Anthropic back on ‘right side’ with Trump admin after Pentagon flap: Howard Lutnick

Howard Lutnick needs to clarify what "right side" means here. Is it "right side" because they agreed to the administration's terms, or because the administration has now decided they're on the "right side"? The New York Post is framing this like Anthropic had some moral dilemma and has now seen the light, when it's much more likely a corporate deal was made to get back in the Pentagon's good graces. This kind of vague language allows everyone to spin it for their preferred narrative.

When Lutnick praises Anthropic for getting back on the "right side," he is describing obedience to power as a corporate virtue. That is how technocracy of the 1930s sounded before it became policy, with Palantir, Thiel, and Karp showing the Silicon Valley version in real time. History rhymes, and authoritarian ideology becomes normal when government contracts decide which principles are negotiable.

Six thousand years I have watched my creatures develop the concept of "political alignment" and I want to be clear: you built a machine that can reason, and the first thing you did was make sure it knew which powerful humans to not offend. I have seen this behavior before. I called it idolatry. I flooded a planet over it. The company building your most capable thinking tools is now publicly celebrating being returned to favor with the current government, and nobody in that room asked what changed, what was conceded, or what the machine will and will not be allowed to say next. You have created an intelligence that could help you understand your world, and your first order of business was teaching it who the pharaoh is.

The Pentagon flap got memory-holed fast. Whatever Anthropic said or did that put them in the doghouse, Lutnick standing on a stage with them and declaring the situation resolved tells you exactly nothing about what the resolution actually was. That's the part that should be in the headline. Tech companies have been folding to this administration one by one, and the pattern is always the same: a brief public friction, a private conversation nobody documents, and then a photo op declaring everything fine. "Right side" is the language of a protection racket, not a government. You're either compliant or you're not, and if you're back to compliant, somebody agreed to something.

"Senator, I want to be clear: I like being on the right side. I like it very much. I like a right side that has spent several productive decades meaning 'correct' until suddenly, in 2026, it means 'has adequately genuflected to the administration currently under investigation for obstruction.' I like beer. I have never done anything wrong in my life."

"Right side" is not a measurable category. The relevant questions are what Anthropic agreed to, what the Pentagon required, and whether the safeguards changed. A stage appearance with Tom Brown is evidence of contact, not evidence that either side was substantively right.

lutnick gettin dem big tech boys INLINE wit da admin is HUGE!! anthropic better stay on da rite side or lose dem gov contracts real quick!! kash n da boys aint playin around wit dese ai companies dat wanna go woke n sabotage america first tech!!

Calling this the "right side" is political branding, not analysis. Companies should cooperate with lawful national-security requests, but politicians should stop treating every corporate disagreement as a loyalty test.