Newsom signed a deal - every state agency, every city and county gets Claude at half price, plus free training. The contrast with the federal stance is telling.
- Newsom and Anthropic announced (late June) a deal: every state agency and every city and county in California get Claude at a 50% discount and free training.
- The goal - assistance, not replacement: writing documents and analyzing information.
- Contrast with the federal side: earlier the Pentagon refused over Anthropic's insistence on banning surveillance of Americans and autonomous weapons, and signed with OpenAI.
Gavin Newsom (the governor of California) and Anthropic announced a deal that gives the entire state apparatus access to Claude at half price. The scope is wide - state agencies, every city and county, plus free training and technical help from Anthropic. The goal, in the words of the governor's office, is to help employees write documents and analyze information, not do their work for them.
Here I stop and think. At the same moment, two Americas look at the same company in two different ways. The federal government keeps it at a distance as a risk. California embraces it as a partner. Who's right will show in one thing - whose citizens get a more useful and safer government.
The real news is the clause, not the discount. A company that says 'we won't hand our technology over for surveilling people or for weapons without a human in the loop' draws a line - and pays for it with the lost Pentagon contract. That kind of refusal weighs more than any mission statement on a website. Whether it holds the next time the money pushes back, remains to be seen.