Exclusive: Hegseth gives Anthropic until Friday to back down on AI safeguards

Source: Axios

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei until Friday evening to give the military unfettered access to its AI model or face harsh penalties, Axios has learned.

The big picture: Hegseth told Amodei in a tense meeting on Tuesday that the Pentagon will either cut ties and declare Anthropic a "supply chain risk," or invoke the Defense Production Act to force the company to tailor its model to the military's needs.

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Anthropic has said it is willing to adapt its usage policies for the Pentagon, but not to allow its model to be used for the mass surveillance of Americans or the development of weapons that fire without human involvement.

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Hegseth told Amodei he won't let any company dictate the terms under which the Pentagon makes operational decisions, or object to individual use cases.

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Read more: https://www.axios.com/2026/02/24/anthropic-pentagon-claude-hegseth-dario

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This conflict has been brewing for a while, but this is the first time Anthropic has been given a deadline for capitulation.

Earlier stories mentioned the threat of declaring Anthropic a supply side risk, so companies doing business with the government wouldn't be able to use Anthropic's Claude AI.

The threat to use the Defense Production Act to force Anthropic to do what Hegseth wants is rarely used, and is being made because Anthropic has the best.AI.

Musk has already offered to do what the government but xAI isn't good enough to replace Claude.

Google and OpenAI have been discussing letting their AI be used for classified systems but that isn't definite yet. Google's Gemini would be the Pentagon's choice but is considered inferior to Anthropic's Claude.

EDITING to add that if the Trump regime is willing to go this far bullying Anthropic, expect similar bullying of other AI companies.

Which means, for instance, that if you wear Meta's smart glasses, which are probably recording more that Meta saves than you're aware of, don't expect Zuckerberg to stand up against threats like this from a government very interested in mass surveillance.