Pentagon's Hegseth summons Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for 'not a friendly' meeting

The Pentagon has summoned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in what has been described as a “not a friendly” meeting.

A senior defence official told Axios, “Anthropic knows this is not a get-to-know-you meeting. This is not a friendly meeting. This is a sh*t-or-get-off-the-pot meeting”.

The report says that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called Amodei to discuss the terms of Anthropic’s Claude in military use, which is the only AI model currently available for classified systems and the only one used for sensitive defence and intelligence work.

Why has Amodei been summoned?

The Pentagon, reluctant to forfeit its access to Claude, is reportedly angered by Anthropic’s refusal to fully remove its safeguards. With both parties seemingly at a stalemate ahead of the meeting, an Anthropic spokesperson maintained that the company is “having productive conversations, in good faith.”

On the other hand, the Defense Department has said that talks between its officials and Anthropic have shown no signs of progress and are on the verge of breaking down, sources told Axios.

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What has Anthropic said?

Anthropic has indicated it is open to easing certain usage limits but intends to hold a clear boundary in two areas: the mass surveillance of Americans and the creation of weapons that operate without human oversight. The company “is committed to using frontier AI in support of US national security,” a spokesperson said.

However, the Pentagon has refused to budge on its demand to deploy Claude for individual use and has called for all AI labs to make their models available for “all lawful uses”.

The conflict between Anthropic and the Pentagon has reached a point where the latter has threatened to declare the tech company a "supply chain risk." This would cancel all of Anthropic’s current contracts and also force other companies working with the Pentagon to ensure they are not using Claude in those workflows.

Defense officials are weighing additional measures to pressure Anthropic, with one official saying that Pete Hegseth is expected to deliver what amounts to an ultimatum to Dario Amodei at the upcoming meeting.

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The problem with Dario is, with him, it’s ideological. We know who we’re dealing with," a senior Pentagon official said.