Comments
By netinstructions 2026-03-0521:353 reply This designation is usually reserved for foreign adversaries/companies, and so this is crazy to apply it to US company over a sudden contract dispute... that was previously agreed upon by all parties.
This should make any US company nervous about entering into an agreement with the government. Or any US company that already has a contract with the government. If they one day decide they don't like that contract, they can designate you a supply chain risk.
Not 1) rip up the existing contract and cease the agreement or 2) continue (but not renew) the existing contract or 3) renegotiate terms upon renewal but instead a full on ban of doing any business with an entire industry/sector.
> This should make any US company nervous
"Nice little business ya got here -- it'd be shame if something happened to it..."
Shame you didn’t donate $25 million to Trump, like the company we decided to give the contract to instead did, who will benefit tremendously from you being designated a supply chain risk. Maybe next time you’ll be a little smarter.
By _doctor_love 2026-03-060:30 I can't recall the last time you invited me to your house for a cup of coffee.
Well. Unsurprisingly fascists will do a fascism – an ideology somewhat defined by merging state and industrial powers. Many economically minded people, many technologists, including in this space, have afforded themselves the luxury of not talking about politics too deeply. As I said some years ago: Ignoring politics has its way of coming back to haunt you. Back then this was an unpopular take.
By orsenthil 2026-03-067:21 > Ignoring politics has its way of coming back to haunt you. Back then this was an unpopular take.
Right now, we cannot and should not. Even if you ignore, you are getting dragged into without your choice. See: the bribes paid by the companies.
By bloody-crow 2026-03-0616:53 > This should make any US company nervous about entering into an agreement with the government
I'm pretty sure same thing would've happened if Anthropic refused to enter contract negotiations in the first place.
By germandiago 2026-03-0520:263 reply This is awful. That a disagreement tjat involves politics can make a company ruined is really awful.
The civil society should be quite concerned about this kind of attacks.
By softwaredoug 2026-03-0521:098 reply It opens the door for Democratic administrations to do the same to vendors for their own political reasons.
That’s ultimately why Ted Cruz spoke out about the Kimmel cancelation. It doesn’t take long until those powers are turned against you.
No it doesn't. As with so many other things this administration does, this door was not open. They bashed through it anyway.
By bulletsvshumans 2026-03-0713:351 reply Either way, you can walk through the door after. Unless we reseal it legislatively. Resetting norms may be a lost cause at this point.
By wrs 2026-03-0722:50 It depends on the door. Norms are one thing, but these folks went beyond norm violations quite a while ago. If someone is going to ignore the actual law and do whatever they want until the Supreme Court calls them on it, changing the law doesn’t help.
Also, I’d like think that at this point “Trump got away with it” does not set a new norm.
By 1718627440 2026-03-0521:452 reply I think we should really judge governments by their actions and stop labeling them democracies, if they do such things that don't look like democracies at all.
By irthomasthomas 2026-03-0522:10 They will rename it The Free Democratic Republic of America.
By soraminazuki 2026-03-0614:55 We already do that, but we're just selective about it. After all, how many modern autocratic nations identify themselves as undemocratic?
By thinkingtoilet 2026-03-0521:283 reply I love when a Republican does something awful the response is "but what about if Democrats do that same awful thing to us!" as opposed to discussing and admitting that the Republicans did something awful.
By softwaredoug 2026-03-0521:322 reply The only way you convince Republicans it’s awful is by reminding Republicans power can be abused in both directions.
By bdangubic 2026-03-067:52 How I wish this was true... Every single time we experience something (and of course lately it feels like a daily experience) I would be in a discussion at some point with a Republican and would come with super-solid counter-examples like "imagine 2029 and President AOC doing ____" - it just never works...
By SAI_Peregrinus 2026-03-0522:411 reply The democrats don't tend to abuse power back. The SCOTUS ruled presidents have immunity for prosecution for official acts, while Biden was president. He did nothing with the power.
By krapp 2026-03-0523:09 I legitimately wish the Democrats were half as radical as Republican propaganda makes them out to be, then at least we might get something out of it before the inevitable right-wing purge.
By SpicyLemonZest 2026-03-0521:34 I think you're misinterpreting the discussion here. Democrats are precommitting that they are going to do the same awful thing; when the time comes, I will be contacting my legislators demanding that they do to OpenAI or SpaceX whatever is done to Anthropic now. It's outrageous that Sam Altman would step in to try and benefit from the political persecution of his main competitor and we must ensure that he regrets this.
By 1718627440 2026-03-0521:44 Oh. Before your comment I completely misunderstood "Democratic administrations". I understood it to mean administrations of countries that are democratic, not an US administration that is dominated by the Democratic party.
I think a good play by the Democrats would be to say that if they get into office they're going to investigate all these deals as potential bribery, fraud and corruption and that any business leaders that appeared to benefit from contributions might be prosecuted. That would be a laugh, I'd love to see how quickly the excuses start rolling in.
By jamincan 2026-03-0612:14 And then don't be surprised when even more money flows to their opponents.
By jaredklewis 2026-03-0522:07 Bold of you to assume Democrats are going to be allowed to govern again.
Yeah, now that this door is cracked open, it's now possible to decapitate SpaceX, which is at least as natsec-critical as Anthropic. The owner is a drug addict, has business interests in China, and is a Russian sympathizer (recall all the restrictions on Ukraine using Starlink), which all together is way stronger evidence for SCR designation than anything Anthropic has done. They're quickly going to come to regret opening this can of worms, but what else is new.
By tw04 2026-03-0521:36 Trump isn’t planning on ever leaving office before his death. His sycophants will just say yes in the hopes of unconditional pardons. They know they’ll never hold a position of power again so they’re grabbing everything they can while they can.
> That’s ultimately why Ted Cruz spoke out about the Kimmel cancelation. It doesn’t take long until those powers are turned against you.
Meh, I think it's entirely asymmetrical in this era. Democrats aren't good for much, but they're very good at respecting norms.
Trump is willing to do completely unprecedented, vindictive, and malicious things because he's so popular with so many people who are either checked out, nihilistic, corrupt, or just completely unconcerned about the concept of good governance.
It's not a pendulum where there's some super-corrupt Democrat waiting in the wings to do the same things upon their enemies, this really is the Republican party openly embracing kleptocracy and lawlessness.
By Sabinus 2026-03-063:44 Like gerrymandering, I have the strong suspicion that Trump voters won't be incentivised to vote for norm respecting leaders until a Dem does very Trumpian things to their side. I'm thinking firm 2nd Amendment reform enforcement with a rapidly resourced federal agency. Then, standards will be rapidly rediscovered.
By netfortius 2026-03-0522:221 reply What people seem to refuse to accept is that democrats won't have another chance, any time soon. It's done and gone. Count one or two generations, at a minimum, under the new Epstein class regime, before people may try to rise.
By bulbar 2026-03-065:48 If democracy in the US falls apart, it will take an event of World War 3 scale to fix this.
But thinking of it, your estimate might still hold under that premise.
As a European, I have still hopes for the US though. The western world is already reorganizing itself without the US in the center, but we and the world in general still need the US as being more of an ally than an adversary (at the moment, it's more of an adversary to the western world, sadly).
“Concerned” is an understatement. USA is already operating at nazi Germany levels and more than half of the civil society is approving. Not that it’s a surprise for global spectators though - it’s finally showing it’s true colors.
By nextaccountic 2026-03-0614:402 reply More than half is an exaggeration. Trump is not a popular president. With free and fair elections, a blue wave is more or less guaranteed
By manoDev 2026-03-0617:25 Creating a private militia, silencing dissent, declaring wars without congress vote… I don’t see how this is being allowed to happen without public approval, or at least, public apathy.
By tremon 2026-03-0617:11 All the more reason for Trump to prevent any form of free and fair elections then.
If civil society is not concerned by the tribute-based Board of Peace that gladly invited Putin, an attack on another country without authorization by Congress, a threat to seize the land of an ally, and the killing of its own citizens by the ICE militia, then an unjustified supply-chain risk label won't cut it.
By Hizonner 2026-03-062:54 I don't know. There's a certain segment of "civil society" that's pretty much OK with anything as long as it doesn't threaten the Holy Free Market. Free only for appropriately holy values of "free", mind you...
By blueblisters 2026-03-0520:472 reply It might be that this admin does not have the capacity to reason about second or third order effects.
But given that what would typically be red lines for previous administrations have been brazenly crossed without consequences, why would they bother?
By andrewstuart2 2026-03-0520:57 Crossing red lines for previous administrations is clearly a goal at this point.
By theshrike79 2026-03-069:15 Nope, they don't have that capacity. It's been shown multiple times in the past year.
Shutting down USAID being the clearest one. They just saw "they help brown people in other countries with our money" and shut it down. Fuck all second and third order effects that actually benefited the US.
