Anthropic bypasses courts to route distillation claims against Chinese AI labs directly to the US government

@bgurley Exactly... a court gives you damages, the government gives you a moat. but it's the wrong moat, it walls off domestic rivals while open models abroad keep shipping to everyone with no approval needed. The protection only holds against the competitors who weren't the threat.

@IamPranavJ Yes. ROW will run on Chinese models.

https://p3institute.substack.com/p/from-open-source-software-to-open

This is a critical point worth reflecting on. Anthropic could have sued in court (as others have). But they want something far more valuable than simple restitution. They want the US government’s “protection against competition” for years and years. A court can’t provide that.

@Trace_Cohen This will ensure China model dominance.

@bgurley Courts would take years and do nothing, you know that.

This is also Ai and about American domination of Ai - what would or could a court do? This is bigger than that.

@bgurley By working with the government directly > courts? Is it the lesser of two evils or the fastest and best way to try…

I agree it’s not perfect but what else can they do / do you recommend to combat Chinese espionage and influence etc?

I honestly don’t know.

@bgurley @IamPranavJ ROW runs on @grok, if @elonmusk goes route of Twitter/X…

@bgurley @paulg That’s because restitution won’t help you in a case like this. If I steal your source code, or I enter a market with illegal tech or in some other way that violates the law - and beat you in competition because of that - you no longer have a business. Courts won’t help

@bgurley regulatory capture dressed up as safety concern. classic.

the court route is slower but at least it has limits. what they're asking for doesn't.

@bgurley So, you don't realize that the current autocratic government runs by diktat? How efficacious are courts for stuff like this? A lot of our moneymen need to look at themselves in the mirror every day to see what form of government they are supporting.

@bgurley Oh come on. Of course they'll skip the courtroom. Why settle for damages when you can push for rules that could make life harder for your competitors? That's worth a lot more than a one time court payout. I'll never trust Anthropic haha. This is just a pr stunt fosho

@bgurley Time to call bullshit. Thanks for speaking up @bgurley.

@bgurley To steelman Dario's position I'd say he is a true believer in RSI quickly developing into an ASI superweapon. If China is able to catch up, US hegemony is finished. Although a case could be made that the Iran war did a good job of that already.

@bgurley @paulg The most entertaining outcome is likely 😅

@bgurley Hmm. Perhaps. But it can also be estimated that Anthropic sending the lawyers after Trump admin would create an even worse outcome. Then Trump would label them domestic enemies, anti military, anti etc etc.

@bgurley Spot on! Aviation industry monitoring situation.

@bgurley And perhaps free advertising / headlines?

@bgurley its a great point, especially since it's easy to find a jurisdiction that would be friendly to them.

@bgurley Open-source (kimi, deepseek) hosted in US (@FireworksAI_HQ , @DeepInfra, @togethercompute, etc.) is the future. @OpenAI and @AnthropicAI cost is not sustainable

@bgurley The key is to prevent future distillation. Can Court do that? It requires USG to intervene.