A US defense official said the Pentagon’s technology chief outlined the debate with Anthropic over a hypothetical nuclear strike against the US in a meeting last month as if it were “a life-or-death nuclear scenario”, according to information published by the newspaper. The Washington Post this Friday the 27th.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s response reportedly “irritated” the Pentagon, according to the official, who described the CEO’s retort as: “You can call us and we’ll sort it out.” An Anthropic spokesperson denied that Amodei gave this response, calling the report “patently false.”
This Thursday, the 26th, Amodei stated that he does not agree with the demands of the United States Department of Defense and that the government’s threats would not alter his position, given the new dispute between the parties. US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth set a deadline of Friday for the company to evaluate its final offer on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the US Armed Forces.
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According to information from the The Wall Street JournalOpenAI CEO Sam Altman informed employees late yesterday that the company was working with the Department of Defense to verify that its models could be used in classified environments while maintaining the same security measures that brought competitor Anthropic to an impasse. According to sources, no agreement has been signed and negotiations may fail.
“We will see if there is an agreement with the War Department that allows for the deployment of our models in classified environments and that is in accordance with our principles,” Altman wrote in a statement seen by the WSJ. “We request that the contract cover any use except those that are illegal or unsuitable for cloud deployments, such as home surveillance and autonomous offensive weapons.”
