Hegseth Warns Anthropic to Let Military Use the Company’s AI as It Sees Fit

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24, 2026 (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic's CEO a Friday deadline to open the company's artificial intelligence technology for unrestricted military use or risk losing its government contract, according to a person familiar with their meeting Tuesday.

Anthropic makes the chatbot Claude and remains the last of its peers to not supply its technology to a new U.S. military internal network. CEO Dario Amodei repeatedly has made clear his ethical concerns about unchecked government use of AI, including the dangers of fully autonomous armed drones and of AI-assisted mass surveillance that could track dissent.

Besides canceling the contract, Pentagon officials warned they could designate Anthropic a supply chain risk or use the Defense Production Act to essentially give the military more authority to use its products even if it doesn’t approve of how they are used, according to the person, who was not authorized to comment publicly about the meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity.