality of the product you get, like always, is about what people are willing to pay. The big difference is that the current cost of labor/material inputs there, is low enough that you can get the same or often better quality for less.
I wouldn't call that dumping. And to be clear, yeah they've done dumping in some cases.
But when we look at what's happened in the last 8 months or so around various AI SaaS-ish offerings, one could argue that plenty of US companies have done 'dumping with extra steps'. (And that's not even the first time necessarily, e.x. the DoorDash Pizza Arbitrage thought experiment...)
> It's also worth noting that many Chinese manufactured goods would mostly substitute for US manufactured goods (eg cars).
Heck, GM was (although they are moving it due to the Tariffs AFAIR) building the Buick Envision (Compact CUV) in China and shipping it to the US for sale. GM Announced in January that they'd move production to the US by 2028.
Similar for The Lincoln Nautilus (Midsize CUV), The current Gen is built in China and they only in the last month announced that they would move production back to the US... by 2030.
https://euobserver.com/226294/eu-warns-europes-car-industry-...
Because of the tarrif and trade war our local industries will struggle and collapse, there's nothing we can do about that - they were dependent on US trade partners and markets, the Canadian market is much smaller. We have massive productivity issues, there's little chance we'll successfully build our own auto industry.
In the interim buying more from China doesn't really hurt us, and sends a strong signal to the remaining people who care about foreign policy in Washington that there are penalties to treating allies like enemies.
I used to really strongly oppose Chinese expansion and the rise of cheap products getting dumped everywhere - I still do, but I oppose the US admin more; and at least they're stable and clear about what they want
I will admit I'm going to point to a specific example; Canadian Bike makers have been able for at least a decade to get an unpainted frame from Taiwan/China/Etc, components from wherever, but so long as they painted the frame in canada and did final assembly in Canada... 'Made in Canada' alongside all of the tariff exemptions that came with that.
> But from Canada's point of view: they have already been threatened enough that im sure those remaining ford,gm and stellantis jobs might be gone eventually...
Guess you didn't hear about Brampton in the news, the Stellantis plant there might be on the chopping block...
Tarifs have existed since forever. Countries use them to protect local industries. But they've always been stable, and industry focused.
Food production for example is worth protecting and Canada has tarifs on imported Dairy. Partnerships exist to protect local industries, promote exports, and give citizens access to cheap goods. It's a complex balance set up over time with lots of nuance and negotiating.
Yes, sometimes tarifs kill a local industry as well. Lack of international competition let's local industry stagnate until it is dead. US ship building is a good example of this, and US Auto makers are trending in this direction. (Banning Chinese EVs is not bolstering the US EV production, it is causing the US manufacturers to ignore that market, and I don't think that ends well.)
Tarifs are a powerful tool when wielded well. Alas right now the US in unstable. Local industries can't rely on tarifs existing next week, never mind 5 years from now. I'm not investing in a local hockey stick factory because the tarif could disappear at any time.
In my country we get cheap solar panels from China. Frankly, let them sell below-cost if they like. (Hint, they're not below cost). We don't make them here, so cheap energy is good for all.
The US negativity to Chinese goods seems to be around dumping (which happens, but not much), around quality (frankly much of it is very good) or around human rights. (Cause, you know, we bombed Iran to promote human rights...)
I don't think Americans will suddenly love China. But the rest of the world is getting very cosy very quickly.
People say a lot of things. If the infrastructure isn't there, it will end up like the US. I'm not sure Canadian EV infrastructure is up to snuff compared to China or even Europe. In the US a lot of people tried electric and now I am finding again and again, for many of these people, the next car after their EV is a gas car. Because poor implementation of the charging experience has put a bad first experience in many peoples minds. In the US K shaped economy, there are enough people that can stomach higher gas prices, and the lower portion of the K shaped economy has an even worse EV infrastructure or otherwise cannot afford most EVs(used or new) anyway.
It's 2026 and we are still debating this? There are a range of use cases for the population. We have semis, F350s towing landscape trailers, motorcycles, bikes, evs, NEVs, etc.
Pick what you think will work best for your use case and iterate. Global political posturing doesn't move you anywhere.
You can debate all you want. If I have learned anything this past decade, its the internet has little bearing on how real life turns out. Just look at the sales numbers. In the US they are now slightly declining after years of steady growth. I watch auto industry shows that talk about how executives who bet their reputations on the EV transition at places like Ford and GM now stand with destroyed careers because the demand was just not there and billions of wasted capital that had to be written down.
A car company has to sell a product that the masses will buy. It turns out for the US (and I suspect Canda as well) that product is currently hybrids. It gets the fuel cost down for people while allowing them to not give up on what they come to expect.
My next vehicle will be fully EV, not Tesla, once my current one dies.
Canada needs a whole lot less EV infrastructure than the US since so much of the population lives along a narrow band. Once you cover the trans-Canada highway, you've covered ~90% of long distance trips.
Maybe the eventual chinese sodium batteries will solve some of these issues.
Hypocrisy is never a good look.
One is political - Energy in the US is highly political, and the oil and coal lobbies are both influential and regressive. This leads to EVs becoming a political statement rather than an active choice.
Second is size. Americans tend to drive further so range does matter. More range means more cost. And even Americans who don't ever go further than 20 miles entertain at least the idea of a cross-country road trip.
So I get where you are coming from. But I'd also say that the US is different to the world in general. In Europe I saw charging infrastructure everywhere. (Streetlight poles contained chargers, all the way down the street.) Electric busses were the norm. Electric cars everywhere.
Like I said earlier, a tipping point is coming. Naturally it'll happen sooner in some places than others. The US will likely be towards the back.
The problem for US automakers is that by the time they see a local market, they'll be well behind the curve in development. I don't think a GM will be able to compete in product (never mind price) to a BYD et al.
>The problem for US automakers is that by the time they see a local market, they'll be well behind the curve in development. I don't think a GM will be able to compete in product (never mind price) to a BYD et al.
It's possible that GM and Ford are dead companies already. Although at the same time, I'd expected Tesla to decline a lot faster than they really did post MAGA Musk. They've had massive duds and a lot of money spent. Yet in terms of the U.S. they are still ahead of the pack in technology development and sales are not abysmal which is insane given there have not been any new platforms introduced. In fact they have discontinued models.
Whether BYD overtakes the American market remains to be seen, and maybe even in Europe we might see eventual pushback as things get really dire with the local manufacturers. It's really too early to tell.
China has an oversupply of EVs. They have over 100 car companies right now competing to the very death, and only a small handful will survive. Those companies will be very strong. But due to the oversupply and the 25% youth unemployment rate, China has to find a way to offload these vehicles overseas or else they'll suffer significantly as well. So it's going to be interesting times, and I'm not too sure how things are going to play out long term.
As long as a typical Chinese person is happy with a standard of living that is far below what an American expects, China will be way cheaper on labor.
For most products, labor is a significant cost.
For a lot of consumers, price is more important then where it's made. Maybe not what they say they think is important but when they actually decide. As a result, China will make almost everything, along with the rest of south east Asia.
Basically, the lower price for products comes at the cost of exporting your own jobs. One is easy to reason about when making a purchase decision, the other is indirect and abstract. Which is why the former wins
Explain how this is supposed to work on any medium time frame.
Also, haven't they been buying all kinds of stuff in Africa etcetera? Money doesn't have to flow from A to B and back to A. It might very well pass many more hops to complete the circle
If there's a difference, I haven't heard a good explanation of it.
I'd note the lack of evidence presented there, at least in the part I could read.
A hostile power - and China to the US is a hostile power - has no such stake. Quite the opposite.
> A hostile power [...] has no such stake.
As someone that grew up in Detroit, reading this is basically equivalent to science-fiction for me.
If you think domestic companies have some sort of special stake in your country, you're misinformed.
If we have standards and laws it’s unfair to allow outsourced competition to skirt them and collect the savings. That’s a recipe for disaster.
Modern China is not like the Soviet Union; it is much closer to a capitalistic society, but instead of private equity there is a (heavier than even the most 'socialist' of EU nations) government planning push.
In some ways, one could argue they're just taking lessons learned from all of the current systems and applying them aggressively in their centralized planning.
As someone who has lived in/around the heart of the 'Arsenal of Democracy' for my whole life, gotta say they are taking better lessons learned than the US has.
Not to mention, Canada being largely a service and resource extraction economy doesn't even really compete much with China.
It worked for Australia (which has a fairly similar economy to Canada).
It has led to a "Dutch disease" reliance on the resources sector in Australia, but that isn't radically different to the Australian economy before (mostly proportionally more coal & iron ore exports, less wool and grain)
Are you seriously arguing that the policy of putting oneself in a position of total economic dependence on China is in any way reasonable?
Please, elaborate.
Then some greedy fools decided they needed more, and started trying to charge more on the way out or on the way in. Now the ones that specialized in the 'must haves' of today have insane leverage over everyone else. Then the 'easy' answer is to prevent those goods from coming into your country.
It's all so incredibly shortsighted, it deflates me.
You could then try to make laws that countries we import from must abide certain standards, but just gets gamed endlessly. For instance cacao/chocolate makes extensive use of child slavery [1]. There have been numerous lawsuits over this until the Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that you could no longer sue Nestle/Cargill/Hershey/etc over child slavery in their supply lines. They were being sued because their oversight came down to asking, 'Hey you're not using child labor right?' 'Nah.' 'Cheers then, carry on.'
When a company's goal is to not see something, they do a very good job of becoming blind.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour_in_cocoa_producti...
Let me put it this way: American companies sell you a bad car and lay you off to give a CEO a bonus.
Chinese dictatorships put you into reeducation camps if you're a Muslim dissident or unapproved member of a religion. China tells the Catholic Church who to appoint as bishops and the Pope spends his time criticizing...anyone but China.
China pumps metrics tons of drug precursors onto the black market which accidentally find their way into Mexican drug labs and...are imported into Detroit.
China backs our national enemies because they are friends to anyone who opposes us. China funds Russia. China buys Iranian oil.
Chinese hackers steal US trade secrets.
And on and on.
China has their own Abu Ghraib moments swept under the carpet, but their workers accept it for the same reason America ignored Seymour Hersh. Their middle class is growing, the Chinese economy has vast surpluses and market leverage that only America has ever enjoyed. Their asymmetric warfare stealing IP, from Texas Instruments to ARM to Lockheed Martin went unpunished. The Chinese intelligence agency, through Salt Typhoon, probably has more blackmail on American politicians than the Mossad does. From a Chinese perspective, the war is won. They're supporting the winning side in Ukraine since both US administrations rebuffed full NATO intervention. They're supporting the winning side in Iran after the IRGC proved they can disable planes, drones and ships with Chinese hardware.
When the United States calls Canada a "51st state" or renames border territories to manufacture leverage, it's not helping China lose. They're undermining the trade agreements that all of North America relies on, and strengthening China's case as a reliable alternative to America's fickle export restrictions. In that sense, humanitarian outrage is almost an advantage; why would Pakistan, Iran or Russia worry about ethical reprisal from China if they're equally amoral?
I'm saying there's value in specializing, not every country needs to be able to make everything. The real issue is people weaponizing their specializations, in this case specifically the USA with its stupid trade moves.
Cost is a different aspect entirely. A one-dollar scoop of ice cream and a $100 scoop are both good.
Also:
> What does it even mean to question whether you can afford something you already get unlimited amounts of for free?
If I had unlimited money, my limiting resources would quickly become time and energy instead. So affording something would mean fitting it into my day/week/month/etc, and finding the energy for it. I have severe ADHD and executive dysfunction, so I don't always have the capacity for things I should be able to do.
The average hourly rate in the US is $42.50. In Vietnam is is $6.30, in the Philippines it is $5.40[1]
These aren't people living in poverty - they live well.
OTOH environmental legislation costs are harder to come by, but [2] estimates around 10% in a number of case studies. To be specific, that would mean US cost would be $4 less - that's still around 6 times the cost of Vietnam
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-hourly-earnings
[2] https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...
Also the US economy is increasingly polarized so averages mislead. The median hourly is a bit under $21. [1] You also need to account for what happened to the economy after we start shipping these affected jobs overseas. That's an entire segment of the economy which is going to influence wages, consumption, and other distributions. I agree wages are always going to be a major factor, but we can also afford a premium because shipping stuff half way around the world isn't free, the broader economic impact of having less control over your supply line is itself also a significant cost, and so on.