An Open Letter to the Department of War and Congress

Gordon Seidoh Worley

There's an open letter opposing the DoW's assignment of Anthropic as a supply chain risk. It needs more signatures before it gets sent. If you're a tech founder, engineer, or investor and you agree with the letter, then your signature would help bolster its message. Your signature would be especially impactful if you work at a non-Anthropic SOTA AI lab.

You can sign the letter here: https://app.dowletter.org/

Full text follows:

We write as founders, engineers, investors, and executives in the American technology industry. We strongly believe the federal government should not retaliate against a private company for declining to accept changes to a contract.
When two parties cannot agree on terms, the normal course is to part ways and work with a competitor. Instead, the Department of War has designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk” (a label normally reserved for foreign adversaries), stating that “no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.”
This situation sets a dangerous precedent. Punishing an American company for declining to accept changes to a contract sends a clear message to every technology company in America: accept whatever terms the government demands, or face retaliation. The United States is winning the AI competition because of its commitment to free enterprise and the rule of law; undermining that commitment to punish one company is short-sighted and antithetical to our national security interests.
We urge the Department of War to withdraw its supply chain risk designation and resolve this dispute through normal commercial channels. Further, we urge Congress to examine whether the use of these extraordinary authorities against an American technology company is appropriate.

Note: I'm not affiliated with this letter in any way other than having signed it and think others might also want to sign it and that if they did so it might have some marginal benefit.

This situation sets a dangerous precedent. Punishing an American company for declining to accept changes to a contract sends a clear message to every technology company in America: accept whatever terms the government demands, or face retaliation.

I predict that the response of the current regime to this will be to trumpet on Truth Social, "Yes! That's exactly what we're saying!"

[Imagine Trump's head in place of the Chad YES guy.]

Yes, and you these things explicitly stated in public in order to create hard-to-deny common knowledge of them.

>Yes, and you [need] these things explicitly stated in public in order to create hard-to-deny common knowledge of them.

You will not dissuade anyone in the regime of doing what they are doing by publicising what they are doing. They are already publicising what they are doing. Trump words are clear enough: "The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War".

I'm somewhat less cynical on open letters than it sounds like you are, Richard.

Do I expect this letter to, by itself, get anyone at the DoW to change course? No.

But I do think it has a chance at being one more bit of evidence that sways congressional leaders, much as protests and calling them directly do. They're responsive to voter demands because that's how they stay in office, and if often takes many times hearing the same message because someone, including congress people, to take something seriously.

That's true. I still stand by my comment for other, related reasons. They are not the only people that can be influenced.