An Open Letter to the Department of War and Congress

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.