Ben Thompson’s article at Stratechery starts with a power politics view of international law. It doesn’t really exist, he says, because no one can enforce it. Might makes right. The U.S. bombed Iran and that settled the debate. That’s how power works in the world. Always has.

From there, Thompson pivots to Anthropic, which recently refused demands from the Department of War to lift restrictions in the model’s terms of use. Dario Amodei, CEO at Anthropic, said the company would not support mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. The DOD responded by threatening to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk, which is a label reserved for foreign adversaries.

Thompson’s analysis here is blunt. Amodei has publicly compared advanced AI chips to nuclear weapons. So Thompson takes him at his word and extends the logic to its natural conclusion. If AI is truly that powerful, which remains to be seen at present, then a private company that controls it and seeks independence from the military will run directly into the U.S. government. In other words, this isn’t just a vendor dispute. It’s a national security issue. Anthropic doesn’t take that view, obviously. The problem is that the U.S. government has the guns.

The conclusion Thompson comes to is binary. Either Anthropic accepts a subordinate role to elected government authorities, or the U.S. government will eventually destroy or remove it, which they’ve done before throughout history. Thompson isn’t supporting that outcome, of course. But although he seems to lean to Anthropic’s side of the debate on domestic surveillance his analysis is comprehensive and more than fair. He also argues that Anthropic’s insistence on controlling military decisions is itself fundamentally misaligned with how power operates in the world. He reminds us of this reality right up top in his piece with a quote from Pericles: “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” He’s correct with that bit.

Here’s Ben Thompson’s original article on Anthropic:
Anthropic and Alignment

Here’s Ben Thompson on the A16z Podcast talking about his article:
Ben Thompson: Anthropic, the Pentagon, and the Limits of Private Power

Here’s much more on the issue from the All In Podcast but from the perspective of the Department of War, which is substantially different:
Pentagon vs Anthropic: Why Anthropic was labeled a supply-chain risk