A senior Trump administration official and key adviser are slamming OpenAI head of strategic futures Dean Ball's views on regulation, casting a shadow on the future of the company's relationship with the government. Why it matters: The criticism targets a former White House architect of the administration's AI Action Plan who now works at OpenAI, potentially complicating the company's relationship with the Trump administration. State of play: The Trump administration is grappling with how to balance competition and cybersecurity concerns as increasingly capable Chinese AI models come onto the scene. - Ball said the Trump administration would eventually land on creating regulatory risk around using Chinese models as "their best…
Emil Michael, undersecretary of war for research and engineering and War Department chief technology officer, said that use of artificial intelligence across the department is up by roughly 1.42 million users over the past calendar year.
The Trump administration defended its designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk in oral arguments in federal court Tuesday, even as it actively tries to figure out how it can adopt its most powerful model yet, Mythos, to combat cyber threats. Why it matters: Treating a U.S. company as a national security threat while looking to use its technology to combat foreign adversaries is an awkward needle to thread. Catch up quick: The Pentagon claims it's unworkable for the military or its vendors to rely on Anthropic because the company might pull the plug at any time due to its "ideological" views around AI safety. - Unlike other model-makers, Anthropic refused to agree to the Pentagon's "all lawful use" standard for AI deployment. -…
As Anthropic's negotiations with the Pentagon were collapsing, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees he was trying to "save" his competitor, according to internal Slack messages seen by Axios. - At the same time, Altman privately vented that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had spent years trying to undermine him. Why it matters: The messages reveal Altman's conflicted thinking as OpenAI swooped in to secure a Pentagon contract Anthropic had just lost — portraying himself as a peacemaker even as his company emerged as the primary beneficiary. - The Slack messages, paraphrased below, trace Altman's thinking from Feb. 24 through March 2 as the dispute escalated into one of the most dramatic confrontations yet between the AI industry and the…
The Pentagon is highlighting new national security concerns about Anthropic's use of foreign workers, including from China, according to a court filing. Why it matters: The Defense Department is raising red flags about a key element of the AI industry — its reliance on global talent — as it moves to dismiss Anthropic's lawsuit . What they're saying: "Anthropic employs a large number of foreign nationals to build and support its LLM products, including many from the Peoples Republic of China (PRC)," a March 17 declaration from Pentagon undersecretary Emil Michael states. - The use of those workers, Michael wrote, "increases the degree of adversarial risk should those employees comply with the PRC's National Intelligence Law." -…
Who ultimately governs the behavior of intelligent machines that influence military power? Anthropic AI, until very recently, occupied a privileged position within the technological architecture of the United States national security apparatus. The company, founded by former artificial intelligence researchers and lavishly financed by Silicon Valley capital, developed an advanced family of large language models […] The post The Ideological Contamination of the Arsenal: Why the Pentagon Cast Anthropic Out of America’s Military AI Supply Chain appeared first on StoneZone .
Who ultimately governs the behavior of intelligent machines that influence military power? Anthropic AI, until very recently, occupied a privileged position within the technological architecture of the United States national security apparatus. The company, founded by former artificial intelligence researchers and lavishly financed by Silicon Valley capital, developed an advanced family of large language models known as Claude. These systems were designed to ingest vast oceans of data, synthesize intelligence, assist engineers, support cyber operations, and accelerate the decision making processes that increasingly define modern warfare. Because of these capabilities, Claude became the only frontier artificial intelligence (AI) system…Open
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. Why it matters: The Pentagon wants to punish Anthropic as the feud over AI safeguards grows increasingly nasty, but officials are also worried about the consequences of losing access to its industry-leading model, Claude. - "The only reason we're still talking to these people is we need them and we need…
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has summoned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to the Pentagon on Tuesday morning for what sources say is likely to be a tense meeting over terms for military use of Anthropic's Claude. - "Anthropic knows this is not a get-to-know-you meeting," a senior Defense official told Axios. "This is not a friendly meeting. This is a shit-or-get-off-the-pot meeting." Why it matters: Claude is the only AI model available in the military's classified systems, and the most capable model for sensitive defense and intelligence work. The Pentagon doesn't want to lose access to Claude, but is furious with Anthropic for refusing to lift its safeguards entirely. State of play: The two sides are heading into the meeting on two…