⚠️ Anthropic: "We cannot in good conscience accede" to the demands of the Department of War (* Defense) [View all]
⚠️ Anthropic:
We cannot in good conscience accede to the demands of the Department of War.
Concerns about the Departments potential use of AI for mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons have not been resolved.
â ï¸ Anthropic:
âWe cannot in good conscience accedeâ to the demands of the Department of War.
Concerns about the Departmentâs potential use of AI for mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons have not been resolved.
— Leah McElrath (@leahmcelrath.bsky.social) 2026-02-26T22:55:17.395Z
Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
I believe deeply in the existential importance of using AI to defend the United States and other democracies, and to defeat our autocratic adversaries.
Anthropic has therefore worked proactively to deploy our models to the Department of War and the intelligence community. We were the first frontier AI company to deploy our models in the US governments classified networks, the first to deploy them at the National Laboratories, and the first to provide custom models for national security customers. Claude is extensively deployed across the Department of War and other national security agencies for mission-critical applications, such as intelligence analysis, modeling and simulation, operational planning, cyber operations, and more.
Anthropic has also acted to defend Americas lead in AI, even when it is against the companys short-term interest. We chose to forgo several hundred million dollars in revenue to cut off the use of Claude by firms linked to the Chinese Communist Party (some of whom have been designated by the Department of War as Chinese Military Companies), shut down CCP-sponsored cyberattacks that attempted to abuse Claude, and have advocated for strong export controls on chips to ensure a democratic advantage.
Anthropic understands that the Department of War, not private companies, makes military decisions. We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner.