Trump axes Anthropic over its red lines for military AI

Following the president's ban, the Pentagon will reintegrate its systems with OpenAl at a time of acute US military pressure, reports Patricia Clarke

- Patricia Clarke

OpenAI has signed a deal with the Pentagon approving the use of its Al technology for classified military systems, just hours after Donald Trump ordered all US federal agencies to blacklist its main competitor, Anthropic, and in advance of US strikes on Iran.

For much of last week a debate over the ethics of using AI technologies for warfare has raged online and in the Pentagon. Last Thursday the chief executive of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, published a blogpost outlining Anthropic's red lines the use of its models for domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons - amid pressure from Pentagon officials.

In response, the president branded Anthropic's leaders as "leftwing nutjobs" and labelled the company a "supply-chain risk", meaning that anyone who wants to do business with the Pentagon must cut ties with Anthropic. Amodei has promised to mount a legal challenge in response.

On Friday the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, seemed to express solidarity with Amodei's red lines, saying on CNBC he "mostly trusted" Anthropic. But hours later, on the eve of the US strikes, OpenAI signed its own deal with the Pentagon approving its technology for "all legal uses".

In a post on X, Altman claimed: "Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DOD [Department of Defense] agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement." It is not clear how OpenAI's deal differs from what Anthropic originally requested.