Pentagon vs Anthropic: ‘Exceptions don’t work’ — top US Department of War official opens up on clash with AI firm

Pentagon's discussions with Anthropic in the lead up to their Supply Chain Risk (SCR) designation, involved applications for the United States President's Golden Dome, scenarios of battles against Chinese hypersonic missiles and drone swarms.

Speaking on the “All-In Podcast” on Friday, US Undersecretary of War Emil Michael told the hosts that the artificial intelligence company's answer to those scenarios was: “We'll give you an exception for that”; and this led to the demand for “all lawful use” of technology.

“I need to have the terms of service be rational relative to our mission set… We started these negotiations. It took three months and I had to sort of give them scenarios, like this Chinese hypersonic missile example. They’re like, ‘OK, we’ll give you an exception for that.’ Well, how about this drone swarm? ‘We’ll give an exception for that.’ And I was like, exceptions doesn’t work. I can’t predict for the next 20 years what (are) all the things we might use AI for,” he stated.

The All-In Podcast is hosted by Silicon Valley venture capitalists Chamath Palihapitiya, David Friedberg, David Sacks and Jason Calacanis. Sacks, was not present for this particular podcast.

Pentagon and Anthropic clashed on ethical guidelines

Michael said that Anthropic and CEO Dario Amodei's ethical codes were not in alignment with the government's needs. Notably, Donald Trump's ambitious Golden Dome programme proposes putting US weapons in space.

He added that Palantir raised the alarm that if Anthropic's software put up a guardrail during an exercise, it would put people at risk. “I need a reliable, steady partner that gives me something, that’ll work with me on autonomous, because someday it’ll be real and we’re starting to see earlier versions of that. I need someone who’s not going to wig out in the middle,” he said.

Michael also accused Amodei of having a “God complex” and wanting to “personally control” the US military.

“It's our province to decide how we fight and win wars, so long as they're lawful. And I think at some point it turned into a PR game for them because they were not going to win this intellectual battle … and it became this ‘let’s find the issues that are most inflammatory, robot weapons and mass surveillance’. I mean, like we're the Department of War. We're not the FBI. We're not Homeland Security. You're not allowed to legally spy on Americans,” Michael said.

‘Not punitive action’, Trump official justifies SCR designation

When asked, Michael said that he does not view the SCR designation as punitive action.

“I don't view it as punitive. If their model has this policy bias, let's call it, based on their constitution, their culture, their people and so on. I don't want Lockheed Martin using their model to design weapons for me… Boeing wants to use Anthropic to build commercial jets, have at it. Boeing wants to use it to build fighter jets, I can't have that because I don't trust what the outputs may be, because they're so wedded to their own policy preferences,” he stated.

Anthropic to fight SCR designation in court

In a blog post on Thursday, Amodei confirmed that the company received a letter from the DoW the day prior, on the SCR designation, and added that Anthropic would pursue legal action against the move.

“Yesterday (March 4) Anthropic received a letter from the Department of War confirming that we have been designated as a supply chain risk to America's national security. We do not believe this action is legally sound, and we see no choice but to challenge it in court,” Amodei said.

He added that the statute applied (10 USC 3252) is “narrow” and exists to “protect the government rather than to punish a supplier”.

WATCH: Inside the Iran War and the Pentagon's Feud with Anthropic with Under Secretary of War Emil Michael