Altman says agreement reached with Pentagon to deploy OpenAI models for classified work—Did Anthropic refusal clear way?

OpenAI chief Sam Altman on Saturday said that the company has reached an agreement with the United States Department of Defense, to deploy its models in the Pentagon's classified network.

In a post on social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), where Altman used the new name ‘Department of War’ and DoW, he said that their interactions “displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome”.

“We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can. The world is a complicated, messy, and sometimes dangerous place,” the artificial intelligence chief added.

‘AI safety, distribution of benefits’ are core missions: Altman

According to Altman, the ChatGPT-maker holds “AI safety and wide distribution of benefits” as its core missions, adding that “two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems.”

The language reflects sticking points in the clash between Claude-maker Anthropic and the Pentagon, which has pushed for full military use of AI tools for “all lawful purposes”. This includes use even in “most sensitive areas of weapons development, intelligence collection, and battlefield operations”, as per an Axios report.

However, Altman stated that the principles have not been compromised. “The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement,” he wrote.

Sam Altman on Pentagon deal: What does it include?

• Altman said that the company will build technical safeguards “to ensure our models behave as they should, which the DoW also wanted”.
• OpenAI will also “deploy FDEs to help with our models and to ensure their safety, we will deploy on cloud networks only”, he added.

• Seemingly addressing the Pentagon's public battle with Anthropic, he further said that OpenAI is asking the department to “offer these same terms to all AI companies, which in our opinion we think everyone should be willing to accept”.
• “We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements,” he stated.

Trump admin pushes back on Anthropic's safety concerns?

On Friday, the Trump administration ordered all agencies to stop using Anthropic's models and imposed penalties on the firm. US President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials publicly berated the company on social media and accused it of endangering national security after CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down over AI safety concerns.

In a statement issued on Friday evening, Anthropic said it would challenge what it called an unprecedented and legally unsound action “never before publicly applied to an American company”, AP reported.

The move is not surprising, earlier this month, the Axios report said the department threatened to cut ties with Anthropic over its insistence on some limits for use of its AI models by the US military. The two sticking points for Anthropic are — fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of Americans.

It cited a source say the categories under dispute have “considerable grey area around what would and wouldn't fall into” them, and the Pentagon is not willing to negotiate each case separately or have Anthropic's models unexpectedly block some processes.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Anthropic’s contract with the Pentagon is worth around $200 million.

Notably, the Pentagon also has contracts with Alphabet (Google) and Elon Musk's xAI — which are both also negotiating a move into the classified networks. The action against Anthropic is likely to benefit Grok and serve as a warning to Google during these negotiations, the AP report added.