I think this both overstates and understates the case. The evidence being weak does not invalidate the decision; as the court notes, the government gets substantial deference on matters of national security.
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.
omgwtfbyobbq
There are 5th amendment issues too IIRC.
jonas21
Well, I guess it's good that corporations have free speech protections under the First Amendment. I often see it argued here that they shouldn't.
zugi
The legal short-hand saying that "corporations are people" is terrible PR. Non-legal-experts look at that and logically and correctly conclude "no, they're not", and think it's a ridiculous statement.
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.
hn_acc1
They arguably have more free speech rights than the average person with citizens united..
jonas21
How so?
grackasthebig
Money affords direct access and reach while the average person gets a queue
You and I get an email box often full to communicate with officials over
Rich people call and text them
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ecocentrik
Politics is frequently a game of semantic drift. The application of labels with unclear meaning to further dilute meaning or extend it for the purpose of engagement, legal reclassification... it's not engineering and you can't expect well defined terms from people who want power without accountability.
jacobolus
Politics doesn't work if a significant part of the leadership is constantly acting in bad faith, and behaving essentially sociopathically.
Voters' and citizens' (and some judges') willingness to support sociopathic behavior by leaders is a profound failing at their basic social duties, and is deeply shameful.
LordDragonfang
> Politics doesn't work if a significant part of the leadership is constantly acting in bad faith, and behaving essentially sociopathically.
Not to be too contrarian, but I'm certain there are many people who would claim that's the only way it has ever worked (poorly)
jacobolus
People always feel like that to a certain extent, but both quantitatively and qualitatively there have been very dramatic shifts in the past few decades in the USA.
pvab3
It happens in a lot of ways. People call things violence, terrorism, matters of public health, or war to justify whatever it is they want.
lucasban
Hyperbole gets attention, which is useful
qlte
No, this isn't just an overused rhetorical device like all politicians do, those examples are the flimsy legal argument the Trump Admin uses in court, frequently as justification to break the actual letter of the law.
rafram
Neither was/is terrorism.
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ok123456
"National security matters" was never in good faith.
As a concept, it's used as an escape hatch whenever it wants to avoid public scrutiny.
throwitaway222
I dislike it when people claim speech is violence. Like if you're trying to have a conversation on what should be or not - then people claim that it's a violent act to talk about.
senderista
The point of that is to justify actual violence to suppress speech.
chihuahua
"Speech is violence" is very popular with the campus groups that want to ban speakers they disagree with.
I'm not sure if it's still going on, but a few years ago the same crowd kept insisting that "silence is violence" which is even more ludicrous - if you're not parroting their critical race theory talking points at every opportunity, YOU are committing an act of violence.
madrox
I have noticed fads in rhetoric as I've gotten older and lived through many of these moments. The rhetorical fads are mostly about structuring an argument where to disagree makes you appear beyond the pale.
What fascinating about these is that they eventually turn on themselves, because rhetoric has no logical foundation and can be twisted to mean anything.
FloorEgg
I wish the people down voting you would take a moment to explain why. Not because I agree with you, but because I don't know about this and I am curious and would appreciate a calm rational person to explain why they disagree with you.
hsuduebc2
At this point, it seems pretty obvious to me that every group in this conflict is willing to do basically whatever it takes to push through what it wants. Both sides do it so clumsily and stupidly that they only end up pissing off both observers and their opponents even more. Consensus can never really be reached, because the whole point of these theatrics is the fight itself.
I’m not American, so I’m not used to this kind of thing at all, which makes it even stranger for me to watch one group roleplaying as deeply religious while at the same time embodying arrogance, greed, and a lust for power, while on the other side you have people fighting for equality so hard that it eventually turns into plain old racism, sexism, and mental gymnastics, with definitions of words and concepts being constantly changed just to make them fit into an already flimsy theory meant to explain why the patriarchy or some similar nonsense is supposedly to blame for everything.
I’m genuinely curious to see how the conflict between these two groups develops from here. It just keeps getting more and more absurd.
kfse
That was essentially the point made by America in allied-occupied Germany, which completely suspended free speech. It does happen.
fwip
I think you may have replied to the wrong post.
throwaway85825
In the 40s the government took control of the whole economy in the name of national security, in the 1860s the government suspended the constitution in the name of national security. None of this is new.
seizethecheese
"In the 40s" and "in the 1860s" here are obfuscations of "during WWII" and "during the civil war". Extraordinary actions in the name of national security during a literal civil war or during a time of total war are to be expected. The comparison to other times is not meaningful.
tremon
Isn't this exactly what the war on terror was for? To always be able to claim that the US is currently at war?
seizethecheese
It seems like it was to be able to not be encumbered by civil rights while attempting to solve the problem of terrorism militarily.
blitzar
the war on terror is/was as real as the war on drugs and the war on christmas
shimman
Someone must tell the 200,000+ dead Iraqi civilians that the war was fake.
LordDragonfang
Strictly speaking, it was, since we never actually declared war on Iraq. Which only makes the whole tragedy a more egregious violation.
shakna
Declaring war isn't... Really a thing. Since around WWII. Acknowledging a war has happened, is what the notification to Congress is, and that happened.
thaumasiotes
> Isn't this exactly what the war on terror was for? To always be able to claim that the US is currently at war?
No, obviously not. That would have been pointless; the US was at war anyway. The US is always at war.
throwaway85825
The intervention in the economy predated the war.
wewtyflakes
The context of what the nation was facing in the 1860's (the civil war) and 1940's (world war 2) were very materially different than what it faces now.
kelseyfrog
It's crazy how powerful trans people are. Given the response, they're as powerful as the Civil War and WW2.
There's 2.8M trans people in the US. Compared to the Axis powers who mobilized 25-30M personnel, each trans person has the equivalent strength of 9-10 Axis soldiers. Impressive.
claytongulick
Congress ceding it's authority to the executive branch is an issue of national concern, has been going on for decades, and is definitely not limited to one specific party [1], though I do agree that the current administration has been testing the limits of executive power more than any other that I can recall in my lifetime.
The current administration is the final nail in the coffin of presidential-style governments versus the parliamentary system.
Separating the legislature and the executive has no useful purpose: if the president is going to defacto enact law should be handled by the legislature, then there's no reason they shouldn't just be the head of the legislature and forced to actually whip the votes to do so.
terribleperson
I actually lean a little differently, though maybe it's the same thing in a different shape.
Since modern government seems to require a large bureaucratic apparatus to function, I think it should be its own branch with no single head - or put another way, all bodies established by the legislature should be independent from each other, the executive, and the legislature. This way, all power the legislature grants to a body doesn't acrue to the presidency, and the collective powers of these bodies don't acrue to a single person or group. The president would still have a suite of powers, but they wouldn't automatically expand - the president would only have whatever control over these bodies the legislature chooses to grant. Of course, if the legislature wants to exercise any power over these bodies once they've established them, they would have to do so through the usual legislative process, and it would still be subject to presidential veto.
shimman
The US president was always designed to be like this. It's like people are deliberately forgetting anti-federalists were not only a thing, they warned about these exact same problems over 200 years ago.
gmoot
Well, yes and no. The remedies are impeachment and electoral accountability. Both of which have broken down in this era of extreme partisanship.
shimman
Impeachment that has to be done in a house of congress that was designed to have minimal accountability and is deeply anti-democratic? Maybe it "broke" down because there were no real checks and balances to begin with.
jacobolus
I'd recommend reading the Federalist Papers. A large number of them are more or less explicit warnings that Trump-style actions and attitudes should not be tolerated, and explanations about how they should be prevented and countered.
The Federalists were extremely familiar with the way monarchies functioned, spent a lot of time thinking about government strucutre, and the US presidency was quite explicitly set up to be something else.
If the leaders of all of our institutions decide to shrug when the president treats national powers as a tool for organized crime, and voters don't do anything about it, that's a people problem, not a problem of institutional structure. Any institution is only as powerful as our collective willingness to support and protect it.
XorNot
And built the system as it is anyway: with no practical way to prevent this from happening. And we see it over and over again in other presidential style systems, the US is just the largest one left to fall.
shimman
You say no practical way, I say system working exactly as designed. Many people who wrote the constitution were actively disdainful of "the democracy" problem. They openly hated that citizens were practicing local politics in towns across Massachusetts while thinking that plantation slave owners in Virginia, that were equivalent to oligarchs (and ruled as such too), were a more "noble" form of government.
They used Shays' Rebellion as a pretext to push for constitutional reform.
The constitution is explicitly written to prevent change. It's why change is so hard to implement and requires actual courage (see America's second founding).
One of the first official acts George Washington did was sign the fugitive slave act then tried to deputize his nephew in the treasury department to kidnap a free woman who was his former slave, Ona Judge, because Washington didn't want to argue in a public court why she was his property. Great video on the topic:
Many of the founders were rotten ghouls (Alexander Hamilton's favorite form of government was a monarchy), you need to read what they exactly think because they designed a government where about less than 2% of the US population could vote and design a system where the only house that commoner's could be elected into would be the weakest. They openly wrote about all of this too, it's not anything new.
When they wrote about freedom they weren't talking about 95% of society, they were talking about a very specific type of people that excluded many.
The rot has always been there, it's why there is an allure of truth when conservatives say they just want to return to the founding. Look at what the founding actually entails, there is nothing unamerican about white national colonialism. That's why we mustn't look to the past to build a better future.
_3u10
National security excuses enjoy widespread bipartisan support.
Want to execute a citizen without trial? National security.
Want to execute his child without trial? National security.
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LordDragonfang
GP already explicitly called it bipartisan, and it was bipartisan well before Obama (though if we're pointing fingers at a modern president for accelerating the abuse of "national security", it really should be Dubya).
msandford
It was literally Obama who did the things mentioned that had bipartisan support.
Objectively, the courts ruled for Obama and against Trump. You can read the rulings to understand why.
jibal
A prime example is that the Trump regime overthrew all California environmental regulations regarding oil drilling by Sable in the name of national security:
Remember covid? We all fell into lockstep with great eagerness. Suddenly everybody agreed on what's good and bad, who's good and bad. And why. So don't go pointing fingers. Attend to the 2x4 in your own eye because it's happening to you right now.
leonidasrup
Restriction on the movement of people, animals, and goods which is intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests is much older then COVID.
"
The word quarantine comes from quarantena or quarantaine, meaning "forty days", used in the Venetian language in the 14th and 15th centuries and also in France. The word is designated in the period during which all ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague."
If the past has taught us anything it's that we can contrive a logically-consistent, authoritatively-founded rationale to support literally anything.
embedding-shape
This is probably as a concise summary as you could get from there:
> 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
londons_explore
Presumably this is going to lead to anthropic getting a big payday from the US gov for all the time their flagship product was banned and all the users they lost due to it
to11mtm
I don't think there's a law or precedent for that.
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.
z3c0
> 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'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".
peri-cl
This is about the DoD supply chain risk designation—*not* the export controls.
ReptileMan
The case is not about that though
harimau777
I thought that the blacklisting was what led to them losing the business? Didn't the blacklisting effectively mean that contractors couldn't use Anthropic because it was supposedly a supply chain risk?
simonw
That was a different issue from the US government preventing Anthropic from selling general access to their Fable 5 model for a few weeks.
jimt1234
I think the reverse is true. Anthropic gave a generous donation to the 'Trump fund' to make it go away, and so the government intentionally fumbled the case. Now Anthropic can continue to do business without this stench following them around.
senderista
Did they? Source?
solenoid0937
They did not, you are confusing them with OpenAI which donated millions to Trump's inauguration fund.
dgellow
The government would just not pay, similar to what trump tried with his rape verdict
criley2
The government will pay because it's not his money, it's our money. He loves spending our money...
firefoxd
The law is too slow. It's like a horse carriage in the age of twitter. Why can't they expedite for special cases? Not even defending Antropic or any company. Just that if a tweet can cause damage in seconds, the law shouldn't be too far behind.
throw0101a
> Why can't they expedite for special cases?
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's not unusual that the "shadow docket" orders have limited briefings when the extent of the ruling/order is usually procedural, as opposed to ruling on the merits of the case.
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.
SpicyLemonZest
The problem is that the rationale is hidden, not that criticism of it is hidden. If the Supreme Court doesn't explain why they make momentous, weighty decisions, that leaves the rest of us with only speculation, both in understanding how the decision should be applied to other cases and evaluating whether the decision made any sense at all.
(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.)
tialaramex
This mechanism means that regardless of how awful the Trump admin proposal one SCOTUS justice can "temporarily" unblock it giving no reason at all, and then the "real" merits case can be slow-walked.
qlte
Slow-walked, conveniently, until the admin has finished doing whatever the original lawsuit claimed was illegal, and then the government argues it is impossible to undo after the fact.
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Refreeze5224
Absolutely nothing about how the Supreme Court works nowadays has respect for standard process or decorum. It's merely a shield to hide behind when it's convenient, to be ignored when it's useful.
fny
Bush and Obama filed 8 emergency applications across their presidencies (16 years.)
The first Trump admin filed 41.
Biden filed 19.
The second Trump admin filed 32 in 2025 alone.
jimmaswell
Ok? This is a total non-sequitur.
fny
I was trying to avoid editorializing by just stating facts that demonstrate the process is beyond some issue of reigning in lower courts and is instead leveraged by politicians to achieve their goals.
I can also editorialize.
In my view, Trump is leveraging the shadow docket to get decisions over turned by members of his own party who don't need to provide detailed (or any) explanations as to why or information about who voted for what.
exe34
It indicates one of two things: either the orange fuhrer is being sabotaged and having to defend himself, or that he's doing blatantly illegal things and even a court stacked in his favour by him is trying to reign him in.
hungryhobbit
SCOTUS is not stacked with justices who are just GOPers. There are lots of Republicans who absolutely value the rule of law in this country!
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.
jstummbillig
Mostly, the law is not creating the right incentives. In this case in particular, I don't think it's so much a matter of speed: I suspect the current US admin would still sow the chaos they do to the same degree if it was ruled illegal within a week instead of within months.
ElProlactin
You're right: the current administration would find a way because they don't care what the law says. The law, to them, is a system to be hacked when necessary.
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.
bobthepanda
An interesting feature of Trump 2.0 is that his party has essentially entirely keeled over.
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.
klik99
This is true but every recent president has expanded powers, and had their party agree. Due to my age, I first noticed it with Bush then when Obama continued it, it felt weird to be fine with allowing more power in the executive branch when it’s someone you support, because that’ll add to the precedent for the next person who you don’t support. The presidency has come a long way since Washington and Trump 2.0 is a clear result / continuation of what’s been happening for as long as I’ve been paying attention.
somenameforme
Exactly. People forget things like Obama signing a law into existence that allows for the indefinite detention of Americans without trial or charge if you claim they're connected to terrorism. [1] As far as I know that law has not yet been used. However that leads to two issues. (1) It could be at any time. The current issues with Israel are rife for abuse to the point that I'm somewhat surprised it hasn't yet been used.
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.'
The legislature will never claw back power it gave to the executive unless overall federal power is seriously threatened IMO.
BurningFrog
Just a guess, but maybe this is a result of the dysfunction in Congress.
Someone has to get things done, and if Congress won't do it, maybe the President has to.
rootusrootus
> An interesting feature of Trump 2.0 is that his party has essentially entirely keeled over.
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.
heylook
> 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.
rootusrootus
> I fucking hate living in interesting times.
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.
expedition32
US politicians are all millionaires with excellent resumes.
They have literally no excuse to be this cowardly. They will still be alive and rich if they go against Trump.
BurningFrog
There is no point for a Republican to fight Trump now. He'll be out of power in 2 years, so it's much smarter to just wait him out.
What happens then will be very interesting!
I don't see anyone who can keep wielding Trump's power.
Tanoc
There's also the benefit of following the strategy the Democrats as a larger party have followed since at least George W. Bush. Let someone stupider or bolder break a system that's hampering you, and then just never fix it because it benefits you. Disregard that with it broken your opponent can, will, and does cause more harm to everyone. We've been in a cycle of one side smashing whatever makes them upset at the moment, and then the other side just walking over the shards now that they don't have to detour around it.
theultdev
Nah the GOP never had fangs.
They can't even get the SAVE act passed.
Terr_
For "no fangs" there are an awful lot of people around (or dead) with GOP bite marks these days.
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.
heylook
What on earth are you talking about? Trump invaded multiple American cities. He created an $85 billion federal goon force. He's kidnapped or killed TWO DIFFERENT heads of state. He's destroyed our trade relationships. He's taken inflation from frustrating to existential. He's bulldozing national parks. He's started a brand spanking new forever war. He's utterly corrupted the Supreme Court. He's multiplied the national deficit and debt. He's cut taxes for only the richest. He let Elon tear our institutions to shreds, costing infinitely more money than he "saved" in the process. Our entire federal science and research apparatus is gone. Effing measles is back and killing people. Screw worm is back. Air traffic is falling apart. Trump and his family have made tens of billions.
It is going to take literal decades, if it is even possible at all, to repair the damage Trump has done in 18 months.
antonvs
> He let Elon tear our institutions to shreds, costing infinitely more money...
...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.
>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.
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.
SwtCyber
The harder problem is designing remedies that make illegal government action actually expensive enough to discourage it, without also making officials afraid to make legitimate decisions.
cucumber3732842
>officials afraid to make legitimate decisions
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.
rootusrootus
> if your policy goals involve people in other states, which just about all progressives do
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.
cucumber3732842
What part of "lowercase p" was unclear?
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.
heylook
> What part of "lowercase p" was unclear?
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.
jhbadger
The part where you gave the word your own private meaning was the unclear part. There are no two sides to "progressive". It means thinking the past was bad and that we can make a better, fairer society in the future. Those who think society was better in the past and think the 1950s or even the 1850s or even earlier were the Golden Age aren't progressive upper or lower case. They are regressive by definition.
rootusrootus
> What part of "lowercase p" was unclear?
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.
pjc50
Unclear why you seem to be blaming progressives for Trump.
mrandish
Agreed. There's little doubt the admin knew they'd lose in court before they did it but they also knew it would still hurt Anthropic and make an example showing what happens to "any vendor who tries to put restrictions on the DoW's use of their product."
inigyou
The law is normally supposed to repay whatever damage you suffered while the law was running.
MBCook
What would that even be in a case like this?
valleyer
Anthropic would estimate (and provide justification of) how much lost income (and perhaps brand equity, opportunity cost, etc.) it suffered as a result of the government's actions, and the judge would consider it and decide.
MBCook
I know that’s how it works. How could they possibly estimate that in this specific case.
robotresearcher
Courts do this stuff all the time. Meta was just fined $18B for making their services addictive, and failing on purpose to keep kids away. That number is entirely made up.
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.
vkou
Generally, one side would come up with their idea of the number and state their reasoning, the other side would do the same, and the judge looks at their reasoning and decides what makes sense.
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.
frog42
I thought I hated Web 2.0/3.0, but "age of twitter" made me actually feel ill.
wavewrangler
From recalled beef, to contaminated greens, to the cancer that is twitter, you will forever remember this period of your life as the dreaded... "age of shitter"
mceachen
age of xitter won't make you feel better.
rzz3
In the age of "Twitter"? Why Twitter specifically, not the internet or social media? I honestly feel like Twitter is losing relevance. I learned about it from TikTok for what its worth, and then read more about it here on HN. I've never understood why people put Twitter on a pedestal that I feel it doesn't deserve. Though aside from that your point stands and I totally agree with you. In reality people's/companies' constitutional rights can be infringed easily and the courts take months or even years to stop said infringement.
avaer
That's why the exploit of a social media savvy government is to overflow the system with so much slop (literally and figuratively) the law can never catch up. Your bug is their feature.
inigyou
They call it "flooding the zone", it's an explicit strategy
theshrike79
And Gish Gallop.
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".
inigyou
Gish gallop is a name that came from an opponent of the strategy, and refers to a localized usage of the strategy within one argument. Flooding the zone is what the people who are doing the strategy call it when they do it globally.
kaon_2
You are right and yet I continue to be impressed by a court system that can deliver judgment in 3 months whereas in the Netherlands nothing happens in under a year and complex cases always last more than five.
penguin_booze
"The wheels of justice turns slowly but grinds finely". Oof!
smuhakg
They do. It's called a preliminary injunction, which Anthropic obtained back in March. And this current decision is "summary judgement" which is another way to expedite a court case.
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.
ImJamal
Doesn't every company and person consider their case special?
0xbadcafebee
It's less slow in countries that aren't extremely litigious and backed up with frivolous cases, underfunded in staff, with excessive penalties and racial profiling causing overflows of cases and convictions for minor offenses, resulting in the world's largest prison population and the world's most backed up legal system.
colechristensen
>Why can't they expedite for special cases?
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.
3eb7988a1663
Anthropic didn't suffer any irreparable harm
This is a fast paced business environment where one company being explicitly disallowed by the government could create long-lasting damage. How many institutions might have gone with the safer OpenAI and will not revisit the decision?
colechristensen
I'm pretty convinced Anthropic was intentionally antagonizing the government in order to get high level attention, media coverage, and government contacts to hep "fix" the problem. Far from irreparable harm it was a marketing stunt.
arctic-true
A lot of folks here are misreading “irreparable harm,” which means “something that cannot be fixed with money later.” Even if this somehow screwed Anthropic so badly that they lost the AI race and Dario was relegated to the permanent underclass, that is an injury which could in theory be compensated with money - a jaw-dropping quantity of money, but money nonetheless. Irreparable harm can never be fixed even with infinite money. For example, if you think you’re the rightful owner of a piece of real estate, and someone else tries to sell it to a third party, you are faced with the prospect of irreparable harm: all the money in the world can’t FORCE the buyer to sell it back to you if the transaction goes through, and a piece of real estate is completely unique and non-fungible (at least in the eyes of the law), so no amount of money could get you the same thing.
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).
fg137
> Anthropic didn't suffer any irreparable harm
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.
polski-g
The injunction happened before the DOD ban even came into effect.
What you are saying is false.
fg137
In many companies, Anthropic models are still banned despite the injunction. Companies are waiting for this to be settled.
You don't have the full picture.
adastra22
I don’t know how you can say that. Anthropic’s reputation was destroyed by this, and A LOT of business deals happened before this injustice was corrected.
nl
> Anthropic’s reputation was destroyed by this,
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.
bulbar
You sure they didn't lose governmental contracts because of it?
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.
colechristensen
>You sure they didn't lose governmental contracts because of it?
I'm sure they got MORE government contracts because of it by turning themselves into headline news for weeks.
smuhakg
but they literally obtained a preliminary injunction back in March.
physicalecon
Law was not in effect yet, and now it’s repealed. Cest la vie.
Arubis
Judge rules horse must return to barn.
thinkcontext
Good for Anthropic for standing up for themselves but think of the masses of companies that decided not to take the risk. The tone was definitely set at Trump's inauguration with all the tech execs front and center on display. They knew that if they didn't play ball Trump would use government power against them.
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.
eclipticplane
> energy companies giving up wind leases and switching to fossil fuels
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.
noahbp
Don't forget OpenAI, whose CEO bragged gleefully about taking the contract Anthropic refused to sign since it granted the DoW the ability to build Skynet (autonomous weapons) and a Chinese-style mass domestic surveillance system using their models.
newsomix9xl
Didn't google give up "not being evil" a long long time ago? Are you really surprised?
solenoid0937
Just because you expect someone to do a bad thing doesn't mean you shouldn't shame them when they actually do the bad thing.
UncleMeat
Google does plenty of evil. This has nothing to do with the slogan.
"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.
newsomix9xl
They did remove the slogan.
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?).
“Removed it from the preface and retained it as the last sentence.”
They moved where it appeared in the document. That’s not removing it.
selfhoster1312
> It is a shame that Google's leadership is so spineless.
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).
heylook
> They knew that if they didn't play ball Trump would use government power against them.
And that friends, is capital-F Fascism.
frog42
So can they now sue the government and recoup their inflated theoretical losses to be paid out of tax revenue? It feels like any outcome here will have no negative effect on the major players actually involved.
dools
s/out of tax revenue/with public money/
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.
hingler36
At this point, does precedent even matter? Based on recent rulings, I feel like this exact scenario could play out again and the result would be the exact same.
bushido
It was a master stroke in international politics though, the US created an arms race towards sovereign ai, small models, and self-hosting - exactly like they wanted to.
(sarcasm intended)
angry_octet
The Iran war and SoH crisis has been great for EV uptake outside of the US. In combination with the US AI apartheid, it has been a huge boost for Chinese EVs and Chinese AI adoption.
bruce511
And trade. The last 18 months the US has shown itself to be a unreliable trade partner. Lots of companies are looking at diversifying both markets and supply chains.
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.
realo
I recently bought a BambuLab 3D printer.
Designed and made in China.
Right from the unpacking to first print the experience was top Apple-style quality.
Indeed I was agreeably surprised.
saturn8601
Its Apple'esque. The edge are still rough, and I don't trust their sketchy antics. People buy Apple because they earned that trust among their customer base. Is the device better than competitors, in my opinion yes but they are more along the lines of Samsung and not Apple.
Caveat: (Yes I know geeks here will say apple users are just dumb and want a status symbol....they'll never get it)
busterarm
So was my Prusa and they don't violate the GPL or lock me into their ecosystem.
To each their own I guess.
realo
My comment was not say Prusa is inferior, but just to mention that "Made in China" today is really not like the "Made in China" of the 1970s.
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 !
newsomix9xl
I doubt the Canadians want their economy flooded with Chinese goods ("dumping" - selling goods at less than cost) - which destroys local industry.
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.
nl
Accusations of Chinese dumping are cheap and easy to make, but the evidence is pretty mixed.
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.
to11mtm
The thing people tend to handwave about China's manufacturing prowess is that they have spent the last 25-ish years getting really good at 'making things to a spec' at a cost in-line with their labor market, being bolstered by their government's approach at Economy planning (i.e. subsidizing certain industries, required partnership agreements when foreign companies want to use that labor market to build things).
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.
MisterTea
Garlic dumping. Those little socks of 4 or 5 bulbs sold for a dollar-something are from China (notice the tops are chopped off so they cant sprout.) I buy domestic garlic because it's fucking stupid to import something that's so easy to grow.
gonesilent
It showed up in Africa along some of the Belt and road initiative items. Lined with Chinese sellers, Raising chickens and selling Chinese goods.
Selling at a loss to capture market share, isn't that part of every SV startup? What makes it so bad in this case?
SpicyLemonZest
It's not "so bad in this case". The domestic version is called "predatory pricing" and is illegal. In practice, it's easier to raise anti-dumping complaints than predatory pricing cases, both because the producers don't vote in your country and because the complaint doesn't have to be proven in a court of law.
phainopepla2
Heavy subsidies by the state.
disgruntledphd2
Surely if this is a problem, then heavy subsidies from private capital is also a problem?
If there's a difference, I haven't heard a good explanation of it.
to11mtm
TBH I agree with you, even mentioned it in my other reply.
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.
tough
If they have happy customers buying them is the dumping just a shibboleth for just "they're taking our national companies market share"
newsomix9xl
That is a very short term perspective. National companies often employ locally and pay taxes and have a stake in your long term interest.
A hostile power - and China to the US is a hostile power - has no such stake. Quite the opposite.
bigyabai
> National companies often employ locally and pay taxes and have a stake in your long term interest
> 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.
newsomix9xl
I'm sorry our educational system has not made the differences between bad faith companies and dictatorship clearer.
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.
bigyabai
You just described it yourself. American companies will build a Cybertruck, blame their customers, cancel a $25,000 EV, and then lay off employees for Elon's ketamine/AIPAC shill fund.
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?
data-ottawa
There are differences in labour and environmental laws that I do actually want a tariff to equalize.
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.
zeryx
I'm Canadian, the auto industry here died the moment trump started all of this tarrif talk in February, it just hasn't gotten cold yet.
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
LakesAndTrees
Seems pretty straightforward to me: Hey, China - start local plants and we’ll be happy to have as many EVs as we can build. After all, we’ll have plenty of idle auto workers.
zeryx
If Chinese industry is willing to operate at a loss in order to poke the US in the eye, sure - markets too small and labor too expensive otherwise imo.
saturn8601
It would be cool to have a native Canadian car company to defend and the only argument you can make for Chinese car dumping is that you dont want the only car companies remaining in the world to be Chinese. Thats a possibility yes since China has 100+ car companies, the population is overall declining in most western countries and there are already too many car companies for a shrinking pie of customers. 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...so whats left? Maybe Canada can demand BYD open a car factory in Canada.
to11mtm
I'll be rude/bold enough to say that Canada's ability to argue around 'in-country' made goods has been eroded for decades;
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...
saturn8601
Yeah Canada has natural limitations bigger countries like the US does not have but still, I wonder if good negoiation and maybe a changing situation in regards to the US's declining prospects might allow Canada to swing a bit higher in the future and demand something like this. There is a skilled workforce in place as well so maybe that changes the calculus.
bruce511
Hence the concept of trade partnerships. No country makes everything, and yes, there's lots of competition.
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.
Paradigma11
But China wants to make everything, that is the problem. It might also be the case that we misunderstand the state of the Chinese economy quite a bit. I heard an argument by an economist that the situation is mainly explained by the real estate crash. That was a ginormous event but the government basically just denied any big consequences. That did kill the credit market for a long time. Now Chinese consumer have little money to spend and China is forced to export their products, no matter the price to keep things going.
hvb2
> But China wants to make everything
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
Paradigma11
But in what goods/currency/assets are other nations paying China for those goods if China does not want/need to import anything?
Explain how this is supposed to work on any medium time frame.
satvikpendem
Use joint ventures just as China does.
newsomix9xl
In which you have a non-optional deal with a state owned venture?
satvikpendem
Doesn't have to be state-owned but it probably helps if the state forces such a venture with their domestic companies. It's already occuring in many countries now that China is the dominant producer, such as Ford with Geely and Volkswagen with XPeng.
inigyou
Oh no! Cheap goods and services! Maybe some other governments will be smart enough to not let a massive influx of nearly free stuff make everyone materially worse off. In fact it seems like only a completely idiotic system would make people worse off for having more free stuff.
rozal
oh no, lost jobs and and dying economy!
nl
> oh no, lost jobs and and dying economy!
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)
inigyou
That is a policy choice. Why do we need jobs if we're getting unlimited free stuff? The laws of physics aren't requiring us to - we are requiring us to.
matheusmoreira
> Why do we need jobs if we're getting unlimited free stuff?
Are you seriously arguing that the policy of putting oneself in a position of total economic dependence on China is in any way reasonable?
poncho_romero
The point is total economic dependence on _no one_, because we had basically had total economic dependence on the US and they fucked us into learning our lesson.
inigyou
I'm saying the policy that receiving a gift is bad for you is our fault.
IAmBroom
I was unaware that goods self-assembled without human intervention.
Please, elaborate.
inigyou
Other humans. If other humans were giving you everything you need for free, why do you need a job?
LoganDark
To afford things I merely want? To afford to support friends and partners?
inigyou
But other people are giving you everything you want for free. Why do you need to afford it? What does it even mean to question whether you can afford something you already get unlimited amounts of for free?
LoganDark
You said "everything you need". I need shelter, I need food and water, but I want powerful computing, fast internet, a phone with cell service, treats and snacks and etc. I want games to play with my friends, I want gifts to buy for my friends. I don't need those things, but they greatly contribute to my quality of life.
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.
CamperBob2
We're working on that. Be patient.
Barrin92
protectionism is what kills your economy because it cannot raise aggregate output. You can't "save jobs" in total, only a minority at the expense of the majority. When you raise tariffs on Chinese imports every consumer takes an economic hit, which otherwise would have gone to.. job creation and consumption. You'll have on net fewer jobs because you've made your country poorer.
Not to mention, Canada being largely a service and resource extraction economy doesn't even really compete much with China.
LoganDark
It is genuinely impossible to compete in a market where alternatives are cheaper enough, just look at how Amazon Basics squeezes competitors out of business.
BowBun
This is why free trade is important. We had a decent setup where countries were specializing in their own manufacturing/services specialties, and then we all paid each other for what we needed.
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.
somenameforme
The reality of the world is that when the US sets e.g. environmental or labor standards, we basically end up offshoring the affected industries to other places. Because those standards increase the cost of production which makes it more economical to produce stuff in a country that doesn't have such standards. With completely free trade, everything would be made in whichever country has the lowest standards, which is rather contrary to the implied values when passing environmental and labor standards in the first place.
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.
Labor costs are orders of magnitude more than costs added by environmental or labor standards.
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
That paper discusses only the effect of increasing energy costs, and seems highly dubious as well. Their conclusion is that increases in energy prices would have a small effect that could even be positive. We got to see what happens after increasing energy prices since 2022. The effects have been neither modest nor positive. They studied only modest changes from the past, but they were speaking of energy costs shifts on a scale aiming to shift Earth's climate, which is not modest. The cost is going to be much more than 10%.
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.
I was coming to comment just on that average, but I'm glad you caught it.
IAmBroom
> These aren't people living in poverty - they live well.
We're discussing forced child labor, and you conclude "they live well".
nl
No, I'm discussing people living on the average hourly wage.
LoganDark
What are you saying? If people all choose a shitty version from China, there will be no market for a good local version and businesses will stop trying. The investment required to match China's manufacturing capability in any area is simply impossible unless you say it is an AI data center.
agileAlligator
on what basis do you claim the local product is "good" if people are not choosing it?
IAmBroom
You can manipulate the meaning of "good" to suit your purpose, but it generally refers to quality.
Cost is a different aspect entirely. A one-dollar scoop of ice cream and a $100 scoop are both good.
agileAlligator
What is "quality"? What is the objective test of it?
I have made my definition clear: if people are choosing a product consistently, it must be of some value to them. What is your definition?
Henchman21
Selling below price to capture a market is now somehow BAD? Isn’t this the bread & butter of cutthroat capitalism? Isn’t it something we do endlessly? But when the Chinese do it its “dumping”?
xur17
For more complicated products, the fear is that this subsidy destroys all competition, and then you're dependent upon that country / company.
Henchman21
Right isn’t that the explicit goal of US companies? Why wouldn’t the same goal be ok for other nations to pursue?
Hypocrisy is never a good look.
saturn8601
>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.
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.
bahmboo
For a lot of people the infrastructure is an outlet in our garage. Going to the gas station is a novelty and just for snacks. Road trips are a few times a year and not a dealio at all. A PHEV is a nice sweet spot.
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.
saturn8601
>It's 2026 and we are still debating this?
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.
bruce511
The market in the US may be growing less strongly than elsewhere, but there are somewhat unique circumstances involved in that.
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.
yndoendo
Move and more people are realizing the reliance on fossil fuels is determinant to national security. EV and renewable sources of energy improve national security. I applaud those that have become enlightened.
My next vehicle will be fully EV, not Tesla, once my current one dies.
saturn8601
Whats your locale? Im talking about US & Canada. The sales numbers reversing there tell a different story.
adgjlsfhk1
> I'm not sure Canadian EV infrastructure is up to snuff
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.
saturn8601
Perhaps, and I am open to being wrong about this. What about range anxiety in extremly low temperatures? We have all heard the stories of so many Teslas operating above the artic circle and other Tesla propaganda but day to day, do EVs stack up to Canadian environmental demands? Model 3 owenrs (including one of Telsa's largest former cheerleaders) had numerous problems withs its California based design in cold winters (ex. frozen door handles).
Maybe the eventual chinese sodium batteries will solve some of these issues.
adgjlsfhk1
Canadian environmental demands are strict but not that much of a problem. ~90% of the population is withing ~100 miles of the border and has pretty similar climate to the northern US/most of europe, and anyone much further north than that already plugs their car in at night in the winter to keep the engine from freezing. Recessed door handles could be a problem, but that's not a mandatory part of an EV.
saturn8601
Well yes... the current US admin gets blame for not seemingly understanding the market right now(or bungled elsewhere giving the Chinese a lucky break) but i'm sure the massive oversupply in Chinese EVs didn't hurt either. China has 100+ car comapnies that are all in the jungle right now trying desperately to survive. Most won't make it and when the victors emerge, other car companies may not be ready for these warriors that survived. One of the ways to get rid of excess inventory: dump it elsewhere.
aucisson_masque
> The Iran war and SoH crisis has been great for EV uptake
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.
rootusrootus
Hell, it's been decent (relatively) for pushing EV adoption within the US, too, in addition to renewable energy. This is not the first time that I've wondered if Donald Trump isn't secretly still a democrat at heart.
ihaveajob
No wonder in China they call Trump "the nation builder".
JKCalhoun
And now I think we're going to see a surge of vegetarianism in the U.S.
Good show!
SwtCyber
Truly a flawless strategy: convince every government and large company on earth that depending on US-hosted AI is a geopolitical risk.
dboreham
Similarly the war created unstoppable momentum towards decarbonization.
newsomix9xl
Will Trump go down as one of the greatest environmentalists... ever?
gonesilent
The windmill guys sure are happy with their paid off investment and now selling all the windmill orders back to China
voganmother42
You can beat the rap but not the ride
TheMagicHorsey
Do judicial rulings have much effect on this administration anymore? It feels a bit like the judges are goalies trying to block penalty shots, and this administration just keeps kicking balls at the goal, and eventually something gets in ... because the judicial system itself is a bit stochastic.
xiphias2
Anthropic may win this but strategically it was just plain stupid. Mythos was blocked for just enough time for OpenAI to just catch up with Sol and get lots of enterprise customers.
polski-g
Mythos development was never blocked. And this case wasn't even about mythos.
s3p
do you think 100% of anthropic employees are citizens?
sixothree
Strategically, America was the loser here, not Anthropic.
xiphias2
We'll see, it will depend on the supreme court decision I guess. I'm quite confident the administration will bring it to higher court.
skeledrew
> unlawfully retaliated
Can it be at all lawful to retaliate though?
BowBun
Sure. If someone threatens you with imminent bodily harm, you can retaliate.
skeledrew
Nah that's just trash talk (throwing threats back and forth), or illegal (if it becomes seriously physical).
techneek
"The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics."
firesteelrain
I believe it when I see it that Claude will be allowed again. There will still be that national security clause that will stop anything and the courts can’t prevent it.
giwook
Like so many of this administration's actions, unfortunately...
crassus_ed
As they said during Louis the 14th's reign: "Si veut le roi, si veut la loi.", which translates to the law wants what the king wants.
bsian
In most modern democratic countries (I don't know about the US, since I'm European) executive and legislative branches are one and the same, so that still holds up!
lukan
Can you name some examples?
bsian
All parliamentary democracies.
If you have the majority, you can’t even be removed through a vote of no confidence.
lukan
"executive and legislative branches are one and the same"
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.
rootusrootus
But you have a head of state who can, in theory, remove the head of government at their own discretion, right? In the US the head of state and the head of government are the same person.
carefulfungi
The US president is head of the executive branch, one co-equal third of the entire government, also including the courts (article III of the constitution), and congress (article I).
wasabi991011
Yes in theory, the King Charles III and/or his representative the Governor General, could remove the Prime Minister, though the Governor General is chosen following advice (i.e. choice) of the Prime Minister, so I can't imagine that happening in practice.
penteract
There has been an instance of a Governor General dismissing a Prime minister.
Speaking for, and possibly misunderstanding, the situation in Ireland:
> 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.
georgemcbay
> In most modern democratic countries (I don't know about the US, since I'm European) executive and legislative branches are one and the same, so that still holds up!
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.
stronglikedan
Good. Before, there were questions. Now, there's precedence. Thanks for taking one for the team, Anthropic!
Kranar
This ruling does not establish legal precedence. There is a second lawsuit that is still ongoing that will establish legal precedence. The article points out that the Trump administration is likely to wait for a ruling on that second lawsuit before deciding whether to appeal the ruling of this one.
cubefox
But I guess Anthropic will not be compensated?
josefritzishere
Lots of that going around in this administration
micromacrofoot
Add it to the "but no one's going to do anything about it" pile
dude250711
I think Anthropic will tone down the hype in their PR. So there is hope.
solenoid0937
AI companies no longer talking about AI risk is a good thing now?
lqstuart
two more fucking years of this
herpdyderp
it is not going to end in 2 years
perarneng
Does anything matter if it's illegal or not when it comes to the current government? This is not a flamewar im interested from a practical perspective if things like this has any effects at all in practice.
ncr100
IDK.
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.
dannyw
Yes, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is back in Maryland, as one example.
bpodgursky
It de-risks defense contractors working with Anthropic on other projects. The most aggressive interpretation of the blacklist is that Lockheed Martin was not allowed to use Anthropic to develop their own products, and that's not on the table anymore.
SmarsJerry
Government has three branches for this reason, so yes everything matters if it is illegal.
cubefox
Note that this is a ruling on (just) one of two independent lawsuits, as stated in the article.
jtrn
I get irrational angry by logical and nonsensical statements. When I read this: “ Pentagon says private companies should not be able to constrain military action.” I am screaming: But they can fucking how what THEY want to sell to anybody! Setting terms for THEIR side is NOT constraining military action, unless military suddenly has totalitarian power over everybody !
gigatexal
Will it matter? Trump and his gang of criminal owns the Supreme Court and are happy to flout the law in a move fast a break things approach all the time. (See also the stupid gaudy ballroom) This win a pyrrhic one at best.
sb057
There are several hundred federal judges, and cases like this can be brought before virtually any of them. As a consequence at least one judge has ruled practically every single action by the Trump administration is illegal. These rulings are typically overturn at some point in the appeals process up to the Supreme Court, which has mostly upheld them as legal.
dools
> As a consequence at least one judge has ruled practically every single action by the Trump administration is illegal.
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!!
digitaltrees
When this administration is done we need to amend the constitution to hold politicians legally and financially responsible for intentionally lying and intentionally breaking the law. This was obviously illegal on its face and yet there is no consequence to pushing the norms.
estearum
I don't think that'd require a Constitutional amendment, would it?
datsci_est_2015
Literally the purpose of the House of Representatives, if I understand correctly.
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.
zaphar
This is impossible until a critical mass of voters across every state starts putting competence and integrity ahead of their pet issue and populism. If you actually want to start making headway in this direction you have to stop voting for candidates in either of the main parties. The parties are probably not salvageable. Find a third party candidate with these qualities and vote for them and convince as many people as you can to vote for them.
If we can't do that then we are just stuck as a body politic.
pjc50
Realistically, the option that will actually work for you is to fight within Democrat primaries. The absolute best case is you get a Mamdani. (Note this means accepting a bit of populism, because ultimately it's a popularity contest). Third parties are going nowhere due to the coordination problem.
(NB: this is meaningfully different in the UK which has really multi-party elections despite Westminster elections being FPTP)
the_gastropod
A both-sides guy! How original!
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.
zaphar
This is completely missing the point. Structurally I don't believe either party is set up to allow truly quality candidates to succeed. They optimize for all the wrong things in their candidates. Candidates who are quality that get through tend to be exceptions. Picking the worst of either side is just furthering the "We can't vote for good candidates because they might lose to whoever we believe is the worst candidate on the other side" narrative. The only way out is to stop buying into that narrative in a large enough number.
heylook
Your plan is to vote third party but it has zero to say about First-Past-the-Post voting, and so it is obviously completely useless and naive.
digitaltrees
You're missing the point. The harris administration wouldn't have had even 1% of the damage we are seeing. No 50% tariffs on Canada. No Iran war. No family members get bank charters and $600 million DoD contracts. I could go on and on. Biden was never remotely close to what his worst critics predicted nor was Obama. This admin has been far worse than even the most hyperbolic criticism predicted. American leadership and place in the world is permanently weaker now. It won't ever be the same and we will be poorer over the next few generations more isolated and sink into a position of parity if we are lucky.
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?
the_gastropod
I think that’s some pretty thin gruel. The Democratic Party is hardly perfect. But that’s true of every political party on the planet. There are some grifters, some incompetent, and some corrupt Democrats. But by and large, Democratic politicians do seem to genuinely try to do their jobs. They seem to be at least somewhat receptive, as well. And crucially, they hold their own to account. Get caught with gold bars in your suitcase? Bye. Have women with credible accusations of sexual misconduct against you? Sayonara. There also are many very competent democratic politicians doing solid jobs across the country: Senator Van Hollen, Senator Ossoff, AOC, James McGovern, Baltimore’s mayor Brandon Scott, etc. I see no reason to pretend they’re unworkable. And to suggest “eh, both sides suck” has always felt incredibly lazy and nihilistic to me.
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.
rc_mob
This can happen if we start a 50 propaganda campaign with regular TV and radio ads across the nation
loose-cannon
I don't think "more rules" is the answer. There needs to be people in our government who have integrity, who can apply pressure and take risk. It's the people, not the constitution. The last 1.5 years is evidence that legality doesn't mean anything without people willing to take action.
digitaltrees
I actually feel the opposite. The only thing that has slowed this chaos at all have been courts and separation of powers between the states and federal government.
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
iAMkenough
Start with the Supreme Court, who determined “official acts” are to be presumed legal. With no standards test for what qualifies as an official act or not.
iamatworknow
While we're at it, term limits for everyone. All levels of the judiciary and legislature.
junon
This still makes my blood boil. Even then people didn't seem to care (maybe they didn't understand) and we're all collectively just going along with it.
Zigurd
We already have the tools. The problem is that the corrupt oligarchs have the money that is considered equivalent to speech. Start with fixing that problem and other problems become solvable.
digitaltrees
We don’t have the tools. No senator is afraid of a $1m fine because they lied in a campaign. Yes it would need to be a high bar but to say we have tools when the basic incentives to behave this badly are t punishable makes it hard to support that conclusion.
parineum
It's convenient to blame the "oligarchs" since it justifies you doing nothing since there's nothing you can do.
Zigurd
Of course we can do something. Take money out of politics and you will get legislation that actually reflects the will of the people. Make buying politicians harder. There are lots of ways to do that.
brookst
Huh? Are you saying that one should take action… without making any claims about who to oppose?
j4yav
Presumably taxpayers will pay for it one way or the other.
digitaltrees
I think they get a personal financial penalty with no insurance coverage. This has to stop.
titzer
Nothing means anything without consequences. You can write all the amendments you want, but if they intentionally disable and dismantle all means of holding them accountable, the Constitution doesn't mean anything. They can't even follow the plain text of blatantly clear amendments like the 14th.
digitaltrees
My proposal is that there is a punishment for blatantly ignoring the 14th amendment. That’s the point, become an executive of the government comes with an affirmative obligation to actually enforce the law and a judicial review and cause of action that citizens can bring for
Failure to comply with that commitment.
bell-cot
Could you tell us why the politicians - who are the only ones who have the power to amend the Constitution - would be interested in doing that?
digitaltrees
Because voters demand it.
kingofmen
Even a fairly corrupt politician might believe that they are less corrupt than the other guy, and would be able to use the law as a weapon to get an even bigger slice of the cake. Or, still more likely, they would believe that "I get my fair share, you're a petty self-dealer, he is blatantly corrupt" and that the law would not be used against their perfectly open and above-board win-win deals, only against that other guy's filthy looting.
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.
watwut
They actually had laws supposed to act as stop guard against corruption and executive lawlessness. Supreme court systematically dismantled them.
And by supreme court, I mean right wing justices specifically. Who got there thanks to their heritage foundation connections. Which made project 2025.
fabian2k
You just need the rule of law for that. It helps to not elect blatantly corrupt people as president.
simonw
Problem is that apparently the US will occasionally elect a corrupt president, so we need stronger measures in place for when that happens.
kingofmen
We've got one. It's called impeachment. Unfortunately the system wasn't originally intended to have parties and party loyalties, and assumed that Congress would never have a majority to give a free pass to a corrupt President because he was their guy.
digitaltrees
We we need more checks on the executive and balance of power between the branches. The founders failed to see a scenario where all three branches would collaborate to anoint an executive rather than competing for power against each other.
mrguyorama
No, you cannot, in a democracy, write the rules in such a way to magically and automatically guarantee that bad things cannot happen, because the core conceit of democracy is that the will of the people can happen
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.
digitaltrees
The founders didn’t place their faith in the rule of law, the population or benevolence of politicians or oligarchs. They designed checks on power through balancing the allocation of authority across three branches that each have the right to override the others and further separation between federal and state power. We need more checks and a modified balance between branches.
robomartin
IANAL, so I can't comment on the legal merits of any of it.
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.
cperciva
It's entirely reasonable for the USG to say "we don't want to use a product with guardrails". Plenty of people have gotten annoyed with Fable and done exactly that!
But to prohibit anyone else from using it is a much bigger and more questionable step.
robomartin
> 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.
mitthrowaway2
If Domino's Pizza offered to deliver pizza to the Pentagon but declined in their terms of service to deliver pizza-box-shaped packages to Tehran, do you think it would be a fair and proportionate response for the DoD to ban anyone in the defense supply chain from ever ordering pizza from Domino's?
robomartin
Your analogy makes no sense. At all.
NorthSouthNorth
Which is very different to labelling them a national security risk instead of just not awarding them contracts.
Analemma_
Every single person I've seen trying to defend the government's actions in this case has carefully elided the difference between "not awarding them a contract" (which would've been fine) and "using the law to try and destroy their business". The fact that almost nobody on the government's side has actually spoken honestly about the facts of the case makes it pretty obvious who is in the right and wrong here.
robomartin
It is a security risk. That's the problem you create if you allow every single vendor from imposing their own rules. The contracts are not awarded because doing so would create a security risk.
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.
mitthrowaway2
OK. I'm imagining such a password management system. I don't see why it makes sense for the government to ban Microsoft from using that company's password management system for Minecraft, just because Microsoft also happens to sell Microsoft Office to the DoD.
protocolture
There was a guy in the comments of the first article on this topic, who claimed to be an expert on this law and was adamant that the decision by the Trump admin was perfectly legal.
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.
swingboy
It’s possible this could go before multiple judges who won’t all agree with this particular one.
protocolture
Yeah but this was supposedly "Cut and dry" and no one familiar with the law could possibly mistake it, and it was all media manipulation that made it seem like there was a case where there wasnt one.
goatlover
It's also possible the Trump admin has people commenting online.
bruce511
They don't need to be part of the administration.
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.
inigyou
Well it is. They literally made a law saying whatever the president does is legal because he's the president.
jcranmer
> More than 50% of voters voted for Trump.
Only 49.8% voted for Trump in the 2024 US election.
RoloBaron
You can hear the Department of War's pov on this controversy from the All-In Podcast here:
Super interesting pov from the person who recommended the supply risk designation.
idiotsecant
It did what it was supposed to - punish an entity that dared not do what the government told them to. It doesn't matter if anthropic gets a payday out of it, the administration doesn't get hurt by that and won't learn any lessons. We need to hold individual politicians and functionaries accountable
whalesalad
Unlawful means absolutely nothing these days.
derektank
I don’t know, the $166B in refunds returned to importers after the IEEPA tariffs were ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court seem pretty meaningful
j4yav
Meaningful as a mega transfer of tax revenue from citizens to corporations, which for all we know was the whole point.
harimau777
Ya, but that's only going to the corporations. I doubt they are going to send the rest of us a check.
JumpCrisscross
I got a refund…
embedding-shape
Meaningful for who though, the common person in the country?
lazide
Not for stopping damage to the end-payers of those fees.
Great for fleecing those end-payers, however.
noir_lord
It's the Gish gallop applied to a legal/legislative system - it just can't keep up with the sheer volume of cases that would need to be brought to curtail even the worst of it and that's assuming that if/when it eventually gets in front of the supreme court that that "august" body actually does curtail it.
horsawlarway
Yes - because the system is trying to prevent the flood by piling up sticks instead of removing the source of water.
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.
estearum
The problem is that courts are getting flooded but it's up to Congress (de facto the Republican party) to remove the source of water.
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.
Tangurena2
Steve Bannon, who advised the 45 administration, called that tactic "flood the zone with shit".
Of course it does. For those trying to hold the administration to account, there's all sorts of laws.
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.
Tangurena2
Congress is supposed to hold the Executive branch accountable. They deliberately refuse to do so because keeping their cult in power is all that matters to them.
mc32
Right, like the student debt forgiveness. We hate the ones we disagree with and we love the ones we agree with.
kevin_thibedeau
Debt forgiveness was dumb too. It normalized capricious government handouts for volitional actions. After the Corinthian shutdown there was little excuse for taking on massive debt for BS degrees.
dahart
Why do you assume there’s debt involved? Whether BS or not, people with degrees have higher earnings (~2x on average according to the FED) and pay higher taxes (more than 2x on average); it’s very much in the government’s financial interest for more people to have degrees.
mc32
That suffers from the stereotype fallacy. Some majors have huge ROI while others leave graduates very frustrated with their prospects. Not everyone will benefit from a degree. Not all degrees are financially sound.
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.
dahart
Oh no! You’ve misunderstood. I wasn’t really talking about the benefits of degrees to individuals, I was talking about the benefits to the federal budget (in response to the claim that we’re taking on debt). And there, the average income of graduates is actually the only thing that matters, not individuals’ performance, because that average turns into a sum total in income tax revenue for the federal government, a total that factors in the benefits of all degrees and all incomes, good or bad. There is a healthy positive ROI today for the government on education, even after student debt forgiveness. We’re making a tidy profit on degrees, not taking on debt. We’re making such a good profit, in fact, that we’d still be in the black making money if we covered all 4 year degrees for everyone who’s already choosing to go to college now. It looks like just the additional income tax revenue the country makes off degree earners compared to high school grads is on the order of 2-3x the sum total money paid in tuition and fees to all post-secondary schools in the US. If everyone in the country decided to get free degrees, all else being equal, it might get closer to break even or dipping into the budget… maybe. But there are multiple other countries that cover college for everyone who wants it, and they’re doing fine financially and not taking on education debt, some even rank better than the US on several economic measures.
lenerdenator
How was it dumb?
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.
mc32
We should allow students to discharge their loans if they cannot repay them. This means risk will be assigned to borrowers and that would squeeze the ability for kids to take out loans on stupid majors that have absolutely no hope of ROI, as currently priced.
triceratops
It's a great plan. Why didn't Congress pass that?
lenerdenator
I think there were some reforms to the process not too long ago that may have done something like you describe.
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.
watwut
I dont know what you mean there. There is literally no symmetry between the two. Not in the case of how Biden administration reacted to cases they lost. And also not in the supreme court treatment - it ideological and political goals are pretty clear at this point, although not always pro-Trump.
panny
Sure, but who in Trump's DOJ is going to prosecute Trump? Separation of powers my ass.
hnfong
This is one of the reasons why most heads of state have legal immunity during the time they are serving.
bamboozled
So what if it’s illegal, what can be done about it, the corruption is so extreme there will be no recourse.
I hope I’m wrong…
hirvi74
You're not wrong. The United States has a legal system and not a justice system. Having spent many years of my life involved 'adjacently' with the system, I'd say it's actually a rigged, sadistic system.
theshrike79
What the current regime has brought to light is that WAY too much of the American "checks and balances" are based on "trust me bro" and "a person with morals just wouldn't do that". Zero penalties for doing the wrong thing.
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.
bamboozled
What system successfully combats this though?
small_model
"When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."
blitzar
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is"
Tangurena2
Clinton, being a lawyer, asked for a definition of "sex". The definition given to him did not include oral sex. When a lawyer asks you for a definition of a word, then you are getting screwed.
blitzar
> then you are getting screwed
depends what the definition ...
ModernMech
The modern Trump version is: "If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment." - Trump's legal defense during his first impeachment.
nekusar
And NOT a damned thing will be done to punish the administration for these obvious illegal actions.
And they'll continue to do so, because it takes months to unwind this shit, and the damage was done immediately.
paxys
Sure, and what are you going to do about it? The current government is above laws.
replwoacause
Most of what Trump does is illegal.
inigyou
Actually they made a law saying the president can do whatever he wants.
CMay
No, it didn't say that. It didn't stop the media from repeating it a thousand times, though. In the future, go directly to the supreme court decisions and read them for yourself rather than having other people tell you what to think. We are absolutely in a time rich with other people telling you exactly what you should think and feel about a thing.
addy34
Not in those words, but the decision did give absolute immunity from criminal prosecution and civil damage suits for all core official acts and presumptive immunity for all acts "performed within the outer perimiter of his official responsibility". It also severely restricted the ability to gather evidence for acts that do not fall within this scope.
This is extremely broad, and not unreasonable to summarize as the president being able to do whatever they want without fear of criminal/civil consequences.
Suggesting that everyone should read the 120 page, highly technical decision and come to their own conclusions is not helpful.
CMay
That's what the syllabus is for. It's the first few pages of the decision, for the convenience of the average American. We're also in the age of AI though, so you can feed the PDF in and have it extract the essential decisions. They're generally good enough now that they won't inject hallucinations into primary source material when asked to extract information.
Separation of powers of the various branches of government is very bipartisan. The supreme court opinion largely re-emphasizes how this operates in practice within this particular scenario, because they had never had to detail it out before.
President Trump is the most attacked US president in American history. Full stop. There has never been a president in history that faced more litigation, libel, defamation, disinformation or assassination attempts. This is simply the first time the question had to be asked how the constitution applies in these scenarios.
These rules would have applied to previous presidents as well, so even though people like to say all new rules are being created just for Trump, it really is very much just an expression of the already understood constitution.
ButlerianJihad
A lot of what the President does is ineffectual. And this is speaking with generality, including Presidents Obama, Biden, Clinton, et. al.
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.
inigyou
What happens if the president ignores the budget and spends money how he wants?
digi59404
Interesting. I wonder how those who were laid off by the Government feel about this. Or those who are harmed by ICE Agents. Maybe those who are stuck in limbo because their visas aren’t going to be renewed.
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.
DannyBee
The opinion is quite straightforward, and the evidence on the government's side was entirely nonsense, essentially.
You've got that warhammer 40k "innocence proves nothing" mindset.
LadyCailin
Ok, let’s say I buy that. Why was Anthropic singled out?
kridsdale1
Because Dario won’t say Yes Sir to the big man.
[deleted]
Comment removed.
junon
Not sure if you're just trolling or what but your comment is demonstrably false and very easily disproven at that
kypro
I know most will see this as a good thing, and perhaps in this case it is, but I think it's generally concerning that people can vote for leaders who effectively can't do anything significant.
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.
pjc50
> I think it's generally concerning that people can vote for leaders who effectively can't do anything significant
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.
drngdds
I support the status quo in comparison to Donald Trump being allowed to use Claude for automated weapons and mass domestic surveillance, yeah
parineum
> but I think it's generally concerning that people can vote for leaders who effectively can't do anything significant.
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.
iamatworknow
If only it were that simple.
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.
kmeisthax
Trump wasn't elected on a mandate to govern differently, he was elected because the DNC is a shambling corpse of a party that is paid to lose.
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.
dzonga
[flagged]
lettergram
This would likely be overturned if the federal government needs to push it. At the time Anthropic was saying publicly that they oppose certain actions and their model is restricted in certain ways. The executive branch viewed that as a risk and has the ultimate say over it's vendors, regardless of the judges ruling. The supreme court has been pretty clear on this.
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.
No fine imposed on the Trump Administration corporation (doing business as the federal government of the US of A)? Does the current legal system allow Anthropic to sue for loss of revenue, reputational damage, etc.?
hingler36
Even if they are stuck with a fine, who enforces the fine? What's stopping them from just... Not paying it?
trimethylpurine
I don't agree. When anthropic contractually stopped the US government from using the platform for certain purposes that they could not prevent the average user from pursuing they created a de facto national security risk.
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.
techblueberry
You’re free to not agree with the law but you should know sometimes there are consequences for acting on that belief.
doginasuit
> When anthropic contractually stopped the US government from using the platform for certain purposes that they could not prevent the average user from pursuing they created a de facto national security risk.
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.
trimethylpurine
>These were not special terms for the U.S. government
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!
dosisking
> When anthropic contractually stopped the US government from using the platform for certain purposes that they could not prevent the average user from pursuing they created a de facto national security risk.
The 'national security risk' is imaginary and exists solely in the minds of the government morons in charge of AI policy
trimethylpurine
Bro, we know the US government is using it as a weapon because they told us! That is national security.
jghn
Since SCOTUS is stacked, it really doesn't matter.
ExoticPearTree
Before bashing Trump for not liking Anthropic, people should consider the consequences of having the judiciary decide what software companies the government can and cannot use.
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.
Arodex
Maybe read about the case and the reasoning of the judge before saying things that aren't pertinent.
"The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics"
ExoticPearTree
What I said is pertinent: Anthropic refusing to build software for autonomous weapons platforms is a national security issue. They have the capability, but they just don't want to do it because they don't feel like it.
Soldiers don't need to die because a company is stubborn.
hansvm
> they have the capability
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.
SmarsJerry
Anthropic isn’t just used for image analysis, and is actually a bad option as you said. It’s used mostly for programming, and what happens when it finds “missile system” in your prompt and refuses to continue coding?
hansvm
I can answer your direct question if you'd like, but I'm actually missing what I think is some larger point in why you asked it. Would you be okay elaborating please?
BeetleB
> They have the capability, but they just don't want to do it because they don't feel like it.
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?
ExoticPearTree
Well, the US has a law called the Defense Production Act which, when invoked, compels companies to produce whatever Uncle Sam wants.
I am not saying it should be able, it already is.
Arodex
>because they don't feel like it
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.
ExoticPearTree
> Your argument would be more reasonable if you didn't handwave genuine and difficult moral and ethical decisions under those dismissive terms.
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.
Arodex
A judge reviewed the case for weeks, has training and experience in the law, had access to all relevant documents from both parties; the latter got the opportunity to argue their point at length, and the judge who knows the case better than you decided both the government and you are wrong.
Maybe things are a little more complicated than your simple rules.
manlymuppet
As much as I dislike this administration's actions, why? Doesn't the Department of Defense get discretion to contract for whatever reasons it likes, as long as they think it serves public interests?
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).
Plasmoid
The core issue is that it went beyond just not picking a vendor. They labeled anthropic as a supply chain risk. This banned the use of their software for the whole government (and contractors IIRC).
NCFZ
I’m not a lawyer either but I think the introduction section of the ruling seems to address your questions in a somewhat accessible manner. Specifically the last two paragraphs of the intro section.
The short answer is that there's Federal law on how contracts are awarded and the criteria used to exclude vendors.
For other things that have gone to court see DoD JEDI and the NASA HLS.
lettergram
Judges at this level often do things like this, and given it was brought in California likely the next level would also block the administration. That said, the Supreme Court has been pretty clear that the executive branch has broad and the only authority to designate supply chain risk. That said, they do need to justify it, not sure they did it well enough here, but this is far from an impartial judge.
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.
ImPostingOnHN
The trump administration has a long track record of doing illegal things that were struck down in countless courts across the country, so the more likely scenario is that this is yet another mark on that record. This isn't even the first one this week.
As for your legal arguments, it doesn't seem like they are currently correct, but I guess things can always change.
sailfast
This is good, generally, for government overstepping especially in the case of targeted domestic restrictions (and what amounts to anti-competitive blackmail in my opinion)
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.
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.
You and I get an email box often full to communicate with officials over
Rich people call and text them
Voters' and citizens' (and some judges') willingness to support sociopathic behavior by leaders is a profound failing at their basic social duties, and is deeply shameful.
Not to be too contrarian, but I'm certain there are many people who would claim that's the only way it has ever worked (poorly)
As a concept, it's used as an escape hatch whenever it wants to avoid public scrutiny.
I'm not sure if it's still going on, but a few years ago the same crowd kept insisting that "silence is violence" which is even more ludicrous - if you're not parroting their critical race theory talking points at every opportunity, YOU are committing an act of violence.
What fascinating about these is that they eventually turn on themselves, because rhetoric has no logical foundation and can be twisted to mean anything.
I’m not American, so I’m not used to this kind of thing at all, which makes it even stranger for me to watch one group roleplaying as deeply religious while at the same time embodying arrogance, greed, and a lust for power, while on the other side you have people fighting for equality so hard that it eventually turns into plain old racism, sexism, and mental gymnastics, with definitions of words and concepts being constantly changed just to make them fit into an already flimsy theory meant to explain why the patriarchy or some similar nonsense is supposedly to blame for everything.
I’m genuinely curious to see how the conflict between these two groups develops from here. It just keeps getting more and more absurd.
No, obviously not. That would have been pointless; the US was at war anyway. The US is always at war.
There's 2.8M trans people in the US. Compared to the Axis powers who mobilized 25-30M personnel, each trans person has the equivalent strength of 9-10 Axis soldiers. Impressive.
[1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/its-...
Separating the legislature and the executive has no useful purpose: if the president is going to defacto enact law should be handled by the legislature, then there's no reason they shouldn't just be the head of the legislature and forced to actually whip the votes to do so.
Since modern government seems to require a large bureaucratic apparatus to function, I think it should be its own branch with no single head - or put another way, all bodies established by the legislature should be independent from each other, the executive, and the legislature. This way, all power the legislature grants to a body doesn't acrue to the presidency, and the collective powers of these bodies don't acrue to a single person or group. The president would still have a suite of powers, but they wouldn't automatically expand - the president would only have whatever control over these bodies the legislature chooses to grant. Of course, if the legislature wants to exercise any power over these bodies once they've established them, they would have to do so through the usual legislative process, and it would still be subject to presidential veto.
The Federalists were extremely familiar with the way monarchies functioned, spent a lot of time thinking about government strucutre, and the US presidency was quite explicitly set up to be something else.
If the leaders of all of our institutions decide to shrug when the president treats national powers as a tool for organized crime, and voters don't do anything about it, that's a people problem, not a problem of institutional structure. Any institution is only as powerful as our collective willingness to support and protect it.
They used Shays' Rebellion as a pretext to push for constitutional reform.
The constitution is explicitly written to prevent change. It's why change is so hard to implement and requires actual courage (see America's second founding).
One of the first official acts George Washington did was sign the fugitive slave act then tried to deputize his nephew in the treasury department to kidnap a free woman who was his former slave, Ona Judge, because Washington didn't want to argue in a public court why she was his property. Great video on the topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhxivf0gmj8
Many of the founders were rotten ghouls (Alexander Hamilton's favorite form of government was a monarchy), you need to read what they exactly think because they designed a government where about less than 2% of the US population could vote and design a system where the only house that commoner's could be elected into would be the weakest. They openly wrote about all of this too, it's not anything new.
When they wrote about freedom they weren't talking about 95% of society, they were talking about a very specific type of people that excluded many.
The rot has always been there, it's why there is an allure of truth when conservatives say they just want to return to the founding. Look at what the founding actually entails, there is nothing unamerican about white national colonialism. That's why we mustn't look to the past to build a better future.
Want to execute a citizen without trial? National security.
Want to execute his child without trial? National security.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awla...
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/08/trump-intervene...
" The word quarantine comes from quarantena or quarantaine, meaning "forty days", used in the Venetian language in the 14th and 15th centuries and also in France. The word is designated in the period during which all ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine
> 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".
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.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_docket
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.
(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.)
The first Trump admin filed 41.
Biden filed 19.
The second Trump admin filed 32 in 2025 alone.
I can also editorialize.
In my view, Trump is leveraging the shadow docket to get decisions over turned by members of his own party who don't need to provide detailed (or any) explanations as to why or information about who voted for what.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
What you are saying is false.
You don't have the full picture.
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.
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.
I'm sure they got MORE government contracts because of it by turning themselves into headline news for weeks.
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.
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.
"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?).
They moved where it appeared in the document. That’s not removing it.
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.
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)
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.
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-...
If there's a difference, I haven't heard a good explanation of it.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not to mention, Canada being largely a service and resource extraction economy doesn't even really compete much with China.
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...
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.
[1] - https://data.bls.gov/PDQWeb/le
We're discussing forced child labor, and you conclude "they live well".
Cost is a different aspect entirely. A one-dollar scoop of ice cream and a $100 scoop are both good.
Hypocrisy is never a good look.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Can it be at all lawful to retaliate though?
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.
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.
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.
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!!
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Only 49.8% voted for Trump in the 2024 US election.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzwRflcLPAA&t=2479s
Super interesting pov from the person who recommended the supply risk designation.
Great for fleecing those end-payers, however.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone
https://archive.ph/BfuVs
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.
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.
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.
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.
depends what the definition ...
And they'll continue to do so, because it takes months to unwind this shit, and the damage was done immediately.
This is extremely broad, and not unreasonable to summarize as the president being able to do whatever they want without fear of criminal/civil consequences.
Suggesting that everyone should read the 120 page, highly technical decision and come to their own conclusions is not helpful.
Separation of powers of the various branches of government is very bipartisan. The supreme court opinion largely re-emphasizes how this operates in practice within this particular scenario, because they had never had to detail it out before.
President Trump is the most attacked US president in American history. Full stop. There has never been a president in history that faced more litigation, libel, defamation, disinformation or assassination attempts. This is simply the first time the question had to be asked how the constitution applies in these scenarios.
These rules would have applied to previous presidents as well, so even though people like to say all new rules are being created just for Trump, it really is very much just an expression of the already understood constitution.
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...
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.
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.
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.
https://grokipedia.com/page/Rita_F._Lin
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
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 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.
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.
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.