The artificial intelligence startup Anthropic on Thursday rejected the Pentagon’s demand for unfettered access to its Claude AI model, suggesting it is willing to risk the serious penalties threatened by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
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Anthropic’s defiance follows unprecedented pressure from the Pentagon to abandon its restrictions on the military’s use of Claude. In a Tuesday meeting with Hegseth, Amodei reiterated his red lines — a ban on the technology’s use to surveil American citizens or to empower autonomous weapons.
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Hegseth had threatened to designate Anthropic a risk to the Pentagon’s supply chain if it failed to comply by 5:01pm Friday. The label is almost always reserved for foreign firms with ties to U.S. adversaries, and could be used by the government to blacklist Anthropic and prevent it from working with other companies.
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Hegseth’s move to invoke the DPA suggests that the Pentagon sees Anthropic’s AI models as critically important to U.S. national defense — a stance some lawyers and AI policymakers said was contradictory, given the Pentagon’s concurrent claim that the company may be a national security risk. The discrepancy was highlighted by Amodei in his blog post.