Anthropic digs in heels in dispute with Pentagon, source says

Anthropic has no ‌intention of easing its usage restrictions for military purposes, a person familiar with the ​matter said on Tuesday

Artificial intelligence lab Anthropic has no ‌intention of easing its usage restrictions for military purposes, a person familiar with the ​matter said on Tuesday, adding talks continue after a meeting to discuss ⁠its future with the Pentagon.

The meeting between Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was scheduled to hash out a months-long dispute. The AI startup has refused to remove safeguards that would ‌prevent its technology from being used to target weapons autonomously and conduct U.S. domestic surveillance.

Pentagon officials have argued the government should only be required to comply ‌with U.S. law. During the meeting, Hegseth delivered an ultimatum to Anthropic: get on board ‌or ⁠the government would take drastic action, people familiar with the matter said. The ⁠options included labeling Anthropic as a supply-chain risk or have the Pentagon invoke a law, the Defense Production Act, that would force Anthropic to change its rules, the people said. The government gave Anthropic until Friday at 5 ​p.m. to respond, according to a senior ‌Pentagon official with knowledge of the matter.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a comment request. An Anthropic spokesperson said Tuesday’s meeting “continued good-faith conversations about our usage policy to ensure Anthropic can continue to support the government’s national security mission in line with what ‌our models can reliably and responsibly do.”

The Pentagon has been negotiating AI contracts with ​multiple large language model, or LLM, providers, including Alphabet’s Google, xAI and OpenAI, that are set to shape the future of military use of artificial intelligence ⁠for battlefield applications, spanning autonomous drone swarms, robots and cyber attacks.

Until recently, Anthropic was the only LLM provider on classified networks. This week, the Pentagon announced it had reached an agreement with xAI ‌to deploy it across classified networks. Reuters has previously reported that it plans to move all AI companies to classified networks.