Timeline: Anthropic, OpenAI, and U.S. Government

90 points by vldszn a day ago on hackernews | 30 comments

[OP] vldszn | a day ago

A chronological overview of recent events involving Anthropic, OpenAI, and the United States Department of Defense.

Contributions are welcome!

If you'd like to add or update events, please feel free to submit a pull request. https://github.com/VladSez/anthropic-timeline

themacguffinman | a day ago

The events are out of order, the bottom three events are:

- Feb 27, 2026, 02:13 PM: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation

- Feb 27, 2026, 12:00 AM: Anthropic: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

- Feb 27, 2026, 10:14 PM: Dept. of War: Anthropic is a supply chain risk

[OP] vldszn | a day ago

yeah, sorry, just fixed

[OP] vldszn | a day ago

I think this is the correct timeline tbh:

  {
    date: "2026-02-28T02:56:35.000Z",
    title:
      "OpenAI agrees with Dept. of War to deploy models in classified network",
    source: "https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175",
    sourceLabel: "Sam Altman on X",
  },
  {
    date: "2026-02-28T01:24:31.000Z",
    title:
      "Anthropic: Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth",
    source: "https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-comments-secretary-war",
    sourceLabel: "Anthropic",
  },

  {
    date: "2026-02-27T22:14:43.000Z",
    title: "Dept. of War: Anthropic is a supply chain risk",
    source: "https://x.com/SecWar/status/2027507717469049070?s=20",
    sourceLabel: "Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on X",
  },
  {
    date: "2026-02-27T21:47:00.000Z",
    title: "U.S. government blacklists Anthropic",
    source:
      "https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/27/trump-anthropic-ai-federal-agencies",
    sourceLabel: "The Guardian",
  },
  {
    date: "2026-02-27T14:12:04.000Z",
    title: "OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation",
    source: "https://x.com/sama/status/2027386252555919386",
    sourceLabel: "Sam Altman on X",
  },

baby | a day ago

You know you can use github pages

sgarland | a day ago

For real - OP, push some HTML / CSS, or even just Markdown. This is overly complex for what you’re doing.

[OP] vldszn | a day ago

Yeah, fair point. I used next.js out of convenience. It took around 5 mins for me to set up this project =) Site is purely static.

nickthegreek | a day ago

What’s with this policing of frameworks people want to use?

sgarland | a day ago

If this came across as doing so, I apologize. It was intended more as “there’s a much simpler way.”

Here’s an analogy: I have a kitchen drawer that has had its face torn off, because the threads for the screws were destroyed. I tried fixing it twice by drilling them out, gluing a hardwood dowel in, and then redrilling for screw threads.

After the second failure, I asked my FIL - who is a woodworker - if I should bore them out to a larger size, so I could use a larger dowel with more surface area for glue, etc. He said, “you could, but the failure point is the threads, because you’re driving parallel into end grain. A hardwood plug inserted such that you’re driving into edge grain would hold. Or, you could just move the screws, and optionally plug the old holes for aesthetics.”

I was vastly over-complicating something that had an extremely easy solution. This problem exists everywhere in tech; people will recreate existing technology (usually in a worse fashion), or create Byzantine pipelines for a problem trivially solved by a bash script, etc.

If you consider the available options for something, and then decide, that’s one thing. If you make what is objectively the wrong choice, that still might be understandable - maybe you want to learn something new, maybe it doesn’t matter at your scale (which tbf is true here, though Vercel’s pricing might cause pain if the site exploded in popularity), etc. But the point is, you should understand trade-offs, and what already exists.

: [OP] vldszn | a day ago
Yeah, using static HTML and CSS makes perfect sense for a website like this. I chose Next.js because it was faster for me to get it up and running.

baby | 23 hours ago

The problem is Vercel

[OP] vldszn | a day ago

Make sense. I used next.js and vercel because I have a lot of experience with it =)

baby | 23 hours ago

You can deploy nextjs on cloudflare!

: [OP] vldszn | 19 hours ago
Sure

mpalmer | a day ago

Kind of odd it doesn't lead with the Anthropic statement predicting they were about be designated a risk because they'd refused to move past their red lines.

: [OP] vldszn | a day ago
I think, i fixed this

voganmother42 | a day ago

When will we get to add subverting the elections to the timeline? How does this autocratic speed run compare to others?

: grey-area | a day ago
It is unfortunately similar to the trajectory of Weimar Germany in many respects.

lxgr | a day ago

What time zone are these listed in?

: [OP] vldszn | a day ago
UTC
: [OP] vldszn | a day ago
Sorry, it was converted from utc to your browser local time, now displaying always as UTC

AreShoesFeet000 | a day ago

It looks to me as a consumer that the worst option for my consumption is asserted as the inevitable decision of purchase only by coercion.

dpkirchner | a day ago

FYI an accurate timeline should use the correct name for the government agency: Department of Justice. Hesgeth is the Secretary of Defense.

[OP] vldszn | a day ago

thanks for the report, will check.

hmm, it says on wiki: "The United States secretary of defense (SecDef), secondarily titled the secretary of war (SecWar)"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secretary_of_Def...

dpkirchner | a day ago

"Secondarily titled" is not a thing in our constitution, so it is correct to use "Defense".

Also I just noticed in my pedantry I typed Department of Justice. Embarrassing.

try_the_bass | 18 hours ago

This is such a weird hill to die on. I'm pretty sure none of the cabinet positions are described by the constitution, so I'm not sure citing it here has any relevance at all?

: toraway | 11 hours ago
The constitution assigns legislative power to the Congress, and does not allow the President to rewrite law by fiat.
The Department of Defense was established by the National Security Act of 1947 and is still the law of the land until they pass legislation amending it.
The Trump Administration could request the Republican controlled Congress rename the DoD in the NDA, but for whatever reason they have not done so.
So it's correct to say that accepting the idea that a President can rewrite a law based on their own personal whims without Congress is in opposition to fundamental constitutional separation of powers.

[OP] vldszn | a day ago

UPD: updated timeline, fixed timestamps - they are now always displayed in UTC, fixed style issues.

All new contributions are welcome: https://github.com/VladSez/anthropic-timeline

hbarka | 22 hours ago

You should also add Dario Amodei’s full interview today with his response:

https://youtu.be/MPTNHrq_4LU

: [OP] vldszn | 19 hours ago
thank you, just added this event
link: https://anthropic-timeline.vercel.app/#amodei-cbs-interview