Anthropic's standoff with the Pentagon shakes up AI talent race

With frequent heat and power cuts, many have sought refuge in small rural communities

- Meghan Bobrowsky

Anthropic has seen a surge of public goodwill since CEO Dario Amodei said it wouldn't compromise its red lines for a deal.

(REUTERS)

Anthropic’s standoff with the Defense Department has cost it Uncle Sam as a customer, but it has brought a momentary advantage in the ferocious talent war between rival artificial intelligence labs.

At least two high-level employees have resigned from Open AI, citing values and principles, since the company said it had reached a deal with the Pentagon to deploy its AI models in classified settings. Anthropic was renegotiating its own Pentagon deal and seeking to weave in new safe guards around domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons when talks broke down, prompting the Trump administration to declare the company a supply chain risk.

Caitlin Kalinowski, who oversaw hardware within Open AI’s robotics division, wrote in a post on X over the weekend that she was quitting over the contract.

“AI has an important role in national security. But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got,” she wrote. “This was about principle, not people.”

In a separate post a few days earlier, Max Schwarzer, a vice president of research at Open AI, wrote on X that he was leaving to join Anthropic.

“Many of [the] people I most trust and respect have joined Anthropic over the last couple of years, and I’m excited to work with them again. I have also been very impressed with Anthropic’s talent, research taste and values, and I’m excited to be part of what the company does next!” he wrote, adding that he was also leaving to return to individual contributor research work.