Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s insistence that the company’s AI models may not be used for mass surveillance of Americans or directing killer drones has kicked up a major storm.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth and president Donald Trump came out swinging, directing all government agencies to stop using the company’s software “effective immediately” and labeling the company as a “supply chain risk,” sending shockwaves across the entire tech industry.
Very little love has been lost between the AI leader and the White House. In a leaked Friday memo to employees obtained by The Information, Amodei ignited the powder keg by calling out the president — as well as his arch nemesis and fellow OpenAI cofounder Sam Altman for bending the knee.
“The real reasons [Department of War] and the Trump admin do not like us is that we haven’t donated to Trump,” he wrote, adding that “we haven’t given dictator-style praise to Trump (while Sam has).”
It’s true that OpenAI president Greg Brockman has donated $25 million to a Trump super PAC. Altman also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund in late 2024.
After talks between Anthropic and the Pentagon fell apart — a feud that reportedly started after Anthropic’s Claude was found to have been used during the attacks on Venezuela — Altman seemingly saw an opportunity to swoop in and cash in, triggering a major PR crisis as a considerable number of users accused the company of giving in to the Trump administration’s demands.
In the memo, Amodei also argued that “we have supported AI regulation, which is against their agenda, we’ve told the truth about a number of AI policy issues (like job displacement), and we’ve actually held our red lines with integrity rather than colluding with them to produce ‘safety theater’ for the benefit of employees.”
Whether Anthropic will continue to hold those “red lines” going forward remains to be seen. As Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, less than a week after the memo was sent, talks between the company and the Pentagon have resumed, highlighting ongoing efforts to patch things up.
If they were to bury the hatchet, Altman’s attempts to shoehorn OpenAI into the situation could be greatly complicated. What that would mean for Anthropic’s recent classification of being a supply chain risk remains entirely unclear as well.
The feud put the military in a very awkward position as Anthropic’s Claude chatbot continues to serve a critical function during the United States’ attacks on Iran — regardless of the president and Hegseth’s clear-cut order to stop using it immediately.
“Ultimately, this is about our warfighters having the best tools to win a fight and you can’t trust Claude isn’t secretly carrying out Dario’s agenda in a classified setting,” an administration official told Axios on Wednesday.
Another source said that Anthropic doesn’t want to control the Pentagon’s use of its chatbot, a facet of the talks that apparently wasn’t captured in the media.
In short, now that the feud has grown into a major battle of AI companies trying to establish themselves as the ethical choice — if there even could be one given the atrocities being committed in Iran — the broader tech industry remains unimpressed. Trump’s decision to label Anthropic as a supply chain risk, a term usually reserved for companies being run by US adversaries, has taken Silicon Valley leaders aback.
A Big Tech industry group, whose members include AI chipmaker Nvidia, Amazon, and Apple, sent a public letter to Hegseth, arguing that they are “concerned” about the “Department of War’s consideration of imposing a supply chain risk designation in response to a procurement dispute,” as quoted by Reuters.
The designation could “undermine the government’s access to the best-in-class products and services from American companies that serve all agencies and components of the federal government,” the letter reads.
More on the feud: Anthropic Blowout With Military Involved Use of Claude for Incoming Nuclear Strike
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