I think the most likely explanation is incompetence and equipment failure. These things are being driven through the roof by the pressures of the war with Ukraine, though, so it's still indirectly something Ukraine is provoking. Much like all those officials falling out of windows.

I was told we would always be able to tell.

I don't really care what they're concerned about, I'm personally a long-term thinker on this.

That's a very short-term win, if so, with a long-term cost. Now anyone who's thinking of spending money on an Anthropic subscription (or any other big American company for that matter) needs to consider the possibility that the product they get will be "too good" and therefore will suddenly get yoinked out from under them by the US government.

That long-term impact will be very beneficial for the local and open models because they can't be taken away like that.

Come now, there's just one trillionaire.

Relevant xkcd

Unreliable is still a step up from completely absent.

Maybe we can convince them that COVID vaccination does the trick.

Ironically, It does work in this case. Ivermectin is an antiparasitic, not just a dewormer. It kills screwworm larvae and is being authorized as a treatment for real here.

Just another "what are the writers going to think of next" element to throw into this crazy timeline.

In the United States. Elsewhere in the world it's significantly cheaper.

Ironically, one of the forces that push back against that are the much-derided health insurance companies. Health insurance has the exact opposite incentive structure, they prefer a cure over an ongoing treatment.

Also, do you think the owners and executives of pharma companies never get cancer themselves, or never have friends and family with cancer?

In reality the reasons why cures are less common than treatments are complex, it's not pure evil motivating it. Cures are just hard. Especially for something like cancer, which is not just one single disease but rather an whole vast constellation of different diseases. Some kinds of cancer have been cured, and new cures keep coming out all the time. We just haven't done them all yet.

The patent eventually expires and then the generics come out more cheaply.

There's a generic for Revlimid out now, in fact.