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Comment by nickysielicki | Hacker News Reader

Nobody is saying that Anthropic has to shut down. They’re just saying that nobody taking government money can pay Anthropic for their service as a part of that contract. Anthropic still has the right to exist on their own terms, but their business model is based on rapidly-increasing enterprise subscriptions, which included public sector spending.

If Anthropic can survive on open source contributors shelling out $200/mo and private sector companies doing the same, the government wishes them well. But surely you agree the government has a right to determine how its budget is appropriated?

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Well it depends. Being that the federal government constitutes 20% of the US economy, telling federal agencies you cannot contract with someone because they are adversarial to the USA is indeed pretty severe. When in reality they are not adversarial. We have no choice but to pay taxes and make the federal government 20 percent of our economy. There is no single company or any other entity that is close. And extending it to everyone who has a government contract probably makes it the majority of the economy. So it is not at all equivalent to a private company making a choice

> When in reality they are not adversarial.

This is obviously subjective, and the only subject that matters in this case is the leadership at the DoD.

> We have no choice but to pay taxes and make the federal government 20 percent of our economy. There is no single company or any other entity that is close. And extending it to everyone who has a government contract probably makes it the majority of the economy.

I, too, hate big government and the all-powerful executive branch. Welcome to my tent. Let’s invent a time machine together so we can elect Ron Paul in 2008 and nip this in the bud.

Until then, this is what we’re stuck with.

> But surely you agree the government has a right to determine how its budget is appropriated

I think the government doesn't have rights, it is my elected representative. And I do not agree with it trying to punish a company for not agreeing to contract terms.

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