Anthropic Faces 5 p.m. DOD Deadline, Pentagon Open To Talks

The Pentagon left open of the possibility of reengaging in negotiations with AI developer Anthropic ahead of a 5 p.m. Friday deadline for the company to keep its $200 million DOD contract.

The Department of Defense and Anthropic have wrestled over precisely how the Pentagon will and won’t be permitted to use the developer’s AI models.

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Anthropic has said it does not want its tech used for the mass surveillance of Americans, or in support of unmanned weapons that don’t have human supervision. Meanwhile, the Pentagon wants the developer to adopt the same standard it has for other contractors, which allows the DOD to use their products in any lawful way it sees fit.

Pentagon Open To Talks With Anthropic

On Thursday, Anthropic rejected the Pentagon’s latest offer. “New language framed as compromise was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will,” the company said in a statement.

A day later, on Friday morning, a federal official said the Pentagon remained open to negotiations.

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“We’re always open to talks,” Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael told Bloomberg. “Up until that deadline, I’m open to more talks and I told them so.”

A day earlier, Michael, a former Uber executive, called Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a “liar” who “has a God-complex” in an X post.

The Pentagon had considered retaliating against Anthropic, according to reports. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he could label Anthropic a “supply chain risk.” The designation would prevent Anthropic from doing any business with government contractors. The classification usually applies to companies from adversarial countries that have government ties, like China’s Huawei.

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Additionally, the Pentagon could invoke the Cold War-era Defense Production Act, which would compel Anthropic to allow the government to use its products. Michael said the Pentagon hadn’t yet decided what it will do if Anthropic misses the Friday deadline.

“That’s up to Secretary Hegseth,” he told Bloomberg. “We have some courses of action that he’s considering.”

OpenAI Looks For Pentagon Deal

As the tensions between the Pentagon and Anthropic escalated, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said his company was working on its own DoD deal, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“We are going to see if there is a deal with the DoW (Department of War) that allows our models to be deployed in classified environments and that fits with our principles,” Altman reportedly told staff in a memo.

OpenAI reportedly asked for the same mass surveillance and unmanned drone exceptions as Anthropic.

Altman proposed that OpenAI would “build technical safeguards” and send employees to work directly with the government in order to oversee its AI’s use by the military. “If we are successful, perhaps this can be a path that can work for other AI labs, too,” he wrote.

Furthermore, Altman said he sought to “de-escalate” the situation between the two feuding parties.

(IBD’s owner News Corp has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI).

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