Hours after its competitor was punished, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on Friday night that his company struck a deal with the Pentagon to supply its AI to classified military networks, potentially filling a gap created by Anthropic’s ouster.
The Trump administration on Friday ordered all U.S. agencies to stop using Anthropic’s artificial intelligence technology and imposed other major penalties, escalating an unusually public clash between the government and the company over AI safety.
President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials took to social media to chastise Anthropic for failing to allow the military unrestricted use of its AI technology by a Friday deadline, accusing it of endangering national security after CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down over concerns the company's products could be used in ways that would violate its safeguards.
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But Altman said that the same red lines that were the sticking point in Anthropic’s dispute with the Pentagon are now enshrined in OpenAI’s new partnership.
“Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems,” Altman wrote, adding that the Defense Department “agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.”
Altman also said he hopes the Pentagon will “offer these same terms to all AI companies” as a way to “de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and toward reasonable agreements.”
Anthropic had said it sought narrow assurances from the Pentagon that its AI chatbot Claude would not be used for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon said it was not interested in such uses and would only deploy the technology in legal ways, but it also insisted on access without any limitations.
RELATED STORY | Hegseth reportedly gives Anthropic deadline to allow unrestricted AI military use
“No amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons,” the company said. “We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.”
The government’s effort to assert dominance over the internal decision-making of the company comes amid a wider clash over AI’s role in national security and concerns about how increasingly capable machines could be used in high-stakes situations involving lethal force, sensitive information or government surveillance.
