GEO blocking is not the same as blocking based on nationality.
I'd like(?) to think someone in this decision chain realized "restricting to US nationals" meant effectively restricting it to all and chose this route knowing Antrophic would need to just pull the model (so engaging in censorship without calling it that, possibly less susceptible to court challenges).
Or hurting Anthropic without calling it that? Knowing that Anthropic has clashed with the current administration in the past (https://www.npr.org/2026/02/24/nx-s1-5725327/pentagon-anthro...), and knowing how vindictive (or willing to favor those who suck up to them) they are, I wouldn't be surprised at all...
I'm less confident in that. To me the way the announcement reads as malicious compliance -- this administration is extremely petty in its dealings, and it's not outside the realm of possibility they asked for and would have accepted an essentially symbolic ban, something that anyone with technical knowledge and a VPN could bypass.
Anthropic would have been able to talk to someone and explain how it wasn't possible to ban just "foreign nationals", and would have pointed out how nonsensical such a request was. The fact that the post does not mention any such discussion, and leaves the nonsensical request as the only stated reason, makes this feel like a power move by Dario, simply complying in the most dramatic and rage-inducing way and announcing it in a way to direct that rage at the USG. (Which is, IMO, a savvy move)
I get your reasoning but I think you're misreading this. The Trump admin has had access to Mythos for a couple months and certainly had access to pre-release Fable for more than a week but they wait until 5:30p on a Friday to send a broad and unworkable demand for a company to remove its flagship products from access to anyone who is not a confirmed U.S. citizen under severe penalties for any violation.
What penalties? Treason is still punishable by death in the U.S. I hate that I just felt compelled to write that as a serious possibility and, pre-Trump 2.0, I would have accused anyone citing that as scaremongering. But times have changed and this administration hates Anthropic vehemently. Anthropic is the only major AI company not "playing ball" with the DoW and donating to Trump's pet projects.
I truly believe if Mythos was an OAI or Google model, there would have been exactly the kind of discussion you imagine and this would have all been worked out. I deeply regret that recent facts make the most likely conclusion that this late-Friday ban was planned for days (if not weeks). And there was no real attempt to work anything out about Mythos, because that's not really what the DoW wants.
The driver behind this is the still unresolved dispute of Anthropic's Acceptable Use Policy regarding autonomous lethal weapons and mass domestic surveillance, which conflicted with the Pentagon's push for unrestricted model deployment ("all lawful uses"). This is the DoW's counter-attack. I fully expect that the DoW is going to hold Anthropic (and Ant's IPO) hostage by blocking any new model until Anthropic gives the DoW full access with no restrictions except "all lawful uses" (and the DoW's position is their in-house lawyers decide what's legal).
>Anthropic would have been able to talk to someone and explain how it wasn't possible to ban just "foreign nationals", and would have pointed out how nonsensical such a request was.
It's not nonsensical if the intention is to destroy Anthropic. There is nothing to explain.
Anthropic has been trying to leverage government intervention and dishonest security bluster for competitive advantage and now the Trump admin is using it as a pretext to destroy them ahead of the IPO.
Good catch. I've walked past that many times, including when actively looking for the entrance, and never saw that sign.
Maybe because it's about 4 stories up, almost straight up from the sidewalk, and at a bit of an angle if you're not coming from the bridge, and above something that says it's just advertising the parking garage to cars. Oh, and looks like blocked from sidewalk by trees, if you're coming from the neighborhood rather than the bridge. So maybe visible to passing cars, but not to the generally car-free people in the neighborhood.
(The first couple times of actively looking for the entrance, I walked past it, before doubling back, and finding the white-on-light-pink signage at street level.)
no fuck that. We should definitely complain about AI written content, and we should ban anyone who wants to keep people ignorant of time wasting bs comments.
As a side note, the AI popularized usage of the word 'clean' to denote proper is physically revolting to me.
I left out what may be the most important word from title - 'passively'. No talking, no phones.
I wonder if listening to any other musical piece while doing nothing would not confer similar benefits.
I wonder what their reasoning is behind banning non-powered bikes? It's got very steep hills, so there's a good chance that bicycles wouldn't be very practical, but seems strange to ban them.
Bikes, even muscular ones, can be annoying to pedestrians on thin hiking paths. My take is that even if they allow one/a few/a capped number, then it's out of the bottle, and people will try to game the system one way or another
How strange that a non-electric bike now needs a special prefix. To me "bike" is the traditional kind and "e-bike" is the motorized kind. Has it really tilted that far? Not where I live, where probably 10-20% of bikes are electric. So far.
