News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Anthropic Drops Flagship Safety Pledge by peyton on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @04:06AM (#47149160)
I don’t get it. Even the Soviet Union used money. Simply paying for stuff isn’t necessarily capitalism? Or are you suggesting Anthropic should be state-owned?
Re:Anthropic Drops Flagship Safety Pledge by jon-wood on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @04:48AM (#47149478)
No, capitalism is prioritising profit over all other priorities, as we see happening here.
Re:Anthropic Drops Flagship Safety Pledge by throwaway290 on Thursday February 26, 2026 @11:21PM (#47176468)
That's not capitalism. It's extreme capitalism or some other specific philosophy

Because otherwise there is no word for regular capitalism that's based on money and property but with other values too.

Re:Anthropic Drops Flagship Safety Pledge by wongarsu on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @05:41AM (#47149860)
Using money as a medium to facilitate exchange of goods and services is not capitalism. Abandoning one of your core principles in the pursuit of money, or more charitably because not doing so means your competitors will make more money and overtake you in the marketplace is an outgrowth of capitalism

In the Soviet Union the reasons might have been "to beat the Capitalists", "for the pride of our country" or "Stalin asked us to and saying no means we get sent to Siberia". Though a variant of the last one may well have happened here, and the justification we read is just the one less damaging to everyone involved

Re:Anthropic Drops Flagship Safety Pledge by gibsonsmog on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @06:55AM (#47150357)
>Though a variant of the last one may well have happened here, and the justification we read is just the one less damaging to everyone involved

Hegseth was planning on getting the model via the Defense Production Act or killing Anthropic via supply chain risk classification preventing any other company working with the Pentagon from working with Anthropic. So while it wasn't Siberia, it was about as close as the US can get without declaring Claude a terrorist. Which I'm sure is on the table regardless

Re:Anthropic Drops Flagship Safety Pledge by addandsubtract on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @08:46AM (#47151377)
And you know Claude will be on the hook for any bad "decision" the military makes. So this will end poorly for them, anyway.
Re:Anthropic Drops Flagship Safety Pledge by notanastronaut on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @10:42AM (#47153050)
This. Anthropic didn't really have a choice, at that point, short of killing its company and closing its doors ahead of time.

"Pentagon officials said the Defense Department is planning to keep using Anthropic's tools, regardless of the company's wishes."

NPR - Hegseth threatens to blacklist Anthropic over 'woke AI' concerns

Clearly the threat to go to Grok was just a bluster, which says volumes about what the admin thinks of Grok vs Claude.

Re:Anthropic Drops Flagship Safety Pledge by mcmcmc on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @12:59PM (#47155127)
So this isn’t really capitalism then. Crony capitalism is closer to a planned economy then it is to a free market.