Anthropic Pulls Its Most Powerful AI Models After U.S. Bars Foreign Access

[LevelUP]

Anthropic Pulls Its Most Powerful AI Models After U.S. Bars Foreign Access
https://time.com/article/2026/06/13/anth...-security/

During an appearance on the podcast Core Memory, Altman implied that Anthropic’s “fear-based marketing” was a good way to keep AI in the hands of a small and exclusive elite. “There are people in the world who, for a long time, have wanted to keep AI in the hands of a smaller group of people,” he said. “You can justify that in a lot of different ways.”

“It is clearly incredible marketing to say, ‘We have built a bomb, we are about to drop it on your head. We will sell you a bomb shelter for $100 million,’” he added.

https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/21/sam-al...marketing/

[NotJoeBiden]

I’m sure direct quotes from a competitor like Sam Altman are completely fair and unbiased.

[LevelUP]

History repeating...

In 1999 the department of defense blocked exports of the PowerMac G4 in 50 countries for crossing the 1 gigaflop threshold.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-indust...s-a-weapon

[LevelUP]

I’m sure direct quotes from a competitor like Sam Altman are completely fair and unbiased.

Do you think Altman's statement is true or false and why?

[SteveFoerster]

History repeating...

In 1999 the department of defense blocked exports of the PowerMac G4 in 50 countries for crossing the 1 gigaflop threshold.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-indust...s-a-weapon

In the '90s cryptography was considered a "munition" and was illegal to export:

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2026/06/1...s-t-shirt/

Not only was there this t-shirt, but a few hardcore crypto types got tattoos of that Perl code.

[wow]

I’m sure direct quotes from a competitor like Sam Altman are completely fair and unbiased.

Do you think Altman's statement is true or false and why?

Altman has a long history of hostility with Anthropic, which was founded by individuals who left OpenAI over safety issues (other issues were certainly involved, including Altman's dishonesty and conflict avoidance--he had a record of (not) dealing with disagreements among senior staff by agreeing to what Party 1 wanted to Party 1's face, while telling the Party 2 that he agreed with Party 2 and Party 2's plan should proceed ... which, naturally, only entrenched conflict when both parties kept doing the thing they wanted to do, all the time thinking that the other was flaunting directions from the chief).

His statement is also laughable given that OpenAI was started by AI safety advocates/AI doomsayers (whichever you want to call them) who honestly believe that Generalized AI in the next few decades is a (1) real possibility and (2) an existential threat to all of humanity. OpenAI gained a lot of cachet in its early, nonprofit days as the company that was scared of the AI apocalypse and trying to prevent it. Sam Altman was heavily involved in that "fear-based marketing."

So he is being neither fair nor unbiased. One could say he is being truthful, however. “There are people in the world who, for a long time, have wanted to keep AI in the hands of a smaller group of people. ... You can justify that in a lot of different ways," is true about OpenAI, and it's true about him.