Inside Anthropic's Existential Negotiations with the Pentagon
Anthropic's weekslong battle with the Department of Defense has played out over social media posts, admonishing public statements, and direct quotes from unnamed Pentagon officials to the news media. But the future of the $380 billion AI startup comes down to just three words: "any lawful use."
The new terms, which OpenAI and xAI have reportedly already agreed to, would give the US military carte blanche to use services for mass surveillance and lethal autonomous weapons — AI that has full power to track and kill targets with no humans involved in the decision-making process.
The Supply Chain Risk Threat
The negotiations have turned ugly, with Pentagon CTO Emil Michael driving the government's threats to designate Anthropic as a "supply chain risk," according to two people familiar with negotiations. This classification is usually reserved for threats to national security, including malicious foreign influence or cyber warfare.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei will reportedly meet with Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, and an unnamed Defense official described it as a "shit-or-get-off-the-pot meeting."
The Pentagon issuing this threat to an American company is unprecedented. But the Pentagon publicly issuing this threat is even more bizarre.
Anthropic's Red Lines
A source familiar with the situation told The Verge that Anthropic has been very clear to the government about its red lines, and that there are two narrow things the company won't agree to:
- Autonomous kinetic operations — lethal autonomous weapons
- Mass domestic surveillance
The latter is due to the fact that the "laws haven't caught up to what AI can do" and that it may infringe on American civil liberties. For lethal autonomous weapons, the source said that the technology "isn't there yet for fully autonomous weapons with no humans in loop."
DoD Directives vs. New Demands
Hamza Chaudhry, the AI and national security lead at the Future of Life Institute, noted that Anthropic's red lines already reflected current government directives that have not been repealed:
"DoD Directive 3000.09 requires that all autonomous weapon systems be designed so that commanders and operators be able to 'exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force' and the Political Declaration on Military Use of AI launched by the US Government and endorsed by 50 states enshrines this principle."
What's At Stake
If the classification were to be made official, it would end Anthropic's $200 million contract with the Pentagon, but it would have a more devastating ripple effect on Anthropic's overall bottom line. Major defense contractors and tech companies, like AWS, Palantir, and Anduril, use Anthropic's Claude in their work for the Pentagon, due to the fact that it was the first AI model cleared to use classified information.
If Anthropic is labeled a "supply chain risk," any company that currently works with the military or ever hopes to get a military contract would have to drop Anthropic's AI systems, which are thought to be some of the best in the industry.
Source: The Verge
