Not so fast: Anthropic and US military might do business after all
Anthropic, the AI company behind the popular Claude AI chatbot, received praise last week for standing up to the Trump administration over the U.S. military's use of its AI tools.
However, the company may be reversing course.
According to a new report from the Financial Times, Anthropic and the U.S. Department of Defense have reopened negotiations on how the government can leverage Anthropic tech for military purposes.
The breakdown between Anthropic and the U.S. government began after the AI company received a $200 million contract from the U.S. Defense Department.
However, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei later wanted guarantees that the U.S. government would not utilize its Claude AI models for domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons. The Trump administration refused this request, saying it would use AI technology for any "lawful" purpose.
As talks between Anthropic and the U.S. government broke down, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth even threatened to designate the company as a supply chain risk to national security.
President Trump called Anthropic a "radical left, woke company" in a post on Truth Social and ordered the federal government to cease using Anthropic's technology over the following six months.
The Financial Times reports that Amodei has now re-entered negotiations in hopes of avoiding the supply chain risk designation. Amodei is now discussing terms of a potential deal with Undersecretary of Defense Emil Michael, who called the Anthropic CEO "a liar" with a "God-complex" in a social media post just last week.
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“Near the end of the negotiation the [department] offered to accept our current terms if we deleted a specific phrase about ‘analysis of bulk acquired data’ which was the single line in the contract that exactly matched this scenario we were most worried about," Amodei said in an internal memo to Anthropic employees as reported by The Information. "We found that very suspicious."
Days after talks between Anthropic and the DoD fell apart, OpenAI announced that it had secured a deal with the U.S. government for the use of its AI tools for military use in "classified environments."
OpenAI quickly received blowback from users, forcing CEO Sam Altman to attempt to address concerns. Just days later, an internal memo from Altman leaked, where the OpenAI CEO told employees that it would be amending its agreement with the federal government, as the deal was rushed. Altman stated that the U.S. government assured OpenAI it would not use its technology for domestic surveillance.
Amodei's internal memo reportedly knocked Altman, calling OpenAI and the Pentagon's statements about the issues with Anthropic “just straight up lies." Amodei accused Altman of partaking in “safety theater” regarding his presentation of the deal and stated that OpenAI employees who believed the company were “sort of a gullible bunch.”
If Amodei is successful in securing a new agreement with the federal government, the U.S. military would continue to use the technology, which is reportedly already being used to launch strikes in Iran.
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Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.