In the most clear and consequential policy move on AI safety yet, the Trump administration has announced it will blacklist a leading AI lab over its refusal to allow unfettered access to its technology for military purposes.
It is the president and his secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, going nuclear over Anthropic’s refusal to allow the Pentagon to use its AI for “any lawful purpose”.
Describing Anthropic as a woke, radical left company, the US president said on his Truth Social platform that “The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War”, adding that the company’s actions were putting American lives and national security in jeopardy.
Until now, however, Anthropic was doing more than any other AI lab to support the Pentagon.
Anthropic’s Claude AI is the only frontier model already being used extensively for sensitive military planning and operations.
It’s been widely reported that Claude AI was used as part of the Pentagon’s “Maven Smart System” to plan and execute the military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January.
The origin of the dispute wasn’t about Anthropic’s commitment to the US military; instead, its insistence on “red lines” in relation to the use of AI technology.
Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei demanded assurances it wouldn’t be used for mass surveillance of civilians or lethal automated attacks without human oversight.
In a statement on Wednesday, Amodei said some uses of AI are “simply outside the bounds of what today’s technology can safely and reliably do”.
In a post on X, equally as seething as the president’s, secretary Hegseth announced that, as well as being blacklisted, Anthropic would also be designated a Supply-Chain Risk – a legal intervention previously reserved for…
