https://www.engadget.com/2246131/judge-rules-that-pentagon-anthropic-ban-illegal-and-baseless/
A US federal court has ruled that the Pentagon's designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk was illegal, CNBC reported. US District judge Rita Lin found that the US Department of Defense's restrictions placed on the AI company and its Claude model were "illegal and baseless." As part of the ruling, the judge barred certain federal agencies from enforcing President Trump's order to stop using Anthropic's tools.
"The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," Judge Lin said in a 59-page decision. "Neither the Constitution nor the federal statute invoked by Defendants allows them to impose sweeping penalties based principally on Anthropic's critique of the Administration's views."
"We welcome the court's ruling that this supply chain risk designation was unlawful," an Anthropic spokesperson told CNBC. "We remain focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology."
The dispute arose in late February, after the Department of Defense and its Secretary Pete Hegseth pressured Anthropic to remove certain safeguards from its AI systems. Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei, however, made it clear the company would refuse to allow its model to be used for mass surveillance or the development of autonomous weapons.
Late in February, Trump ordered all US government agencies to stop using Claude and other Anthropic services, escalating the feud. On social media, the president said there would be a six-month phase out period for federal agencies to migrate off of Anthropic's products. Subsequent talks collapsed and Anthropic became the first US company to be designated as a supply chain risk.
After saying it would challenge the decision, Anthropic sued the White House in two federal courts (for two separate designations) to reverse the ban. Today's ruling by Judge Lin gave the company a victory on one of those counts, but Anthropic is still considered a supply chain risk pending the second decision. Even if it wins both cases, though, the Pentagon would not be required to restart its work with the company.
The supply chain designation hasn't slowed Anthropic's march toward a likely near-record IPO later this year. Earlier this month, the company's revenue surged to a record $11.5 billion, 14 times more than it earned in the same quarter last year. Engadget has reached out to Anthropic for additional comment.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 30, @11:54PM (12 children)
When the executive branch gets to decide what's enforced and what is not enforced, then it can never be forced to suffer any penalty for illegal actions.
The US (and others) have relied far too long on lax enforcement to compensate for overzealous legislation and penalties, not to mention a permissive attitude toward selective enforcement...
The fox isn't guarding the henhouse, the hyena-pigs are running the whole show - straight out of Lion King when Scar took over.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31, @12:55AM
Eh, age old story can only inspire the same age old response, "Whaddya gonna do?"
It's all up to us. We can let it continue, or not. However, I do consider the danger of the machines since they serve the worst of us.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday August 31, @02:22AM (10 children)
The thing is, this isn't a new problem:
1. Back in the Andrew Jackson administration, the courts ruled that forcing the Cherokee to migrate at gunpoint was illegal. Jackson did it anyway. There was no penalty for him doing so.
2. We have on several occasions had executive branch officials simply ignoring lawful Congressional subpoenas, completely without consequences because the body responsible for enforcing those subpoenas was the executive branch, often reporting to the very people who had ignored the subpoenas. In theory, Congress could direct the Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest the officials in question, but Congress hasn't tested this response out in over a century.
If we start with Chairman Mao's point that political power flows from the barrel of a gun, and one branch of government has control of the vast majority of the government personnel with guns, guess which branch is really able to run the show when push comes to shove?
I will also add that another glaring problem of the US Constitution is that 40 people (the vice-president, 34 senators, and 5 SCOTUS justices) can keep a president in power and immune from criminal penalties for anything he does even if the entire rest of the country wants him gone and/or punished for his actions. And the president got to pick the vice-president, and may have gotten to pick some of the SCOTUS justices, and the last time the Senate did not have at least 1/3 of their members being from the president's party was in the 1860's. And that's why the impeachment mechanism for removing corrupt or dangerously incompetent presidents has literally never once worked as intended. Say what you will about the flaws of the Westminster system, but parliamentary democracies have a much easier time getting rid of bad leaders.
That's because the political system wants to maintain a difference between how the law works in fact versus how the law works on paper. Is the US, this is largely because the majority of voters have generally wanted a legal system that is officially not bigoted (so they have some deniability about their bigotry) but in practice is extremely bigoted (because a lot of the public is extremely bigoted). And that's how you wind up with a situation where the penalty for one person for 34 counts of fraud is nothing at all, while the penalty for another person being stopped for jaywalking is summary execution and a posthumous character assassination, and a lot of the public and appeals courts cheer on both of those decisions.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 31, @02:43AM (9 children)
The main difference between Andrew Jackson's time and today is: in Andrew Jackson's time most voting citizens were fed very edited / distorted news and views of what was happening "out in the territories" - if they heard anything at all. Today, we get live video feeds from all over the planet, today the voters can - and should - do better, but they appear to be acting much the same - but with much less plausible deniability.
I got a couple of hours face-to-face with my Fox-News marinated mother on her 80th birthday today, she still believes "we're doing alright" and in some perspectives she's not wrong, but some of her basis for that belief seems heavily distorted to me. I take hope in the fact that we do reach similar actionable conclusions from our different information bases - although I haven't really delved into the hypotheticals with her about things like UBI, and she's far too far down her corporate sponsored health insurance for life path to bother discussing things like universal healthcare.
>political power flows from the barrel of a gun
That certainly worked on JFK
>parliamentary democracies have a much easier time getting rid of bad leaders.
Agreed, although even with Maggie Thatcher, I didn't really perceive her so much in-charge but more a figurehead leading a parliment full of like-minded tools, maybe I'm wrong from inexperience and distance, but my perception of those parlimentary "leaders" is that they're heavily neutered by their tenuous grip on power.
The thing I really believe is that since the 1970s or even well before, it has been clear that "one man" decides very little, if anything, in national level politics. The elected figureheads may as well be actors reading their prepared speeches, it's a corporation-like body behind them that decides what they stand for based on market research, raises the funds necessary to propel them into office and keep them there. Our elected congress critters and even President have less personal power than commercial corporate CEOs.
Ultra-obscure movie reference: Hoot (heavily Jimmy Buffet influenced production), had a "Mother Paula" of Mother Paula's Pancake house character who was a simple actor, hired and fired at the whim of the (cartoonishly evil) CEO - but in the correct moment Mother Paula grabbed the microphone and spoke for the company effectively setting policy - those moments may exist for our elected officials, but they're rare, and the figureheads are unlikely to stay "in power" for very long after they start trying to exercise it.
Especially Trump has made it clear (though it has been clear for decades): the people behind the candidates making the decisions have only so much political capital, they can only push so much of their own agendas through before they have to start compromising and deal-making and essentially doing whatever the rest of the groups in power want - if they don't, they get sidelined into irrelevancy. That's how our "leaders" are "peacefully" removed from power before an election cycle ever comes around.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday August 31, @03:15AM (7 children)
All leaders have to have followers to have any real power, but at least in parliamentary systems you can get see the forces behind the leader quickly remove a leader who is dangerously stupid, such as, say, Liz Truss.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 31, @03:44AM (5 children)
Yeah, the U.S. Constitution was sort of Democracy 0.9 - revolutionary, ground breaking, but not quite a production ready release, and the amendment process isn't flexible enough to catch up with more modern versions.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gnuman on Tuesday September 01, @09:57AM (4 children)
No.
US Constitution, as George W. said, is just a piece of paper. Democracy is a state of mind *and* a process, like having secure software, it's a process, not a final state.
This is why Benjamin Franklin in 1787 said "A republic, if you can keep it". The piece of paper will not save your republic. All things fall apart without maintenance and upkeep, including institutions and states. Following "dear leaders" instead of following rules, is exactly how things fall apart very quickly. If you want to improve or at least keep your country, you have to work on it. And sometimes that means more than vote once every few years. Few more years of that type of governance as DJT, and there will be nothing left.
For many people, their apathy of "I leave politics alone" -- but if you do that, politics may just not leave you alone. And there's far more at stake today than in 1787. Ask the participants of the "special military operation" how their apathy helped them.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 01, @02:04PM (3 children)
> Ask the participants of the "special military operation" how their apathy helped them.
In the 1750s, roughly 1/2000 US citizens were casualties of conflicts with the North American native population.
by comparison, the "special military operation" has injured or killed roughly 1/400,000 US citizens.
The news may lead you to believe there is far more at stake today, but the house down our block was the site of a scalping where a nursing mother was left to bleed out with her baby still suckling her breast. It's different times, different scales of peril. Sure, there were no nuclear missiles in 1787, but there were a lot more real tangible not just on TV deaths and serious injuries from knives, bow and arrow, musket, etc.
As for the Constitution, it is indeed just a piece of paper, but it is also a reference point that keeps society on predictable procedures - such as the election coming up in November. It reduces chaos of national government concerns tremendously.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Thursday September 03, @06:54PM (2 children)
I know that Americans are self-centered, but come on! I'm clearly talking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And so far, about 1/100 Russians is injured or dead, or maybe 1/50 men. The Russian apathy in the 2000s and 2010s made this a reality and now they are running to border to escape another round of mobilization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_military_operation [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 03, @07:50PM
Well, yeah, and the U.S. populace last "pushed back" against conscription for Vietnam. Our TACO in chief has floated just about every turd imaginable in press releases, but the one about re-instating the draft went out ever-so-quietly and was dropped faster than virtually all the rest.
13.4% of US service members became casualties during Vietnam, 2.2% died - this, of course, doesn't count the PTSD life ruined casualties like my dad's friends from school... That was about 1/500 of the population - 1/250 men, and when you got down into the service-age bracket those numbers got much more visible, like just about everybody went to school in the same class with somebody who didn't come back... Putin pushing that 5x harder is definitely earning him a mark in history. https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/08/30/cornered-vladimir-putin-plans-to-escalate-his-war [economist.com] https://www.kyivpost.com/post/83426 [kyivpost.com]
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 03, @07:53PM
Oh, and it's no coincidence that the TACO who has "achieved peace" in the Middle East 46 times already during his 2nd term alone, also frames those misadventures as a "Special Military Operation" not requiring the Republicans in Congress to approve funding for a war. Just another way to make the US look bad on the world stage, again. https://migflug.com/afterburner/uss-abraham-lincoln-rusty-carrier-pattaya-thailand-286-days-2026/ [migflug.com]
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Tuesday September 01, @10:05AM
That only works in certain situations. Most people are completely apathetic to the political situation in their countries and even less internationally. Worse, the anti-social media is manufacturing climate of fear where people instinctively fall prey to authoritarian charlatans. "I'm the only solution" and echo chambers has caused more deaths than anything else in human history. Heck, the real problems we are facing are completely ignored now,
1. pollution
2. climate change
3. social cohesion
And now we have idiots starting wars to add to this.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31, @12:48PM
Why is the EU so slow to get rid of shit leaders? What took the UK so long to get rid of Keir Starmer? Both have done incalculable harm to their citizens with immigration policies. At least Joe Biden and his autopen are gone in the US, along with USAID, Southern Poverty Law Center, and soon ActBlue. We actually can change in the US, while the EU remains in lockstep marching toward the cliff.
Sometimes, I envy your parliaments. Most times, I can only laugh at you.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Frosty Piss on Monday August 31, @03:14AM (11 children)
Unfortunately, it doesn't mean the US government under the GRIFTER in Chief will be doing any business with them, and neither will the ass-kissing defense contractors that rely on gorging themselves on the Public Gravy Train.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Monday August 31, @12:42PM (10 children)
The judge explicitly said that it didn't mean the Department of Defense/War had to do business with them, just that it couldn't blackball them. Which is probably the proper decision, even though I strongly support Anthropic's reasons.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2, Troll) by VLM on Monday August 31, @01:56PM (9 children)
Having the judicial branch declare the executive branch can't perform its functions is weird.
I know its entirely being reported as flaming the fans of TDS, but WRT separation of powers its weird to see the judicial branch declare they're the new executive branch and they're giving the orders now.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31, @02:35PM
Judicial branch not very loud when the spying or rights infringing happens to actual citizens. Wins come every few years but trumpo can't even fire his own government departments enacted by previous presidents' executive orders. A stupid ballroom gets an injunction overnight while warrantless wiretapping lasts a veritable lifetime.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31, @03:44PM
You may want a king, most do not
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31, @06:06PM
Well, since the sycophants in the legislature have abdicated, the courts are all we have left for now to defend ourselves. Not that they are really helping, as toothless as they are, but it makes us feel like it's not too late. The real chaos begins in November.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday September 01, @04:02AM (5 children)
Not when those "functions" are breaking the law. For starters, my view is that if the Trump administration can't perform its alleged functions without breaking the law, then it's time to replace them with someone competent who can perform those functions in compliance with the law.
Here, it's quite clear that the determination of being a "supply chain risk" was merely a punitive action against Anthropic rather than good faith enforcement of law - 14th Amendment.
Breaking the law without repercussions would bypass both the Legislative and Judicial branches. That's the real separations of powers problem.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 01, @02:26PM (4 children)
To an extent, the executive branch has been practiced as a bit "above the law, temporarily" - such as the war powers act, the President can order military action, but cannot allocate funding to support a war without the support of Congress.
The recent foolishness has tested boundaries and found them to be ... slow to respond, which is a bit by design, but in 250 years never had been abused to this level before.
Ultimately, it's bad for business - in my corner of reality, Intel has broken its word regarding LTS (long term supply) of certain parts which they promised to make available for 15 years, but in practice they put us on last-time-buy three years ahead of that promised deadline. Replacement parts we might have just dropped in for a 3-5 year extension are mostly out of production as well, so we're facing a potential deep re-design cycle that wasn't supposed to come for 5-10 years here in the next 2-3, and the global regulatory implications of that may take our products off the market for a significant period of time while we apply for permission to market this "major redesign." You can certainly point the finger at the "evil AI empire" sucking up all the chips, but the bigger hurdle we're facing at the moment is 4-6 week delays getting parts that used to arrive overnight, delays mostly due to Tariff mechanisms that didn't exist 2 years ago. "Buy American"? How much more American do you get than Intel? Another corner of our reality uses American display panels which are similarly going End-of-life somewhat earlier than expected. The "overseas" equivalent parts are still avaialble without a redesign, and at 1/5th the cost, but thanks to choosing an American supplier, we're locked in to the premium cost parts and a costly re-design because their smaller selection of options just decided to "improve" our display with a "better" one that needs a different pixel clock. Small change in software, huge headache in process-control paperwork.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 04, @07:10AM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 04, @09:38AM (2 children)
As previously practiced, such as by Jimmy Carter handing off control of his peanut farm, the office of President of the United States was a rather weak institution, all kinds of rules and traditions to respect, standards to uphold, appearances of ethics to keep up.
Whilst attempting to transform that to "the most powerful office on the planet" - in contention with figures like Putin who have taken actions like mobilization of ~1.5 million soldiers (out of a total male/female population of only 144 million) in bloody conflict (estimates run around 1 million wounded + 450,000 dead) - outstripping the Russian Afghanistan death toll by over 30:1 - it takes a lot of wealth extraction to compete with that kind of demonstration of power. In a way, we're following in the footsteps of Russia in Afghanistan, taking huge economic losses for that consolidation of power. I hope China is impressed /s
And, as terrible as all that sounds, remember: the US mobilized over 1.25% of our total population in-theater in Vietnam, but we "only" killed off about 60,000 of our own in that conflict - of the remaining ~2.7 million 150,000 were acknowledged to have sustained serious injury including 75,000 severe disabilities, another 150,000 "less serious" injury, and over the decades since roughly 1/3 deployed have been acknowledged to suffer significant PTSD - the kind of gift that keeps giving back to society not only in lost productivity of the ex-soldier but also in domestic struggles, drug addictions, and other rather ugly follow-on effects. But Vietnam was far from the end for the US - since then another 3.5 million + have been deployed to active combat zones, and that's not even counting those "in harms way" such as the drone pilots who never leave the continental US but still suffer PTSD from their duties.
A significant part of those actions have been "keeping the supply chain safe for Democracy," particularly fuel/oil - it's only fair to take a little back, right? /s
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 04, @01:47PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 04, @04:48PM
The US doesn't discuss politics, it pontificates - back and forth between (ever more appropriately named) red team and blue team - each parroting their echo-chamber trained lines. These are the majority of our voters, and the majority rules. One thing that both sides have successfully implemented (regardless of rhetoric) is decimation of the US education system's budding flower of teaching independent evaluation: thinking for one's self, which started to bloom in the 1960s. 60 years of continued assault and I think they're starting to regain control of the younger generations' ideas of ideals. It's sad for me, my father spent his 40+ year teaching career promoting independent thought - and of course a bit rubbed off on me - was essentially all I knew from birth. And now, he's retired bitter and defeated on that front (but he remarried well, so he has all the toys he ever wanted and more...) As for me, it has been a steady path of continued disillusionment across the decades. I'm pretty sure I don't want Kurzweil's singularity to come and make me immortal, such high probability of that amounting to an eternity of disappointment.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]