Anthropic CEO Stands Up to Pentagon

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Thursday that the artificial intelligence company "cannot in good conscience accede" to the Pentagon's demands to allow unrestricted use of its technology, deepening a public clash with the Trump administration that is threatening to pull its contract and take other drastic steps by Friday, the AP reports. The maker of the AI chatbot Claude said in a statement that it's not walking away from negotiations but that new contract language received from the Defense Department "made virtually no progress on preventing Claude's use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons." Sean Parnell, the Pentagon's top spokesman, said earlier on social media that the military "has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement."

Anthropic's policies prevent its models from being used for those purposes. It's the last of its peers—the Pentagon also has contracts with Google, OpenAI, and Elon Musk's xAI—to not supply its technology to a new US military internal network. "It is the Department's prerogative to select contractors most aligned with their vision," Amodei wrote in a statement. "But given the substantial value that Anthropic's technology provides to our armed forces, we hope they reconsider." Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic an ultimatum on Tuesday after meeting with Amodei: Allow the Pentagon to use the company's AI as it sees fit by Friday or risk losing its government contract. Military officials warned that they could go even further and designate the company as a supply chain risk or invoke a Cold War-era law called the Defense Production Act to give the military more sweeping authority to use its products.

Amodei said Thursday that "those latter two threats are inherently contradictory: one labels us a security risk; the other labels Claude as essential to national security." In a post before Amodei's announcement, Parnell reiterated that the Pentagon wants to "use Anthropic's model for all lawful purposes" but didn't offer details on what that entailed. He said opening up use of the technology would prevent the company from "jeopardizing critical military operations." "We will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions," he said. The talks that escalated this week began months ago. Amodei said that if the Pentagon doesn't reconsider its position, Anthropic "will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider."