Hegseth’s ban of Anthropic’s Claude AI is seriously corrupt

Anthropic wants assurances that its products won’t be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans. This has enraged Trump officials.

As a result, early this month Pete Hegseth banned the use of Claude, not only within his department but also by contractors that do business with his department.

Writes Paul Krugman on substack today, “Think of it as the flip side of crony capitalism: while throwing taxpayer dollars at companies it considers friends — especially because they personally enrich members of the administration or the president’s family — the administration is freezing out companies it considers enemies. If this practice becomes the norm, as it surely will if these people remain in power, it will waste money because the government is denying contracts to vendors who offer the best value but aren’t sufficiently MAGA.”

https://substack.com/home/post/p-190600884