Exclusive: Pentagon clashes with Anthropic over military AI use - sources [View all]

[highplainsdem]

Source: Reuters

The Pentagon and artificial-intelligence developer Anthropic are at odds over potentially eliminating safeguards that might allow the government to use its technology to target weapons autonomously and conduct U.S. domestic surveillance, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

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After weeks of talks under a contract worth up to $200 million, opens new tab, the U.S. Department of Defense and Anthropic are at a standstill, six people familiar with the matter said, on condition of anonymity. The company's position on how its AI tools can be used has intensified disagreements between it and the Trump Administration, details of which have not been previously reported.

In line with a January 9 Defense Department memo on its AI strategy, Pentagon officials have argued that they should be able to deploy commercial AI technology regardless of companies' usage policies, so long as they comply with U.S. law, the people said.

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In an essay on his personal blog this week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that AI should support national defense "in all ways except those which would make us more like our autocratic adversaries."

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Read more: https://www.reuters.com/business/pentagon-clashes-with-anthropic-over-military-ai-use-2026-01-29/

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This is the full paragraph with that quote from his blog:

https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/the-adolescence-of-technology

Democracies competitive in AI. As I wrote above, democracies have a legitimate interest in some AI-powered military and geopolitical tools, because democratic governments offer the best chance to counter the use of these tools by autocracies. Broadly, I am supportive of arming democracies with the tools needed to defeat autocracies in the age of AI—I simply don’t think there is any other way. But we cannot ignore the potential for abuse of these technologies by democratic governments themselves. Democracies normally have safeguards that prevent their military and intelligence apparatus from being turned inwards against their own population, but because AI tools require so few people to operate, there is potential for them to circumvent these safeguards and the norms that support them. It is also worth noting that some of these safeguards are already gradually eroding in some democracies. Thus, we should arm democracies with AI, but we should do so carefully and within limits: they are the immune system we need to fight autocracies, but like the immune system, there is some risk of them turning on us and becoming a threat themselves.