Defense Secretary summons Anthropic’s Amodei over military use of Claude
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has summoned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to the Pentagon for a tense discussion over the military's use of Claude. Hegseth has threatened to designate Anthropic a "supply chain risk."
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is calling in Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to the Pentagon on Tuesday morning to discuss the military use of Claude, according to reporting from Axios.
The meeting comes as the Pentagon threatens to declare Anthropic a “supply chain risk” — a label typically reserved for foreign adversaries — after the AI firm refused to allow the Department of Defense to use its tech for the mass surveillance of Americans and the development of weapons that fire without human involvement.
Anthropic signed a $200 million contract with DOD last summer, and Claude was reportedly used during the January 3 special operations raid that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, an episode that brought the two sides’ tensions into the open.
A source told Axios that Hegseth is giving Amodei an ultimatum: play ball or be banished. It’s unclear whether he’s bluffing — replacing Anthropic would be a significant undertaking. But the stakes are real: A supply chain risk designation would void Anthropic’s contract and force other Pentagon partners to drop Claude entirely.
More Articles
AI’s promise to indie filmmakers: Faster, cheaper, lonelier
AI expands access to filmmaking for resource-constrained creators. But as efficiency becomes the industry’s north star, creativity risks being overwhelmed by a deluge of low-effort, AI-generated content.
Node-based design tool Flora raises $42M from Redpoint Ventures
Flora lets customers use image, text, or video to create media assets, including images and video. Users can also use prompts to create modifications to build new nodes with multiple iterations. These generated versions are mapped with each other on a canvas to give you a tractable flow of creation.
Sequoia to invest in Anthropic, breaking VC taboo on backing rivals: FT
Venture capital firms have historically avoided backing competing companies in the same sector, preferring to place their bets on a single winner. Yet here's Sequoia, already invested in both OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI, now throwing its weight behind Anthropic, too.
Qwen3-Max Thinking beats Gemini 3 Pro and GPT-5.2 on Humanity's Last Exam (with search)
Qwen3-Max Thinking beats Gemini 3 Pro and GPT-5.2 on Humanity's Last Exam (with search)
Google announces a new protocol to facilitate commerce using AI agents
Google said that merchants can now offer discounts to users directly in AI mode results.
Meta acquires Manus: what it means for your enterprise AI agent strategy
Meta acquires Manus: what it means for your enterprise AI agent strategy
Black box AI isn’t enough: Why enterprise consulting is moving to grounded models
"Grounded AI is non-negotiable, because accuracy isn’t optional when we’re doing million-dollar transformation projects within the SAP ecosystem."
Simplifying the AI stack: The key to scalable, portable intelligence from cloud to edge
To unlock the next wave of AI innovation, the industry must pivot decisively away from siloed development and toward streamlined, end-to-end platforms.