Anthropic Rejects Pentagon Demand To Remove Safeguards

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company will not comply with a U.S. Department of Defense order to remove surveillance and autonomous-weapons safeguards from its Claude model, rejecting an ultimatum from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that threatened a $200 million contract and a supply-chain risk designation by 17:01 Friday. Anthropic pledged to facilitate a smooth transition to alternative vendors if needed. The Pentagon is evaluating replacements including Google Gemini, OpenAI, and Grok.