Anthropic vs Pentagon: Amodei Reveals Govt Demands to Bypass Claude Safeguards

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Thursday released a statement revealing details of the company’s discussions with the US Department of War. He stated that the Pentagon has threatened to remove the company from the government contracts and designate it a “supply chain risk” label if they don’t remove the safeguards applied to Claude.

A supply chain risk designation is a label reserved for US adversaries and has never been applied to an American company before.

The Pentagon also threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act to force the safeguards’ removal.

What is the Case About?

Amodei stated that two use cases have never been included in Anthropic’s contracts with the Department of War.

First is mass domestic surveillance, as the company believes it is incompatible with democratic values and presents serious, novel risks to our fundamental liberties.

Second is fully autonomous weapons. Amodei remarked that fully autonomous weapons (those that take humans out of the loop entirely and automate selecting and engaging targets) may prove critical for national defense. But today, the frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons.

“We will not knowingly provide a product that puts America’s warfighters and civilians at risk,” he said, adding that the company has offered to work directly with the Department of War on R&D to improve the reliability of these systems, but they have not accepted this offer.

Govt Threats & Anthropic’s Response

In his public note, the Anthropic CEO wrote, “The Department of War has stated they will only contract with AI companies who accede to “any lawful use” and remove safeguards …. They have threatened to remove us from their systems if we maintain these safeguards; they have also threatened to designate us a “supply chain risk”.... and to invoke the Defense Production Act to force the safeguards’ removal.”

Amodei stated that these threats do not change our position: “we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.”