Donald Trump announced Friday that he will direct all federal agencies to “immediately cease” their use of the human technology, in the latest installment of a highly publicized clash over the safety of AI.
With the agreement expiring Friday afternoon, the Pentagon and Antropic reached an impasse with neither side backing down. The Pentagon had demanded that artificial intelligence companies loosen ethical guidelines for their AI systems or face serious consequences.
President Trump weighed in just an hour before the deadline, saying on Truth Social: “The left-wing lunatics at Anthropic made a disastrous mistake in trying to strengthen the War Department and force it to follow the Code of Service instead of the Constitution.”
“We are the ones who decide the fate of our country, not an out-of-control radical left-wing AI company run by people who have no idea what the real world is,” Trump wrote.
Hours after the competitor was punished, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced Friday night that the company has signed a contract with the Department of Defense to supply AI to classified military networks, potentially bridging the gap left by Anthropic’s ouster.
But Altman said the same lines that were a sticking point in Anthropic’s dispute with the Department of Defense are now in place in OpenAI’s new partnership.
“Two of our most important security principles are the prohibition of domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including autonomous weapons systems,” Altman wrote, adding that the Pentagon “agrees with these principles and has them reflected in our law and policy, and we have included them in the agreement.”
Altman also said he wants the Pentagon to “offer similar terms to all AI companies” as a way to “escalate away from legal and government action and move toward reasonable agreements.”
Shortly after Friday’s deadline passed, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he was directing his department to classify Anthropic as a supply chain risk to national security, arguing that Anthropic’s “position is fundamentally inconsistent with U.S. principles.” This type of designation is typically used against foreign adversaries and can jeopardize the company’s partnerships with other companies.
“Effective immediately, any contractor, supplier, or partner doing business with the U.S. military may not engage in any commercial activity with Anthropic,” Hegseth wrote to X. “America’s warfighters will never be held hostage to the ideological whims of Big Tech.”
Hegseth said the Department of Defense, which has a $200 million, two-year contract with Anthropic, will continue to use Anthropic’s AI services during a transition period of no more than six months. The Department of Government Services followed Hegseth’s lead and announced Friday night that it had also terminated its contract with Anthropic.
Despite the federal power looming over Anthropic, it’s still possible that the AI company and the Department of Defense can reach some kind of agreement. It’s also possible that another AI company could take over Anthropic’s contract.
Anthropic responded late Friday with a statement saying it had not received any direct communication from the Pentagon or the White House about the status of negotiations, but was “deeply saddened” by developments over the past 24 hours.
“We will challenge the supply chain risk designation in court,” Anthropic said, adding that designating the company as such “is an unprecedented act and has never been publicly applied to a U.S. company before.”
The public showdown between the Pentagon and Anthropic began earlier this week after they entered into talks about the military’s use of the company’s Claude AI system.. However, negotiations broke down as the two sides appeared unable to reach an agreement over the safety fence.
Anthropic, which bills itself as the most safety-focused of the major AI companies, had been mired in disagreements with the Department of Defense for months, even before public discussions began this week. U.S. defense officials want unfettered access to Claude’s capabilities, which they say will help protect the country, but Anthropic has resisted allowing its products to be used in autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without mass surveillance or human intervention.
“No threat or punishment from the Department of the Army will change our position on domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons,” Anthropic said in a statement Friday night.
“We worked in good faith to reach an agreement with the Department of the Army and made it clear that we support all lawful uses of AI for national security, with the two narrow exceptions noted above,” the company continued. “To our knowledge, these exceptions have not affected a single government mission to date.”
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Thursday that the Pentagon has “no interest” in using AI for mass surveillance or the development of autonomous weapons. “This story is fake and is being promoted by the left in the media,” he said.
In Silicon Valley, Anthropic has the backing of its most powerful rivals. Top leaders at AI companies have publicly backed Anthropic, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who said in a CNBC interview on Friday that OpenAI shares the same lines as Anthropic.
Approximately 500 employees from OpenAI and Google also signed an open letter saying, “We will not be divided.” OpenAI and Google also have military contracts.
“The Department of Defense is negotiating with Google and Open AI to agree to what Anthropic has rejected,” the letter said. “They’re trying to break up each company because they’re afraid the other will give in.”
