The Department of War has stated they will only contract with AI companies who accede to “any lawful use” and remove safeguards in the cases mentioned above. They have threatened to remove us from their systems if we maintain these safeguards; they have also threatened to designate us a “supply chain risk”—a label reserved for US adversaries, never before applied to an American company—and to invoke the Defense Production Act to force the safeguards’ removal. These latter two threats are inherently contradictory: one labels us a security risk; the other labels Claude as essential to national security.
Regardless, these threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.
It is the Department’s prerogative to select contractors most aligned with their vision. But given the substantial value that Anthropic’s technology provides to our armed forces, we hope they reconsider. Our strong preference is to continue to serve the Department and our warfighters—with our two requested safeguards in place. Should the Department choose to offboard Anthropic, we will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider, avoiding any disruption to ongoing military planning, operations, or other critical missions. Our models will be available on the expansive terms we have proposed for as long as required.
Crossing off mass surveillance and automated killing isn’t everything they could have taken a moral stand on. Personally I don’t think any list will be long enough for the Pentagon, and if it were, there wouldn’t be anything left that could be worked on.
But I keep hearing you say that no mass surveillance and no automated killings is so very little - almost nothing. That doesn’t seem right to me. I think those are both pretty big things. TBH I don’t know exactly how to feel about it all but I’m not horrified that their moral stance would include only that.
That’s a fair stance to take and I definitely do not mean to try to have you change your opinion. I also do not know if you are an American, and I don’t want to assume either way.
But, to better explain my own position, I need to point out:
Anthropic is not saying “no mass surveillance”, they are saying “no mass surveillance of Americans”. If you judge this stance based on effect, it literally makes no difference at all if you are not a US citizen, you are targeted either way. If you judge it based on principles, it can be argued it is even less moral than accepting mass surveillance of everyone - not only are they claiming that billions of innocent people deserve to lose their right to privacy, but they are specifically carving out an exception for themselves based on nationality.
They are also not saying “no automated killings”, but “no automated killings at this time because we haven’t ironed out the kinks yet”. This can be framed as a moral stance relating to safety concerns, so I will assume in good faith that this is their reasoning rather than fear of bad publicity. However, I would argue that it is still an insignificant difference, as the threat posed to humanity by a powerful warmongering state commanding an army of fully autonomous killing machines is already too great. Making sure the technology is ready could mean working on avoiding a Terminator scenario, but without a doubt it will also mean ensuring that the murderbots WILL obey an order to bomb striking workers or displaced refugees so long as the right Executive Order was signed first, something that a human being in the loop might have prevented.
These two red lines seem to make a world of moral difference for someone who already takes it for granted that the USA and its military are overall institutions deserving of trust and support, perhaps with the small exception of the current Secretary of War who may have jumped the gun a bit during negotiations over a new technology. At the very least, that seems to be the position of the author of this letter. But no state should ever be given that amount of trust and support. And particularly given the USA’s belligerence over the years and its current slide towards outright fascism, I am horrified that the bar is this low.