Anthropic is pushing back against the Pentagon’s push for AI companies to allow the U.S. military to use their technology for “any lawful purpose,” according to a new Axios report.
The government has reportedly made similar demands to OpenAI, Google, and xAI. An anonymous Trump administration official told Axios that one of those companies agreed, and the other two likely showed some flexibility.
Humans, on the other hand, are reportedly the most resistant. In response, the Pentagon has apparently threatened to cancel a $200 million contract with the AI company.
In January, the Wall Street Journal reported that there was a significant disagreement between Department of Humanity and Pentagon officials over how to use the Claude model. The Journal later reported that Claude was used in a U.S. military operation to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Anthropic did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
A company spokesperson told Axios that the company “has not discussed the use of the Claude for specific operations with the Department of the Army,” but is instead “focused on specific questions regarding usage policy: fully autonomous weapons and severe restrictions on domestic mass surveillance.”
