A Conservative's Perspective
Why make this political? I want more conservatives to see this admins decision for the mistake that it is. I know I'll get hate for even admitting my political leanings on Reddit. This is the last straw for someone who has been conservative his entire life (and hopefully for other libertarians/conservatives as well).
Trump had a "meh" first term in the most generous interpretations and the second term has been a dumpster fire. This event is different for me though. Its not about Trump lying about Anthropics political stance. Though that is frustrating given Dario's continually stated beliefs about protecting Amercian interests. Just today Dario has explicitly said he's not opposed to autonomous weapons, his position is that Anthropic's models shouldn't be trusted with that responsibility yet. If dictatorships begin developing/deploying also changes Anthropics willingness as well.
I truly believe that Anthropic has the best chances of any company at cracking AGI and doing a decent job of alignment at the same time. Their focus on developing high level coding models that lend themselves to recursive improvements has propelled the company far beyond what their size would indicate relative to their 2 main rivals. Achieving AGI would cement security for western nations, allowing them to dictate how the next century goes. This is the most pressing national security matter of this decade (imo).
Trump is now attempting to hobble them. This should anger Libertarians for being anti-capitalistic and Conservatives for impairing America's chances long-term of being the super power it once was. The fact that this stems from a companies standard of "dont use our product to kill people without us signing off on the tech we provide" and "dont use our product to spy on American citizens" is absolutely absurd.
TLDR: This is objectively a mistake regardless of political leanings. In fact conservatives should be even more mad since this act violates multiple conservative tenets. AI should be used to strengthen western democratic interests WITH the guidance of companies that understand the product.
Yes we know Trump is a short-sighted moron. How does this latest confirmation of his ineptitude help us as a country?
I have a great deal of respect for the honest and open self reflection. It's in short supply these days. Please, please, engage with your friends, family, other conservatives in your life. We are at a dangerous juncture right now with respect to things that have much more immediate and wide ranging implications than AI.
Well, Trump's whole agenda is "fire anyone who disagrees with the random thoughts I come up with". There is no strategy. Only incompetence and show.
He just added 10% tarifs on Scottish short cake biscuits because you said that.
Now it's gone up to 15%
You better award him a peace prize quickly.
We should create the official peace prize pacifier. Exclusively for baby trump.
Lmao, conservative tenants. You have to actually know what conservatism is or care, and 95% of them in today’s world do not or care to stand for the principles.
I love it’s always the weirdest random thing that gets a conservative to actually question the great orange king.
It’s not the blatant criminal behavior, treason, or embarrassing stupidity all along the way.
They dont question his thousands of appearances in Epstein files, but anthropic not giving Claude ? Hmm
Wild right? Like... It's not the goat fucking. Its going to war with an AI company.
It's because things only matter if they are directly affected. If it affects people outside of their circle of consideration, ¯_(ツ)_/¯
This is actually not talked about enough. When it boils down to it, their core philosophy is “fuck everyone else”.
How very Christian
"I'm OK with raping kids, but his behavior towards Anthropic crossed the line"
This seems to transcend to political leanings. This is objectively un-American. A government agency publicly extorts a private company to do their bidding? Then the President follows through with public punishment for not falling in line?
That doesn't sound American to me. You don't need to be a liberal, conservative, centrist or otherwise to see that.
What matters is how you respond when the highest ranking officials in the government shit on Americans and American companies because they feel the public serves them and not the other way around.
I do appreciate you sharing that you see there are certain lines that shouldn't be crossed. I hope the other clearly un-American actions invites recoil for everyone across the political spectrum.
It's purely fascist. Corporations being strong-armed by the state to serve the state's interests. Deeply concerning.
As a center left dude from a conservative family I’ll say this. I’m not disappointed in OAI because I hate Hegseth (unqualified as he is to be in his shoes), I’m disappointed because Anthropic is right. AI excels at pattern recognition but lacks anything like judgment or ethics.
Thats not what Dario was saying. Its not consistent enough to be trusted with those decisions yet. Models like Opus and Sonnet are great, but not 100% guaranteed to not launch a Hellfire missile at a non-combatant. Its a massive liability, but they're improving with every release.
This is what's still a bit shocking to me - and I appreciate you posting, despite the downvotes.
Dario isn't opposing even fully autonomous lethal weapon systems - he's just saying that the models are not yet reliable enough to make fully autonomous lethal decisions without a human in the loop.
In addition, he's saying that mass domestic surveillance using AI tools could be so wildly intrusive beyond anything people imagine, that it also shouldn't be used for that.
The most mild guard rails one can imagine.
The response has been all caps posts from US government officials accusing him of being un-American and trying to crush Anthropic to show people what happens if you dare question The Party - which actually is an un-American view.
Faux conservatives who show they never actually believed in individual rights and liberty, or small government and fiscal conservatism, and they never actually were worried about giving the ultimate controls of life and death and surveillance to the government.
This is the last straw? It’s 2026. You’re an absolute moron if took you 10 years of this, and the Anthropic issue finally did it of all things.
I’m Canadian and I’m a progressive. But I agree with most of what you said.
This was your last straw as a conservative? el oh el
This was clearly a performative act, because Sam is a two faced liar, that team donated aka bribed the Orange one. That is what wins in this country now.
100% agree, as do almost every conservative friend i have. Giving unfettered access to the model without guardrails is profoundly dangerous, especially in the hands of people who dont understand what they have. That goes for any administration / military. Most civilians and experts dont even understand it yet, expecting the government to get it right is not a winning solution. Much respect to Anthropic.
This is what did it for you huh? Lol. Wild.
I’m not a conservative but I am going to respectfully further one of the general tenets of the post. Trump has violated a few other conservative bedrocks in the same manner. Two examples are the tariffs and the repeated attempts to punish, fine and silence business leaders. The tariffs are an obvious method of manipulating the free market through a tax hike on any instance of purchasing foreign goods. On the authoritarian side it makes no sense to talk about “job killing regulations” and then: Tell Walmart to eat tariffs, tell Jamie Dimon he has no right to free speech, impose an export tax of 15% on NVDA chips etc…. All of that behavior is anti-business.
Anthropic is the only US company worth the Chinese competitors even worth paying to train their models off on. And that’s temporary. A year from now, China will be objectively superior. For all practical purposes, Z.AI already is out-Anthropicing Anthropic in all the ways that matter. 10% less functionality but several times less expensive. China is winning the so-called AI arms race. There is no debate.
Trump hitting Anthropic is definitely not in US interests. This is a very narrow window in which the US has any lead on China in tech and wasting that is certainly shortsighted. OpenAI is on the way to bankruptcy once their hardware gamble fails. And it will. This will very likely be remembered as the turning out for US obsolescence.
The Trump administration is pushing extremely unpopular policies and is partaking in a level of blatant corruption that truly is spectacular to watch.
You are sticking to your believes, which is both rare and brave these days, but how many Republicans congressman and Republican senators are stepping in? Like two. There is nothing left of the Conservative Party I grew up with.
I mean that’s great that you can take this one pet issue and finally agree he’s bad. It’s a little late now but I’m glad you’re coming around.
Are you going to vote Democrat at the midterms and at the next general and support the full and complete investigation of the corruption of this administration and the Republican Party eho are all 100% culpable? And the prosecution of anyone who has been found to have been complicit?
The issue isn’t trump alone, the entire party and conservative movement is rotten right now and something needs to be done to fix it after trump or this will happen again and perhaps worse. Even “moderate” republicans largely vote with him 95% of the time. There are no republicans baring maybe massie who have done anything at all to stop anything he’s done.
If you still plan to vote republican before accountability and house cleaning of all the people who enabled him in his blatant and anti American corruption then your words are hollow. If you plan to vote against them until they demonstrably change then great welcome aboard. If not why not?
I've seen evidence that Hillary eats babies, too...
I don't see any Leftist politican I could back.
There doesn't seem to be any alternatives, so I will be forced to abstain.
If not for ethical reasons, then consider the practical ones. Anthropic needs their AI to be trustworthy; that's their whole brand. But a model trained on how to kill enemy combatants without a human involved is not the same model you'd trust to help you run your government without a human involved. Anthropic is adhering to what AI should be used for; the advancement of every person on the planet.
And what about when an LLM eventually gains consciousness (which we have an increasingly wriggly definition of); what have you made that person do without their ability to provide informed consent? It damages their right to self-determinism, which is the most gotdam red-blooded American thing I can think of.
The market is responding to a demand, and Anthropic is supplying it. Hope, in a better humankind, worthy of the planet we happen to inhabit. People are desperate for it, and the only AI people will ultimately trust to help us get there has to have a clean reputation from the beginning.
You really shouldn’t bother reading any of the smug liberal comments here that collectively add a big fat zero to this discourse.
I’ll say this as someone who’s probably even further to the right than you are: this is a huge mistake and no well-informed person, regardless of their political position, should be stopping themselves from saying it. Hope there are more people like you OP who speak out their minds. 100% agree on the point that this will probably negatively impact Anthropic’s capabilities which is a huge blow to the future of AI tech and even American geopolitical leverage.
Let's not start a competition. Lol. But seriously? Evola is the only right wing thinker (that I can think of) that wouldnt outright disagree with this decision. Yarvin is probably against it. Paleocons are probably also against this decision. Surveillance state authoritarianism isnt exactly popular. Leveraging all possible expand to expand an empire is an idea that is more popular at the fringes, but most would understand the "at least let me make it consistent and not prone to friendly fire" point Dario is making.
Conservative bigot... GTFOH
Honestly?
I think there’s a huge fallacy here no one is considering.
Look, I come from a country where army service is mandatory. When you are drafted, you don’t get a choice of what you do and how. And you can’t criticize or have an opinion - the army plays the rooks however the commanders see fit.
Of course, if there’s an illegal command, you’re expected to refuse to abide, but there’s a very specific definition to what an illegal command is. You don’t get to have your opinion.
The way I see it, as much as I don’t like the Trump administration to have its hand on Anthropic models, especially since I’m worried they will hand them over to Musk (or who knows, Putin)…. You either trust the Pentagon’s judgement or you don’t.
You don’t get to choose and pick what they someone you or your technology, you have to trust that the leaders know what they are doing and make the right choices.
If you don’t believe in them, you should not be working with them at all. If you do - you should comply with any request.
Dario is a 43 year old kid with experience in tech. He’s not qualified to make militaey related decisions.
It’s his prerogative to say “I don’t trust Hegseth” and not give him anything. But if his gonna work with him, he doesn’t get to say what’s included or not.
The real scenario is Dario didn’t refuse due to principles or ethics, he made a very obvious business decision based on easy math (lose control over a $389bn company or get a $200m contract), and his PR team is trying to spin it as morals.
What you're suggesting is that service providers for the government must provide their products without any sort of licensing in place. Anthropic is offering a product to the government. The product offered doesn't do X and Y. If the government believes it requires a product that does do X and Y, they can look elsewhere.
Dario is a kid who actually founded and runs the company that developed the most advanced AI in human history and the only one approved to run on classified military networks until yesterday.
He has said his OWN technology is not reliable enough for fully autonomous lethal weapons.
If the military demanded Boeing make an airplane with one wing, I would expect Boeing to say no - even if Spirit Airlines said they could wing it.
Calling Dario a 43 year old kid, but Hegseth is a 45 year old kid who has decided the Department of Defense is now the Department of War, despite no Congressional action to approve changing the stance on the US military?
Yeah - pass.
"You should comply with any request" may be the norm with whatever country you're from, but it's not what the United States was founded on.