This is probably as a concise summary as you could get from there:
> Defendants have now submitted the administrative record justifying those actions. The record is slim. A four-page memorandum, which post dates two of the three challenged actions, provides the entirety of the government’s rationale. Defendants have now backed away from the thrust of their risk assessment, which relied on Anthropic having backdoor access to its technology once deployed in a national security system. It is now clear that Anthropic undisputedly lacks any such access and that, as Defendants concede, Anthropic’s technology is itself no riskier to the national security than any other “black box” artificial intelligence model
CGMthrowaway · 2026-08-28 13:14:33 UTC
Military suppliers are innocent until proven guilty! Can't see how that could go wrong...
londons_explore · 2026-08-28 12:28:53 UTC
Presumably this is going to lead to anthropic getting a big payday from the US gov for all the time their flagship product was banned and all the users they lost due to it
ReptileMan · 2026-08-28 12:41:57 UTC
The case is not about that though
harimau777 · 2026-08-28 13:23:11 UTC
I thought that the blacklisting was what led to them losing the business? Didn't the blacklisting effectively mean that contractors couldn't use Anthropic because it was supposedly a supply chain risk?
peri-cl · 2026-08-28 13:09:42 UTC
This is about the DoD supply chain risk designation—*not* the export controls.
dgellow · 2026-08-28 13:30:57 UTC
The government would just not pay, similar to what trump tried with his rape verdict
whalesalad · 2026-08-28 12:32:46 UTC
Unlawful means absolutely nothing these days.
noir_lord · 2026-08-28 12:35:41 UTC
It's the Gish gallop applied to a legal/legislative system - it just can't keep up with the sheer volume of cases that would need to be brought to curtail even the worst of it and that's assuming that if/when it eventually gets in front of the supreme court that that "august" body actually does curtail it.
horsawlarway · 2026-08-28 12:57:50 UTC
Yes - because the system is trying to prevent the flood by piling up sticks instead of removing the source of water.
It's in failure mode (intentionally, is my read) because while it might eventually declare "x is not legal" at no point is it discouraging the people who did X (and have now also done y, z, 1, 2, and 3 - all also likely illegal) because there is zero actual accountability at the personal level.
If your house is flooding from a broken pipe... you don't bail. You turn the water off.
estearum · 2026-08-28 13:19:24 UTC
The problem is that courts are getting flooded but it's up to Congress (de facto the Republican party) to remove the source of water.
But they're a mixture of exclusively cultists or cowards so they won't do it.
They need to be charged with any and every crime they can credibly be accused of so this calculus changes in the future.
Tangurena2 · 2026-08-28 13:32:44 UTC
Steve Bannon, who advised the 45 administration, called that tactic "flood the zone with shit".
Right, like the student debt forgiveness. We hate the ones we disagree with and we love the ones we agree with.
watwut · 2026-08-28 13:09:49 UTC
I dont know what you mean there. There is literally no symmetry between the two. Not in the case of how Biden administration reacted to cases they lost. And also not in the supreme court treatment - it ideological and political goals are pretty clear at this point, although not always pro-Trump.
kevin_thibedeau · 2026-08-28 13:25:23 UTC
Debt forgiveness was dumb too. It normalized capricious government handouts for volitional actions. After the Corinthian shutdown there was little excuse for taking on massive debt for BS degrees.
derektank · 2026-08-28 12:51:49 UTC
I don’t know, the $166B in refunds returned to importers after the IEEPA tariffs were ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court seem pretty meaningful
lazide · 2026-08-28 13:04:29 UTC
Not for stopping damage to the end-payers of those fees.
Great for fleecing those end-payers, however.
embedding-shape · 2026-08-28 13:04:40 UTC
Meaningful for who though, the common person in the country?
harimau777 · 2026-08-28 13:06:03 UTC
Ya, but that's only going to the corporations. I doubt they are going to send the rest of us a check.
j4yav · 2026-08-28 13:17:39 UTC
Meaningful as a mega transfer of tax revenue from citizens to corporations, which for all we know was the whole point.
Tangurena2 · 2026-08-28 13:28:33 UTC
Congress is supposed to hold the Executive branch accountable. They deliberately refuse to do so because keeping their cult in power is all that matters to them.
small_model · 2026-08-28 12:49:00 UTC
"When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."
blitzar · 2026-08-28 12:54:49 UTC
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is"
idiotsecant · 2026-08-28 13:06:58 UTC
It did what it was supposed to - punish an entity that dared not do what the government told them to. It doesn't matter if anthropic gets a payday out of it, the administration doesn't get hurt by that and won't learn any lessons. We need to hold individual politicians and functionaries accountable
micromacrofoot · 2026-08-28 13:08:14 UTC
Add it to the "but no one's going to do anything about it" pile
dude250711 · 2026-08-28 13:30:37 UTC
I think Anthropic will tone down the hype in their PR. So there is hope.
digitaltrees · 2026-08-28 13:12:17 UTC
When this administration is done we need to amend the constitution to hold politicians legally and financially responsible for intentionally lying and intentionally breaking the law. This was obviously illegal on its face and yet there is no consequence to pushing the norms.
j4yav · 2026-08-28 13:14:27 UTC
Presumably taxpayers will pay for it one way or the other.
digitaltrees · 2026-08-28 13:16:37 UTC
I think they get a personal financial penalty with no insurance coverage. This has to stop.
estearum · 2026-08-28 13:18:08 UTC
I don't think that'd require a Constitutional amendment, would it?
datsci_est_2015 · 2026-08-28 13:30:13 UTC
Literally the purpose of the House of Representatives, if I understand correctly.
So it requires a critical mass of very local reps to care about executive accountability. Which is exactly why Project 2025 / Trumpism plays the endorsement game so heavily. Fealty.
bell-cot · 2026-08-28 13:20:40 UTC
Could you tell us why the politicians - who are the only ones who have the power to amend the Constitution - would be interested in doing that?
zaphar · 2026-08-28 13:21:16 UTC
This is impossible until a critical mass of voters across every state starts putting competence and integrity ahead of their pet issue and populism. If you actually want to start making headway in this direction you have to stop voting for candidates in either of the main parties. The parties are probably not salvageable. Find a third party candidate with these qualities and vote for them and convince as many people as you can to vote for them.
If we can't do that then we are just stuck as a body politic.
techneek · 2026-08-28 13:18:03 UTC
"The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics."
josefritzishere · 2026-08-28 13:24:54 UTC
Lots of that going around in this administration
SimonWAds · 2026-08-28 13:28:46 UTC
Nobody ever believed Anthropic is doing anything interesting.
Giant waste of marketing with “Dario” and everything else. Nobody believes it.
Because nobody uses their shit. They have no customers.
dzonga · 2026-08-28 13:29:50 UTC
criminals in charge did unlawful shit. what a surprise.
nekusar · 2026-08-28 13:33:12 UTC
And NOT a damned thing will be done to punish the administration for these obvious illegal actions.
And they'll continue to do so, because it takes months to unwind this shit, and the damage was done immediately.
Comments
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.46...
> Defendants have now submitted the administrative record justifying those actions. The record is slim. A four-page memorandum, which post dates two of the three challenged actions, provides the entirety of the government’s rationale. Defendants have now backed away from the thrust of their risk assessment, which relied on Anthropic having backdoor access to its technology once deployed in a national security system. It is now clear that Anthropic undisputedly lacks any such access and that, as Defendants concede, Anthropic’s technology is itself no riskier to the national security than any other “black box” artificial intelligence model
It's in failure mode (intentionally, is my read) because while it might eventually declare "x is not legal" at no point is it discouraging the people who did X (and have now also done y, z, 1, 2, and 3 - all also likely illegal) because there is zero actual accountability at the personal level.
If your house is flooding from a broken pipe... you don't bail. You turn the water off.
But they're a mixture of exclusively cultists or cowards so they won't do it.
They need to be charged with any and every crime they can credibly be accused of so this calculus changes in the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone
https://archive.ph/BfuVs
Great for fleecing those end-payers, however.
So it requires a critical mass of very local reps to care about executive accountability. Which is exactly why Project 2025 / Trumpism plays the endorsement game so heavily. Fealty.
If we can't do that then we are just stuck as a body politic.
Giant waste of marketing with “Dario” and everything else. Nobody believes it.
Because nobody uses their shit. They have no customers.
And they'll continue to do so, because it takes months to unwind this shit, and the damage was done immediately.