Unfortunately for Anthropic, the Constitution does not require the government to purchase goods or services from a company that has made a public declaration that it will not allow its AI models (specifically Claude) to be used for mass domestic surveillance or to power fully autonomous weapons, if such a declaration goes against the government's contract requirements.
The government, and not the contractor, should have control over the scope of its use of products purchased from a supplier. If a supplier wants to retain such control and restrict functionality, deeming them a supply-chain risk seems appropriate.
Obviously, if the contract requirements themselves are lawful, the government has the power to purchase only those goods and services that meet the requirements, and to not purchase those that do not.
But that's irrelevant, because the "supply chain risk" designation is not needed if the government is merely trying to assure that the good and services in a contract meet the requirement of the contract, it is a separate legal provision with separate purposes that would be superfluous for the purpose described.
If the government is using the "supply chain risk" designation as a backdoor way to rewrite all previously-entered, still-in-force defense contracts to retroactively add new requirements incompatible with the use of Anthropic software given their limitations on the service Anthropic is willing to provide, that also is not what the "supply chain risk" designation exists for, and, even if were to seem facially within the statutory purpose of the authority, would raise 5th Amendment takings issues.
Anthropic provides their product under specific terms, if the government doesn't accept those terms then there's no deal, simple as that. That's how basic contracts work, not sure why you think that has anything to do with a supply chain risk.
But who knows. None of us are at the table, and there’s probably classified stuff anyway, so as an observer it’s tough to take a position based purely on facts.
In an ideal world, it sounds like Anthropic should not accept the military’s terms, and consequently no supplier will accept Anthropic’s terms, and everybody will get what they want.
Given that the Anthropic announcement of their policy update to their AI being used in they way it was already being used happened less than two weeks ago, how could the government have had a right of refusal at the time the contracts were issued (probably years ago)?
