“He’s blundered here. He’s trying to set policy for the government on the use of AI through a sales contract.” — Keith Teare on Dario Amodei

There’s only one tech story this week: Dario Amodei’s refusal to let the Department of War use Anthropic’s best technology for what he calls “mass domestic surveillance” and “fully autonomous weapons”. Many in Silicon Valley rallied behind him—at least according to the New York Times. Sam Altman publicly supported Amodei—while cutting his own deal with the administration. Classic Sam. But That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare thinks Anthropic is wrong.

Keith’s argument is simple: vendors don’t set policy. If you want to sell to governments, you can’t then control what they do with your product. That’s not your role. And by trying to dictate government policy, Amodei has managed to alienate the entire US administration and triggered a battle that can only damage his company. I’m much more sympathetic. I admire the political position Amodei is taking against Trump. With Congress neutered, powerful corporations appear one effective way of standing up to an increasingly dictatorial administration.

The debate cuts to something more profound: the power shift between corporations and the state. Oppenheimer couldn’t withhold nuclear tech from the government because they owned it (and him). Amodei can say no because he runs a company worth several hundred billion dollars. Tech companies like Anthropic and Google now speak to the government as almost equals. I think Amodei (rather than, say, Tim Cook) offers a model for ethical corporate leadership in our age of creeping (and creepy) authoritarianism.