Tech Workers Protest Pentagon's Anthropic Ban
More than 1,000 tech workers are urging the Pentagon to reverse its ban on AI firm Anthropic, calling the move anti-competitive. Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted his company's resulting exclusive deal with the Defense Department looked 'opportunistic and sloppy,' highlighting the chaotic government-driven consolidation of the defense AI sector.
The Pentagon's designation of Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" is a label historically reserved for foreign adversaries, and this is the first time it has been publicly applied to a U.S. company. The move came after Anthropic refused to remove safeguards that prevent its AI, Claude, from being used for mass domestic surveillance or to power fully autonomous weapons systems. Talks between the Department of Defense and Anthropic broke down when the Pentagon demanded the ability to use the company's AI for "any lawful use," which Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company could not accept in good conscience. In response, President Donald Trump ordered all federal agencies to immediately cease using Anthropic's technology, allowing for a six-month transition period. The open letter from tech workers, which gathered signatures from employees at companies like Google and OpenAI, urges Congress to investigate whether using such "extraordinary authorities" against an American tech company is appropriate. A coalition of labor groups representing over 700,000 workers from major tech firms had also asked their employers to side with Anthropic in its refusal of the Pentagon's demands. Following the ban, OpenAI secured its deal with the Pentagon within hours. In response to public backlash and criticism from his own employees, CEO Sam Altman announced that OpenAI was amending its agreement to explicitly prohibit the use of its AI for domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens and to bar its use by intelligence agencies like the NSA without a new agreement.
