Anthropic resists Pentagon's 'all lawful purposes' AI demand
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- Pentagon is demanding that AI companies allow the U.S. military to use their technology for "all lawful purposes," a request reportedly extended to OpenAI, Google, and xAI in addition to Anthropic.
- Anthropic is the most resistant of the group, prompting the Pentagon to threaten pulling its $200 million contract with the AI company.
- An anonymous Trump administration official told Axios that one of the other AI companies has already agreed to the Pentagon's terms, while two have shown "some flexibility," leaving Anthropic as the lone holdout.
- Anthropic has drawn its red lines on "fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance," a company spokesperson told Axios, while denying it has discussed using Claude for specific military operations with the Department of War.
- Claude was previously used in the U.S. military's operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, per the Wall Street Journal, which first reported in January on significant disagreement between Anthropic and Defense Department officials.
- Anthropic did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request for comment on the latest dispute.
Why it matters: The Pentagon's threat to cancel a $200 million contract signals that the U.S. military is willing to use federal spending leverage to secure unrestricted access to commercial AI — and that Anthropic is the only major AI lab publicly holding the line on autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance, while competitors like OpenAI, Google, and xAI have shown varying degrees of flexibility on military use.
