A top Pentagon official lost his cool with an AI company in full public view after it refused to bow to the demands of the so-called “War Department.”
Undersecretary of Defense Emil Michael’s very public meltdown was in response to fraught discussions with the AI safety and research company Anthropic.
Late night Thursday into the early hours of Friday, Michael, who oversees Research and Engineering at Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense, fired off six X posts about Anthropic and its CEO, Dario Amodei, in just two hours. In one post, he called Amodei a “liar” with a “God complex.”
Earlier this week, the San Francisco-based company told the Pentagon it would not agree to its demands to drop critical safety precautions and grant the U.S. military full access to Anthropic’s AI capabilities. Amodei said Anthropic “cannot in good conscience” comply with Hegseth’s requests.
This led the DoD to reportedly threaten to cancel its $200 million contract with Anthropic. Hegseth’s department also warned that if a deal is not struck by Friday evening, Anthropic will be designated a “supply chain risk” by the department, according to Axios.
At the head of these discussions is Michael, who is apparently so upset by Anthropic’s refusal to yield to his department’s demands that he posted a barrage of social media posts attacking the company.
In his first missive, late on Thursday, he reacted to an Axios piece about Anthropic reportedly rejecting his department’s final offer. “It’s a shame that @DarioAmodei is a liar and has a God-complex. He wants nothing more than to try to personally control the US Military and is ok putting our nation’s safety at risk. The @DeptofWar will ALWAYS adhere to the law but not bend to whims of any one for-profit tech company,” he raged.
Earlier this week, Anthropic dropped a central pledge of its flagship safety policy, a 2023 commitment never to train an AI system unless the company could guarantee in advance that the safety measures in place were adequate. “We didn’t really feel, with the rapid advance of AI, that it made sense for us to make unilateral commitments,” Anthropic’s chief science officer Jared Kaplan told TIME.
On Thursday evening, Michael shared this piece, writing: “Not hard to believe that @AnthropicAI dropped their own safety policy but thinks they should dictate ours @DeptofWar #GodComplex.”
Minutes later, he reacted to Democrat senator Elissa Slotkin asking on X, “Why wouldn’t Secretary Hegseth say, ‘No problem, we’re never gonna use AI at the Pentagon to conduct mass surveillance of American citizens?’”
He said: “Respectfully @SenatorSlotkin that’s exactly what was said. @DarioAmodei wants to override Congress and make his own rules to defy democratically decided laws. He is trying to re-write your laws by contract. Call @DarioAmodei to testify UNDER OATH!”
He took a break for around an hour, then began railing against “Claude’s Constitution.” Claude is Anthropic’s chatbot, its “constitution” is a set of functionality values rather than principles on how to govern. Michael painted it as if it were the latter, writing: “Imagine your worst nightmare. Now imagine that @AnthropicAI has their own ‘Constitution.’ Not corporate values, not the United States Constitution, but their own plan to impose on Americans their corporate laws.”
About an hour later, he honed in on an earlier statement from Amodei about the discussions with the DoD. In it he raised concerns about “mass domestic surveillance” and “fully autonomous weapons.”
Rolling out a new hashtag, Michael wrote, “Anthropic is lying. The @DeptofWar doesn’t do mass surveillance as that is already illegal. What we are talking about is allowing our warfighters to use AI without having to call @DarioAmodei for permission to shoot down an enemy drone swarms that would kill Americans. #CallDario.”
Later, he began posting screenshots of an AI training document about cultural sensitivity, while, as Amodei had pointed out, the actual dispute is over autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.
That concluded his two-hour gab fest. Amodei did not reply to the petty attacks. The Daily Beast has contacted the DoD and Anthropic for comment.
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