Comments
I think the big problem is that this is more like a sanction, more than the government saying they don't want to do business with them. They government is saying that anyone they do business with can't do business with Anthropic.
So it's extremely important that they get an injunction that allows the cloud compute companies to continue to work them. I think they probably will, but it's really crazy that the government is actively trying to kill them off over this.
By tantalor 2026-03-0917:12 The big problem is this is prior restraint on free speech.
By OrvalWintermute 2026-03-0923:462 reply I support the rights of Democrat & Republican administrations to designate certain companies as supply chain risks OR a national security risk.
I do not want a TikTok hoovering up our personal info sending it to China
I do not want a Anthropic becoming essential to warfare then questioning when the their AI is used to bring an enemy to justice
I do not want Nvidia sending their latest and greatest to China
I do not want a ASML moving their super advanced photolithography machines to China
I do not want a DJI selling their drones in the US and then exporting all the meta-data back to China
I do not want a Huawei hacking through American IT companies and then getting a free pass on selling their devices based on stolen IP in the US
By xvector 2026-03-101:10 You certainly seem to support the government designating a company a SCR at gunpoint when they refuse to renegotiate a signed, agreed to, and finalized contract.
...You realize the only valid uses of supply chain risk you mentioned were DJI and Huawei. TikTok isn't providing services to the U.S. Gov. Anthropic is an American company with no foreign ownership. A supplier does not have to sell it's product to a government it knows is liable to misuse it. Not as a SaaS provider. Nvidia and ASML are both now covered under ITAR. Your specification of Democrat &Republican admins just demonstrates both are two sides of the same coin. Both need a good and thorough cleaning out.
By cermicelli 2026-03-1023:53 Anthropic has private ownership from a bunch of foreign investors GIC and MGX for one.
Not saying this action is correct or not but Anthropic has no reason to decline Chinese investment if they could get it. Neither does openAI.
It's insane people consider private companies should have free speech.
When they can't and aren't willing to do the same for private citizens. People being shot on streets didn't see any court cases?
I find hn to be quite brain dead in terms of what it chooses to care about.
By tokyobreakfast 2026-03-0917:214 reply > They government is saying that anyone they do business with can't do business with Anthropic.
Is neither unusual nor extraordinary. The 2022 TikTok ban on government devices—enacted under the Biden administration—carried the same viral-as-in-GPL terms.
By curt15 2026-03-0922:27 The TikTok ban upheld by the courts was a law enacted by Congress, not an executive action, specifically targeting Tiktok. The legal challenges were all about the law's constitutionality.
This dispute challenges the executive's action, not the underlying law (10 USC 3252). Anthropic does make some constitutional claims regarding the 1st and 5th amendments, but they also advance procedural challenges under the Administrative Procedures Act and statutory arguments about whether the law authorized the action.
By armchairhacker 2026-03-0918:471 reply At least TikTok is owned by China, which is the US’s rival. Nothing Anthropic has done gives me the impression they’re working against anything America.
By OrvalWintermute 2026-03-0923:502 reply The story is they started fishing for classified info on how their tooling was used from their prime contractor, Palantir, who rightfully blew the whistle on them and told DOD what they were up to.
https://fortune.com/2026/03/07/pentagon-emil-michael-anthrop...
By xvector 2026-03-102:31 You mean their signed and finalized contract was being violated and they started discussions about how violating said contract is not okay?
By ImPostingOnHN 2026-03-105:34 It's more like the government blew the whistle themselves that they were trying to use Anthropic's services in a manner contrary to law.
By catigula 2026-03-0918:56 This argument is going to be skewered in court.
By scuff3d 2026-03-0918:12 Careful, you might hurt yourself stretching that far
By verdverm 2026-03-0917:29 The actual letter the govt sent Anthropic narrowed the supply chain risk to DoD usage. Far less than the Epstein administration poffered on social media
By SilverElfin 2026-03-0915:53 It’s not just the supply chain risk designation from the Department of defense. Trump then added that he would order all government agencies to stop doing business with them. Basically, if you do not cave to their ideology, you will be coerced through such unethical means.
Palantir famously sued the army and won, now accounting for the majority of their USG revenue. So, this is not necessarily a bad strategy.
Key differentiator though is Palantir’s suit was based primarily on Congressional acts and explicit clauses of the FAR. This absolutely does not seem to be the case for Anthropic, who could easily do the same, but chooses another ideological battle. I can’t imagine their legal counsel would recommend this route (actually asking Claude it doesn’t either!) which would imply this is Anthropic leadership’s move.
I’d gamble they’ve already given up on actual business with the government/military and that this is more of a PR move to further distance themselves and maintain a high road image.
By OrvalWintermute 2026-03-0923:531 reply Palantir was trying to do the right thing.
Anthropic is trying to sell to the government while simultaneously dictating terms on how AI is used in the war department.
When you sell to the War department, or the IC, you can be certain that they are going to use it for planning operations and for executing operations.
By xvector 2026-03-101:11 Actually Anthropic is just refusing to renegotiate a contract. If the DoW cared so much about these restrictions, they shouldn't have signed the contract. Attempting to mike the company is childish behavior that will be stopped in court.
The government has near-absolute discretion over whom it contracts with, and no company has a constitutional right to be a federal vendor. Courts treat military technology decisions as core Commander-in-Chief functions subject to minimal judicial review, and the political question doctrine may bar second-guessing what the Secretary deems a security risk.
The supply chain risk statute grants broad, largely unreviewable national security discretion and doesn't require the threat to originate from a foreign adversary.
Finally, the First Amendment claim faces the problem that the government was responding not to abstract speech but to a concrete refusal to provide services on the military's terms, which courts are unlikely to treat as protected expression warranting judicial override of procurement choices.
While this suit has a weak basis, what you’re saying is not at all how government contracting and procurement works.
> The government has near-absolute discretion over whom it contracts with,
Not at all the case, procurement is dictated by a maze of Congressional acts and the FAR.
> and no company has a constitutional right to be a federal vendor.
Not constitutional but federal law actually dictates they do. Many companies actually have _more_ of a right to contracts than primes.
> Courts treat military technology decisions as core Commander-in-Chief functions subject to minimal judicial review,
Not at all the case there have been many disputes and it’s not uncommon to see a protest filed against procurement decisions in even innocuous cases. Many companies (eg Palantir) have sued the government on procurement and won.
> and the political question doctrine may bar second-guessing what the Secretary deems a security risk.
Sure, lowercase security risk, but uppercase Supply Chain Risk designation is an actual action subject to administrative procedure. There are many laws (eg Administrative Procedure Act) that allow judges to overturn this. The current basis of their suit is largely ideological but if they instead argued the designation was arbitrary the APA could very possibly be used to overturn it.
By curt15 2026-03-0922:38 >The current basis of their suit is largely ideological but if they instead argued the designation was arbitrary the APA could very possibly be used to overturn it.
Their front-line complaint (Count 1 in the brief linked elsewhere in this thread) invokes the APA.
By tantalor 2026-03-0917:18 Re: First Amendment claim
It goes much further than the "refusal to provide services" speech. By blacklisting them, they are blocked from doing any future business, which is prior restraint. Courts aren't very friendly to that.
By vharuck 2026-03-0917:29 Even if a law provides few guardrails to restrict how it's applied, courts care that applications of the law are not capricious.
