Trump orders federal phase-out of Anthropic | Political News
Dario Amodei said he wouldn’t accede to calls for from the Pentagon to enable unrestricted use of its technology for what he described as “mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons” (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top administration officers posted a collection of charged social media posts on Friday, demanding all federal businesses stop utilizing Anthropic’s AI technology and casting the $380 billion company as “radical left” and “woke.”
The Trump administration’s social media tirades, political accusations against the tech giant and orders to part out its technology got here the day after its CEO, Dario Amodei, said he “cannot in good conscience accede” to calls for from the Pentagon to enable unrestricted use of its technology for what he described as “mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons.”
The Pentagon said it was not in such makes use of and would only deploy the technology in legal methods, but it also insisted on access without any limitations. “The United States of America will never allow a radical left, woke company to dictate how our great military fights and wins wars!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social all caps.
Trump said Anthropic made a mistake making an attempt to strong-arm the Pentagon. He wrote on Truth Social that most businesses must immediately stop utilizing Anthropic’s AI but gave the Pentagon a six-month period to part out the technology that is already embedded in army platforms, The Associated Press reported.
After months of non-public talks exploded into public debate this week, Anthropic said Thursday that the federal government’s new contract language would enable “safeguards to be disregarded at will.” Amodei said his company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the calls for.
Anthropic said Thursday that the federal government’s new contract language would enable “safeguards to be disregarded at will” (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Anthropic can afford to lose the contract. But the government’s actions posed broader risks at the peak of the company’s meteoric rise from a little-known computer science research lab in San Francisco to one of the world’s most valuable startups.
The president’s decision was preceded by hours of top Trump appointees from the Pentagon and the State Department taking to social media to criticize Anthropic, but their complaints posed contradictions.
Top Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said on social media Thursday that Anthropic’s unwillingness to go along with the military’s demands was “jeopardizing critical military operations and potentially putting our warfighters at risk.” Hegseth said Friday that the Pentagon “must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the Republic.”
Trump’s social media post also mandated the company “better get their act together, and be helpful” during a six-month phase-out period or there would be “major civil and criminal consequences to follow.”
However, Hegseth’s choice to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk uses an administrative tool that has been designed for companies owned by U.S. adversaries to prevent them from selling products that are harmful to American interests.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, noted that this dynamic, “combined with inflammatory rhetoric attacking that company, raises serious concerns about whether national security decisions are being driven by careful analysis or political considerations.”
But even as the Pentagon lashed out at Anthropic and Amodei, a source acquainted with the matter told Axios that the division agreed to comparable restrictions outlined in a deal with Sam Altman’s OpenAI.
“This is a case where it is important to me that we do the correct factor, not the simple factor that seems strong but is disingenuous,” Altman said in an overnight memo to staff, according to Axios. “But I notice it could not ‘look good’ for us in the short time period, and that there may be a lot of nuance and context.”
Trump’s said there can be “major civil and criminal consequences to follow” for the company’s refusal to grant the government unrestricted use of its technology (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Employees at OpenAI and Google have reportedly been calling on their respective company leaders to stand in solidarity with Anthropic.
Though Altman appeared to have stood firm on similar restrictions for the government’s use of its AI technology, Altman’s relationship with the Trump administration is far rosier than that of Amodei.
Altman was one of several tech giants who donated $1 million to Trump’s second presidential inauguration, and he reportedly has given millions to Trump’s main super PAC, MAGA Inc.
The dispute stunned AI developers in Silicon Valley, where venture capitalists, prominent AI scientists and a large number of workers from Anthropic’s top rivals — OpenAI and Google — voiced support for Amodei’s stand in open letters and other forums.
The move is likely to benefit Elon Musk’s competing chatbot, Grok, which the Pentagon plans to give access to classified military networks, and could serve as a warning to two other competitors, Google and OpenAI, that have still-evolving contracts to supply their AI tools to the military.
Musk sided with Trump’s administration, saying on his social media platform X that “Anthropic hates Western Civilization.”
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