Anthropic Inc. is getting help from an unusual ally in its legal battle with the Trump administration over the Pentagon’s decision to classify it as a “supply chain risk”: employees of rival AI companies.
More than 30 OpenAI and Google DeepMind employees, including Google chief scientist Jeff Dean, have filed a court brief warning that the Pentagon’s humanity blacklist could harm the entire American AI industry.
“This effort to punish one of America’s leading AI companies will undoubtedly impact the competitiveness of American industry and science in the field of artificial intelligence and beyond,” the employees said in their filing. As researchers from rival companies rally around Anthropic, a dispute that began over a military contract could turn into a broader decision about who controls AI.
The brief was released just hours after Anthropic filed two lawsuits challenging the government’s decision to designate supply chain risk as supply chain risk, a label previously applied only to foreign companies and intended to prevent adversaries from interfering with U.S. military systems. The relationship between the Trump administration and Anthropic collapsed last week after the two companies failed to agree on a revised contract governing how the company’s AI model, Claude, would be used. Anthropic sought to ensure two “red lines” regarding domestic mass surveillance and the use of the model for autonomous weapons. Rather, the Pentagon insisted that Anthropic agree to allow the U.S. military to use its AI systems for “any lawful use.”
Anthropic refused to agree to this language. In response, the administration terminated the government contract and deemed the company a national security risk.
Just hours after negotiations with Anthropic broke down, OpenAI swooped in to secure its own contract with the Department of Defense, seemingly agreeing to terms that Anthropic had rejected. The view of the deal has sparked a war of words between the CEOs of both companies, with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei calling OpenAI’s approach to the deal “safety theater” and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s public statements a “blatant lie.” Mr. Altman then indirectly attacked Mr. Anthropic, saying it’s “bad for society” when companies abandon democratic norms because they don’t like who’s in power, which appeared to be a veiled response to Mr. Altman’s accusation that Mr. Amodei was “praising Trump like a dictator.”
While the atmosphere among executives at these companies may not be all that conciliatory, the court filing is an unusual demonstration of solidarity among employees at rival companies. The employees said they signed in their personal capacity, but it also follows an open letter signed by nearly 900 Google and OpenAI employees calling on their leaders to reject government requests to deploy AI for domestic mass surveillance and autonomous lethal targeting, the same “red line” that Anthropic drew in its negotiations with the Pentagon.
OpenAI lost at least one staff member to the controversy. Caitlin Kalinowski, who led hardware and robotics at OpenAI since November 2024, resigned over the company’s contract with the Department of Defense, saying domestic surveillance without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human permission “is a policy that deserves more consideration than it gets.”
Anthropic’s battle with the Pentagon is already set to have major implications for the overall governance of AI and the relationship between companies and governments, but it could also spark a widespread revolt by tech workers against management. Google previously faced this kind of employee opposition in 2018 when it worked with the U.S. military to explore Project Maven, part of which involved using AI to analyze aerial surveillance imagery. Due to employee opposition, Google refused to restart its drone surveillance analysis work, which was subsequently taken over by Amazon and Microsoft.
