Anthropic (anthropic) boss rejects Pentagon demand to drop AI safeguards

anthropic’s chief executive Dario Amodei said on Thursday the company will not back down in a fight with the US Department of Defense over how its artificial intelligence technology is used, and that it would rather not work with the Pentagon than agree to uses that may "undermine, rather than defend, democratic values. "

Anthropic and Pentagon standoff

Amodei’s comments followed a meeting two days earlier with US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over demands that Anthropic accept "any lawful use" of its tools. That meeting ended with a threat to remove the company from the Department of Defense supply chain, and Amodei said: "These threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request. "

Amodei’s stance and quotes

At issue are potential uses of Anthropic AI tools like Claude for "Mass domestic surveillance" and "Fully autonomous weapons. " Amodei added that "such use cases have never been included in our contracts with the Department of War, and we believe they should not be included now. " He also warned: "Should the Department choose to offboard Anthropic, we will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider. "

Trump’s federal ban and phaseout

The dispute escalated when United States President Donald Trump directed every federal agency to immediately cease work with Anthropic, while allowing a six-month phaseout for the Department of Defense and other agencies that use the company’s products. The president wrote in a post: "I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!"

Contract language and company response

An Anthropic spokeswoman said the company received updated contract wording from the Defense Department on Wednesday night, but that it represented "virtually no progress on preventing Claude's use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons. " She added: "New language framed as compromise was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will. Despite [the Department of War's] recent public statements, these narrow safeguards have been the crux of our negotiations for months. " Spokespeople for Anthropic, which has a $200m contract with the Pentagon, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Legal pressure and threats

The Pentagon signalled tougher options if Anthropic did not comply. A Pentagon official previously said that should Anthropic not comply, Hegseth would ensure the Defense Production Act was invoked on the company. The act essentially gives a US president the authority to deem a given company or its product so important that the government can require it to meet defence needs. Hegseth also threatened to label Anthropic a "supply chain risk, " a designation meaning the company would be designated as not secure enough for government use.

Officials’ reactions and attacks

Emil Michael, the US Undersecretary for Defense, personally attacked Amodei on Thursday night, writing on a social platform that the executive "wants nothing more than to try to personally control the US Military and is ok putting our nation's safety at risk. " In an interview, Michael said: "At some level, you have to trust your military to do the right thing. " He added that the uses of AI Anthropic fears are already barred by law and by Pentagon policies, and when asked why the Pentagon would not agree to contract language demanded by Anthropic he said: "We do have to be prepared for what China is doing. " A former DoD official who asked not to be named said on Thursday that Hegseth's grounds for either measure were "extremely flimsy. " A representative of the Defense Department could not be reached for comment.

Wider fallout and business context

Trump’s comments arrived just over an hour before the Pentagon’s deadline for Anthropic to allow unrestricted military use of its AI technology or face consequences, and nearly 24 hours after Amodei had said his company "cannot in good conscience accede" to the Defense Department’s demands. The president also called the company "left-wing nut jobs" and warned he would use "the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow" if Anthropic did not cooperate with the phaseout. He granted the Pentagon a six-month window to phase out technology already embedded in military platforms.

The dispute comes as Anthropic raced to win sales to businesses and government, particularly for national security customers, ahead of a widely expected initial public offering; the company has said it has not finalised an IPO decision. Anthropic has said it was the first frontier AI lab to put its models on classified networks through a cloud provider and the first to build customised models for national security customers. Its product, Claude, is in use across the intelligence community and armed services. US Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat and vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, criticised the president’s directive.

With both contract negotiations and presidential directives now in play, Anthropic and the Department of Defense remain at an impasse over narrow safeguards that the company says are central to its willingness to continue work on defence contracts.