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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stated on Thursday that the company will not compromise with the US Department of Defense over the usage of its AI technology. Amodei asserted that the firm would prefer to forgo working with the Pentagon entirely rather than allow its tools to be used in ways that "undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.”
His comments come two days after a meeting with US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over demands that Anthropic accept "any lawful use" of its tools. It ended with a threat to remove Anthropic from the DoD's supply chain.
"These threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request," Amodei said.
At issue for Anthropic is the potential use of its AI tools like Claude for two purposes: "Mass domestic surveillance" and "Fully autonomous weapons."
Amodei said "such use cases have never been included in our contracts with the Department of War, and we believe they should not be included now."
The Department of War is a secondary name for the Defense Department under an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump in September.
"Should the Department choose to offboard Anthropic, we will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider," Amodei said.
An Anthropic spokeswoman added on Thursday that while the company received updated wording from the DoD for its contract on Wednesday night, it represented "virtually no progress on preventing Claude's use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons.”
"New language framed as compromise was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will," she said. "Despite [the Department of War's] recent public statements, these narrow safeguards have been the crux of our negotiations for months."
A representative of the Defense Department could not be reached for comment.
Emil Michael, the US Undersecretary for Defense, personally attacked Amodei on Thursday night, writing on X that the executive "wants nothing more than to try to personally control the US Military and is ok putting our nation's safety at risk."
