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
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.
I really hate that republicans have capitalized on the good faith inherent in "national security matters" and are just sprinkling that onto literally everything they want to do to bypass all matters of scrutiny.
Need to demolish the white house? Oh national security!
Trans people in the military? NAtioanl security!
Need to make anthropic do exactly what you want them to? Well that sounds like national security to me!
The reflecting pool? Urgent national security measure for the 250th.
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!
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.
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.
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
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?
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).
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 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).
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.
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.
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 !
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.46...
> 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 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.
Need to demolish the white house? Oh national security! Trans people in the military? NAtioanl security! Need to make anthropic do exactly what you want them to? Well that sounds like national security to me!
The reflecting pool? Urgent national security measure for the 250th.
If you have the majority, you can’t even be removed through a vote of no confidence.
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.
Great for fleecing those end-payers, however.
Can't indict the President for unlawful acts during his term. Can't post pictures online about the President. Can't lawfully protest against ICE agents abducting people off the street.
It's in failure mode (intentionally, is my read) because while it might eventually declare "x is not legal" at no point is it discouraging the people who did X (and have now also done y, z, 1, 2, and 3 - all also likely illegal) because there is zero actual accountability at the personal level.
If your house is flooding from a broken pipe... you don't bail. You turn the water off.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
depends what the definition ...
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.
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.
And they'll continue to do so, because it takes months to unwind this shit, and the damage was done immediately.
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
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.