Pentagon gives Anthropic Friday deadline to loosen AI policy

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon announced today that it has given AI company Anthropic until Friday evening to “decide” whether it will loosen company policy regarding the military’s use of its Claude AI model, or to be deemed a “supply chain risk.”

“Here’s what we’re asking: Allow the Pentagon to use Anthropic’s model for all lawful purposes,” chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote on X today. “This is a simple, common-sense request that will prevent Anthropic from jeopardizing critical military operations and potentially putting our warfighters at risk. We will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions.

“They have until 5:01 PM ET on Friday to decide. Otherwise, we will terminate our partnership with Anthropic and deem them a supply chain risk for DOW,” he wrote, using the secondary initials for the Defense Department. The Friday deadline was previously reported by Politico and others, citing anonymous sources.

The public missive is the latest in a days-long brewing conflict between the Pentagon and the tech company, reportedly related to the firm’s policy against the potential for Claude to be used as a tool of mass surveillance or in autonomous lethal weapon systems. In his post Parnell claimed that the idea the DoD wanted to use the AI to do either was a “fake” narrative “peddled by leftists in the media.”

DoD Undersecretary for Research and Engineering Emil Michael likewise said earlier today that the DoD “would never” engage in mass surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment, but argued, “We won’t have any BigTech company decide Americans’ civil liberties.” Emil previously argued that it would be “not democratic” to “let any one company dictate a new set of policies above and beyond what [laws] Congress has passed.”

A spokesperson for Anthropic did not immediately respond to Breaking Defense’s request for comment for this report. Anthropic’s policies prohibit using the AI to “produce, modify, design, or illegally acquire weapons” or to “track a person’s physical location, emotional state, or communication without their consent, including using our products for … battlefield management applications.”

Last summer, the Pentagon’s Chief Digital & AI Office awarded Anthropic, Google, xAI, and OpenAI contracts worth up to $200 million apiece to customize their popular generative AI applications for military use. Classified versions of Anthropic’s Claude AI are also available to Defense Department personnel through Amazon and Palantir, Semafor has reported.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei reportedly met with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth this week in an attempt to iron out the issues. Though The Associated Press described the meeting as cordial, it doesn’t appear to have been successful for either side.