Rob Wiblin

But there's no rule that says you're only allowed to evaluate the process, never the outcome that the process would actually produce in real life.

Noticing the tension between these two things and weighing them against one another isn't hypocritical.

It's clear thinking.

The second line of criticism is that Anthropic was naive or foolish to resist the government's demands in this case.

The most influential version of this line of argument comes from Ben Thompson at the blog Stratechery.

Thompson's reasoning runs roughly like this.

Dario Amadei, the CEO of Anthropic, he's very publicly compared advances in AI to nuclear weapons.

Well, if AI really is that powerful, then any company building it is constructing a power base that could rival the US military.

Realistically, no government is going to tolerate that.

And Thompson also observes that international law is ultimately a function of power.

That might still makes right.

And he applies that same logic domestically, reaching a stark conclusion.

Anthropic either had to accept a fully subservient position relative to the US government, or the US government would invariably try to destroy it.

I'll evaluate the two underlying arguments in turn.

That the government's actions here are so natural, it's absurd and counterproductive to object to them.

And secondly, that the government was motivated by fears of a private company threatening their sovereignty.

First up, Thompson's piece opens with a long passage, arguing that international law is essentially fake, that power dynamics determine behaviour at the international level.

He then applies that same realist framework to Anthropic.

The company is fundamentally misaligned with reality for resisting demands from the executive branch, which is, after all, so, so much more powerful than it as a private company.

As a prediction of how powerful actors tend to behave, that may be correct, at least to a large extent.