Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s least favorite artificial intelligence CEO isn’t holding back from calling out his rivals’ capitulation to the Trump administration.
The defense secretary has been enraged with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei because it won’t remove safety guardrails that prevent its AI, Claude, from using lethal autonomous weapons without a human and engaging in surveillance of Americans.
In a Friday memo to employees, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the relationship between the company and the government had grown strained because Anthropic was unwilling to cozy up to the Trump administration and give “dictator-style” praise, unlike other AI companies, according to a report in The Information.
Amodei wrote that the “real reasons” the Department of Defense and the Trump administration “do not like us is that we haven’t donated to Trump (while OpenAI/Greg have donated a lot),” in what appeared to be a reference to OpenAI President Greg Brockman’s $25 million donation to a Trump super PAC.
“We haven’t given dictator-style praise to Trump (while Sam has), we have supported AI regulation which is against their agenda, we’ve told the truth about a number of AI policy issues (like job displacement), and we’ve actually held our red lines with integrity rather than colluding with them to produce ‘safety theater’ for the benefit of employees (which, I absolutely swear to you, is what literally everyone at DoW, Palantir, our political consultants, etc, assumed was the problem we were trying to solve),” the memo continued.
Palantir is Anthropic’s business partner for government work, and “DoW” refers to the Trump administration’s name for the Department of Defense, the Department of War.
The Daily Beast reached out to the Pentagon for comment.
The same day Amodei sent the memo, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that his company had inked a deal with the Pentagon to use its AI tools in the military’s classified systems. This deal included similar safety guardrails, which Anthropic had requested, CNN reported.
It remains unclear what is different about OpenAI’s deal with the DOD from what Anthropic had requested.
The feud between Amodei and Hegseth is believed to have originally escalated after reports that the Pentagon used Claude in the Trump administration’s January military action in Venezuela.
Hegseth has effectively canceled the DOD’s $200 million contract with the San Francisco-based company as it refused bow to his demands.
He also designated the company as a supply-chain risk to national security, a designation that is typically reserved for companies with direct connections to foreign adversaries. Anthropic said it will challenge that designation.
President Donald Trump also weighed in on the matter, claiming on Friday on his Truth Social platform that the company was engaged in unconstitutional tactics.
“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” the 79-year-old president wrote. “Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.”
Amidst the Trump administration’s feud with Anthropic, its Claude app has skyrocketed to the top of the Apple App Store, becoming the most downloaded free app in the last week.
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