Pentagon summons Anthropic chief in dispute over AI limits
WASHINGTON — Amid intense pressure from the Trump administration, Pentagon officials have summoned the CEO of artificial intelligence company Anthropic to Washington for a meeting on Tuesday to discuss how its technology is used on classified systems.
The Defense Department and Anthropic agreed to a $200 million pilot contract last year. But a Jan. 9 memo by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calling on AI companies to remove restrictions on their technology led the two sides to renegotiate their contract.
The Pentagon has signed an agreement with one company, Elon Musk’s xAI, and is getting close to making a deal with Google, which makes the Gemini model, according to people briefed on the discussions. Defense Department officials hope to use those agreements to pressure Anthropic to allow its model to be used more broadly, they said.
Anthropic, the official said, will be asked to agree to the same guardrails that the Defense Department is negotiating with the other artificial intelligence companies. In those negotiations, the Pentagon has said the contracts must allow the department to use the models as it sees fit, as long as those activities are lawful. But the department is allowing the companies to build safety provisions into their models, which the companies call “the safety stack.”
Anthropic was the first company authorized to work on the military’s classified networks.
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