Anthropic doesn't trust the Pentagon, and neither should you

Hogging seats on a crowded train, not saying excuse me, watching videos on your phone with no headphones in. Sometimes it feels like we don't know how to act anymore. What we have been seeing, increasingly, is people breaking rules. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? This week on Explain It to Me, how to mind your manners.

New episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil I Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today we're going to talk about the messy, fast-moving situation at Anthropic, the maker of Claude that now finds itself in a very ugly legal battle with the Pentagon. The back and forth is complicated, but as of a few days ago, the Pentagon had deemed Anthropic a supply chain risk, and Anthropic had filed a lawsuit challenging that designation, saying that the government was violating its First and Fifth Amendment rights and, quote,

seeking to destroy the economic value created by one of the world's fastest growing private companies. I can tell you right now, we're going to be talking about the twists and turns of that case here on Dakota and on the verge many, many times in the months to come. But today I want to take a step back and really dig in on one very important part of this situation that hasn't gotten nearly enough attention as things have spiraled out of control. how the United States government does surveillance, the legal authority that allows that surveillance to occur, and why Anthropic was so distrustful of the government saying it would follow the law when it comes to using AI to do even more surveillance. My guest today is Mike Masnick, the founder and CEO of Tector, the excellent and long running tech policy website.

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