The Pentagon Can’t Afford This A.I. Fight

Mr. Hennigan writes about national security for Opinion.

The Trump administration waged its latest war of choice this week when it tried to coerce the tech company Anthropic into giving the military a blank check in how it uses the company’s artificial intelligence technology.

The confrontation sharply escalated on Tuesday when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered an ultimatum to Anthropic’s chief executive, Dario Amodei: Lift all safeguards on its technology by 5:01 p.m. Friday or lose the company’s $200 million contract and any future business with the military. It culminated about an hour before that deadline when President Trump publicly declared he was “directing every federal agency in the United States government to immediately cease all use of Anthropic’s technology.”

In typical florid fashion, the president went on to call the company “WOKE” and full of “Leftwing nut jobs” who meant to do the country harm. It’s a striking turn for Anthropic, which in late 2024 became the first major A.I. lab to work on classified U.S. military networks. Although military contracts made up a small percentage of its business, the company’s A.I. model was the most widely used across the American national security complex.

Anthropic’s technology enables troops and intelligence agents worldwide to synthesize and cross-reference oceans of classified information in a split second. In January it was reportedly used during the raid to capture Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro.

But the company has always had two red lines: The government can’t use its product in the mass surveillance of American citizens or install it in killer robots that operate outside human control. These safeguards have long been at the core of Anthropic’s safety-conscious business model and don’t differ much from other A.I. labs trying to do the tricky job of advancing their cutting-edge technology while ensuring they don’t compromise public safety.

When viewed this way, Anthropic’s limits are sensible and legal. Federal law almost always precludes the U.S. military from spying on American citizens, and a Defense Department directive has strict regulations around all lethal autonomous weapons that don’t have human oversight. But Mr. Hegseth couldn’t live with those terms, and Mr. Amodei refused to give in to the Pentagon’s threats, saying in a statement late on Thursday that his company was willing to suffer the consequences.

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W.J. Hennigan writes about national security, foreign policy and conflict for the Opinion section.

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