Pentagon CTO Owns Perplexity Stock, Presses Ban

Financial disclosures show Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s Undersecretary for Research and Engineering, holds $2–$10 million in Perplexity stock and served on its board while publicly urging sanctions against Anthropic for refusing domestic-surveillance and autonomous-weapons uses. Perplexity has federal deployment agreements and is being considered to host government AI systems. Anthropic has sued the DoD and a judge, Rita Lin, questioned the Pentagon’s supply-chain designation.