{"id":447888,"date":"2026-02-27T04:27:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T04:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/447888\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T04:27:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T04:27:07","slug":"anthropic-says-it-cannot-in-good-conscience-allow-pentagon-to-remove-ai-checks-us-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/447888\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthropic says it \u2018cannot in good conscience\u2019 allow Pentagon to remove AI checks | US military"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthropic said<\/a> Thursday it \u201ccannot in good conscience\u201d comply with a demand from the Pentagon to remove safety precautions from its artificial intelligence model and grant the US military unfettered access to its AI capabilities.<\/p>\n

The Department of Defense had threatened to cancel a $200m contract and deem Anthropic a \u201csupply chain risk\u201d, a designation with serious financial implications, if the company did not comply with the request by Friday.<\/p>\n

Chief executive Dario Amodei said in a statement that the threats from the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth<\/a>, would not change the company\u2019s position, and that he hoped Hegseth would \u201creconsider\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur strong preference is to continue to serve the Department and our warfighters \u2013 with our two requested safeguards in place,\u201d he said. \u201cWe remain ready to continue our work to support the national security of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the core of the Department of Defense and Anthropic\u2019s standoff is a disagreement over how the AI company will permit its product, Claude, to be used. The Pentagon has demanded that Anthropic turn off safety guardrails<\/a> and allow any lawful use of Claude, while Anthropic has pushed back against allowing Claude to be used for mass domestic surveillance or in autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without human input.<\/p>\n

After months of dispute and pressure from the government, Hegseth reportedly gave<\/a> Amodei until Friday evening to agree to the Pentagon\u2019s demands or face punitive action.<\/p>\n

Whether Anthropic would concede was seen as a high-profile test of its claim to be the most safety-conscious of the major AI firms, as well as whether any part of the AI industry would push back against government desires to use the technology for controversial, potentially lethal purposes.<\/p>\n

In his statement, Amodei said using AI for autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance is \u201csimply outside the bounds of what today\u2019s technology can safely and reliably do\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Department of Defense has handed a number of lucrative deals to tech firms in recent years for the companies to build or integrate AI technology into US military systems. In July of last year, Anthropic was one of several big tech companies including Google and OpenAI to receive up to $200m contracts<\/a> with the DoD. What set Anthropic apart, and has intensified its conflict with the Pentagon, is that until this week it was the only AI model that had been approved for use in the military\u2019s classified systems. (Elon Musk\u2019s xAI reached an agreement<\/a> earlier this week to also be used in classified systems.)<\/p>\n

Anthropic\u2019s technology has reportedly already been used for military applications<\/a>, including the US capture of Venezuelan leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro last month, highlighting the growing use of AI in conflict. The growth of autonomous weapons technology, such as drones that can carry out operations even after their connection to a human operator has been severed, has also intensified longstanding concerns around how AI will be used in life-and-death situations.<\/p>\n

Anthropic and Amodei have long been some of the industry\u2019s most prominent advocates for regulation and safety precautions in developing AI, even as they have struck deals with the military and this week watered down a core policy<\/a> to not release new AI models without first guaranteeing their safety. Amodei\u2019s calls for regulation, and history of political opposition<\/a> to Donald Trump, have run up against Hegseth\u2019s vows to remove \u201cwokeness\u201d from the armed forces and pursue aggressive military policies.<\/p>\n

If Hegseth follows through with his threat to categorize Anthropic as a supply chain risk, it would be a huge blow to the AI company. The designation, which is more commonly intended to be used for foreign adversaries, would prohibit other vendors that do business with the US military<\/a> from using Anthropic\u2019s products.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthropic said Thursday it \u201ccannot in good conscience\u201d comply with a demand from the Pentagon to remove safety…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-447888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}