Developing: Pentagon and Anthropic Clash Over Military AI Guardrails as Defense Secretary Hegseth Meets CEO Amodei
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met Tuesday morning with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at the Pentagon in a high-stakes showdown over whether the artificial intelligence company will be permitted to maintain its own ethical guardrails on how the U.S. military uses its technology. The meeting comes after weeks of escalating tension between the Department of Defense — now rebranded as the Department of War — and the AI startup, which holds a contract worth up to $200 million and is the only frontier AI company to have deployed models on classified military networks. At the heart of the dispute is a fundamental question that extends far beyond any single contract: Who gets to decide the ethical boundaries of AI in warfare — the companies that build the technology, or the government that wields it? Anthropic has insisted its Claude AI systems must not be used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance of American citizens. The Pentagon has demanded the right to use all AI tools for "any lawful use" without company-imposed restrictions. The confrontation arrives at a moment when Anthropic is simultaneously shaking multiple industries. In just the past week, the company's new AI tools have triggered massive sell-offs in cybersecurity and legacy software stocks, while its accusations of intellectual property theft by Chinese AI firms have added a geopolitical dimension to its already outsized influence. With a valuation of $380 billion following a $30 billion funding round earlier this month, Anthropic finds itself at the center of nearly every major AI debate in 2026.