Altman Calls Pentagon Deal 'Sloppy'

The controversy began when Anthropic, a rival AI company, refused to remove safeguards from its government contracts. These safeguards were designed to prevent its AI, Claude, from being used for two specific purposes: mass domestic surveillance of American citizens and the development of fully autonomous weapons that can kill without direct human control. In response to Anthropic's refusal, President Donald Trump directed all federal agencies to cease using the company's technology. Subsequently, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth labeled Anthropic a "supply chain risk," a designation typically reserved for foreign adversaries, and barred military contractors from doing business with the AI firm. Just hours after the public fallout with Anthropic, OpenAI announced its own deal to provide AI for classified military systems. This rapid sequence of events led to public backlash and criticism that OpenAI was capitalizing on its competitor's ethical stance, prompting many users to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions. In an internal memo later shared publicly, Sam Altman stated he was "genuinely trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome." Acknowledging the poor timing, he said the rushed announcement "just looked opportunistic and sloppy," calling it a "good learning experience." Following the criticism, OpenAI amended its Pentagon contract to explicitly prohibit its models from being used for the domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens. The updated agreement also affirms that the AI services will not be used by intelligence agencies like the NSA without a specific modification to the contract. Hundreds of tech workers from companies including Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft have signed open letters. They are urging the Pentagon and Congress to reverse the "supply chain risk" designation for Anthropic, arguing it weaponizes procurement authority and punishes a company for establishing ethical red lines.