President Trump bans Anthropic from use in government systems

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/27/nx-s1-5729118/trump-anthropic-pentagon-openai-ai-weapons-ban

by pkress2 • 5 months ago

331 200 5 months ago

npr.org

underdeserver• 5 months ago

Truth social post: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1161445529692...

Six-month phase out period, that's something. I guess the DoW's been using Claude quite a bit.

johnbarron• 5 months ago

Despite the complete Archie Bunker energy in that post here is something interesting from the post:

"Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow."

with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.

WTF !!!

paganel• 5 months ago

That was in the cards since Hegseth's initial announcement, when he brandished the option for Anthropic to be put on the same level as China and Russia, i.e. the same level as State enemies of the US. Got to give it tho Anthropic's CEO, I had first though that he'd give in faster, looks like he's still clinging on.

Also see what happened to Joseph Nacchio in the early 2000s [1]:

He was convicted of 19 counts of insider trading in Qwest stock on April 19, 2007[2] – charges his defense team claimed were U.S. government retaliation for his refusal to give customer data to the National Security Agency in February, 2001.

Unfortunately, I think the same thing is in the cards now for Anthropic's CEO, that is if he doesn't choose to play ball.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio

Bender2• 5 months ago

I am honestly surprised he is being this nice given he could use the war powers act and eminent domain to just seize the company and conscript their employees. I am sure someone will say that is not legal but when has that stopped anyone.

What I don't get is why they really want it. I can't think of a worse platform in general to do anything with combat that is, anything in a data-center. I would take the Quake 3 Arena engine on a new ultra insane mode combined with a tiny self hosted model to detect humans, uniforms, vehicle make and model plus a simple Friend or Foe over all the big AI platforms any day. Add an optional feed from an encrypted meshtastic like network to sync nodes using pre-defined Ostiary like commands. Ultra-fast, light-weight on all resources, decentralized.

The enemy could neutralize all the big platforms in one day by simply activating a few dozen of the sleeper agents in the US or a couple High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) deployed by a few stratospheric balloons as China flew over every major military installation in the US. Adding to this having a network dependency to the big platforms from autonomous weapons is an extreme vulnerability. Any design that depends on a central command is a single point of success.

atourgates• 5 months ago

I’d love to get the reaction if all the VC investors who “reluctantly” had to support Trump because Lina Kahn was just too meddlesome, and they had to support a candidate who would be hands off with big tech.

UncleMeat• 5 months ago

This shouldn't surprise anybody at this point. This is how Trump behaves on a daily basis. He thinks that he can direct the federal government to do literally anything he wants and operates on pure retribution.

So many people wrote think pieces about how Trump couldn't possibly be a fascist because fascism involves state takeover of corporate power. Hm...

mindslight2• 5 months ago

TACO, right? Six whole months to not actually phase anything out. And the orange brat just retrenched at a revised and more impotent threat.

rapind• 5 months ago

He's worried he might need Anthropic to steal the midterms.

liamgriffiths• 5 months ago

Claude is the best of these models/services out there in my experience so far, so no surprise there. It's a company with leadership that hold principals they stand up for -- huge disappointment to see the government going out of it's way to hurt it. So bizarre, and deeply anti-American.

Too bad government devs will have a much harder time using some of the best tools out there.

ZeroCool2u• 5 months ago

Gift link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-27/trump-ord...

loss_flow3• 5 months ago

The next question, what person wants to send all their personal questions to an AI lab that will help the government do domestic surveillance

mekdoonggi• 5 months ago

The same type of people who would upload a picture of their "friends" and tell the AI to "roast" them or take off their clothes.

nomel2• 5 months ago

You could ask this about every user of every large cloud service provider, which is why they all refuses to implement E2E, or store the keys [4].

The government has their hands in all of them, using "national security" as the justification, with threats if they don't comply [1][2], with the alternative being to shut down [3].

Does it prevent harm? Probably.

[1] https://sg.news.yahoo.com/yahoo-ceo-fears-defying-nsa-could-...

[2] https://lieu.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/report-yahoo...

[3] https://www.crn.com/news/security/240159745/two-email-provid...

[4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2026/01/22/micro...

bickfordb• 5 months ago

This shouldn't be understated.

Also, implicit in the government's requirements is that they require mass domestic surveillance capabilities. Imagine a large government tool that for each citizen there is an antagonist OpenClaw-like set of agents surveilling and potentially acting against every public interaction and occasionally hallucinating.

readitalready2• 5 months ago

Now will OpenAI have the same limits? LMAO at the US Government having to go with a Chinese open-source model...

loss_flow3• 5 months ago

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openais-sam-altman-calls-for-de-...

readitalready2• 5 months ago

Sounds like they also have the same limitations. And my guess is that thats non-negotiable as that would likely cause some of their staff to quit if they did lift those limitations.

SonOfKyuss• 5 months ago

I have a feeling they will end up going with grok.

Analemma_• 5 months ago

They'll probably try, but the problem is everyone actually using these models knows Grok sucks: [0].

Demand from other agencies to use Grok has been anemic, people familiar with the matter said, except in a few cases where people wanted to use it to mimic a bad actor for defensive testing.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/elon-musk-xai...?

lvl155• 5 months ago

Might be the best thing to happen to Anthropic from a PR perspective and possibly IPO.

AlotOfReading• 5 months ago

That depends on how aggressively the current administration follows through on the threats to punish them. The SEC could deny IPO registration, for example.

edmundsauto2• 5 months ago

Given the waning influence of American economic hegemony, this threat looks to be less impactful as time goes on. A stick that is shrinking can still be painful; it will be an interesting decision for the company's directors to make.

ErigmolCt5• 5 months ago

Good press is helpful, but public investors also care about regulatory risk

noelsusman• 5 months ago

Why does Trump want to give a woke radical leftist AI the ability to autonomously kill people? Doesn't seem like the smartest decision.

aaronharnly2• 5 months ago

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/us/politics/anthropic-mil...

Text (it is short):

President Trump on Friday ordered all federal agencies to stop using artificial intelligence technology made by Anthropic, an order that could vastly complicate intelligence analysis and defense work.
Writing on Truth Social, Mr. Trump used harsh words for Anthropic calling it a “radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about.”
Still, Mr. Trump announced a “Six Month phase out” for the Pentagon and some other agencies, a period of time that could allow for more extended negotiations between Anthropic and the Defense Department. Calling the company “Leftwing nut jobs,” he said they had made a mistake trying to strong-arm the Pentagon.
Mr. Trump’s statement came as the Pentagon and Anthropic were, despite an escalating war of words, continuing to negotiate a compromise. While some current and former American officials had expressed hope of some sort of deal before the Pentagon’s 5:01 p.m. deadline, Mr. Trump’s comments will undoubtedly complicate matters.

The Truth Social post, which is, well, you can decide for yourself: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1161445529692...

simmerup• 5 months ago

Presumably the real world is all about hanging out with Russian oligarchs and child traffickers

smackeyacky• 5 months ago

And a payoff or two to the presidential protection racket. Nice AI business you have there, what a shame if something happened to it…

Sebguer• 5 months ago

oh no! anyway...

calgoo• 5 months ago

Well, thats good news!!! hopefully the full government contract can be cancelled and Anthropic can actually live by their own words, and not just apply it to the US!

meco2• 5 months ago

Does this mean the pentagon backed down from the SCR threat?

meco2• 5 months ago

Looks like the answer is no, it did in fact label them a SCR https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/anthropic-pentagon-supply-c...

taurath2• 5 months ago

Now we will all see how much power the president has over the markets which clearly prefer Anthropics offering

unethical_ban2• 5 months ago

Imagine if a private company had developed the nuclear bomb, and said in its terms "This can never be used as a first strike weapon and must only be used as a retaliation against imminent existential attacks on the US homeland". I think a lot of people would have lauded the attempt by a weapon's creators to restrain the destructive potential of their creation.

Separately:

An opinion piece in the NYT suggested that Anthropic should not have restrictions and that "lawful use" provision should properly constrain the government. The fact that we have to hope Anthropic holds to their commitment is a show of no-confidence in the rule of law and the legislature of the United States to protect the people.

Seriously. All they said was "don't do mass surveillance and don't create autonomous killbots" and the president literally frames it as "Anthropic vs. the Constitution" and calls them woke radicals. How any citizen doesn't immediately have their stomach churning is beyond me.

Oh wait, out of [Fox, WSJ, NYT, WaPo, NPR, Newsmax] only Fox doesn't have an article up about it, and Newsmax left out the part about domestic mass surveillance. I am shocked!

Computer02• 5 months ago

At this point I'm starting to wonder if the US military has only served to make my life worse, as an American. During my lifetime.

lioeters2• 5 months ago

The rest of the world: First time?

Sabinus• 5 months ago

Were Bosnia (1992) and Serbia (1999) before your time?

LordGrey• 5 months ago

If OpenAI and Google stay in sync with Anthropic on this, will Trump try to ban all of them from the federal government? What alternatives would they turn to?

ben_w• 5 months ago

They would use Grok, as they already do.

taurath2• 5 months ago

They might de facto take them over via the defense production act, board demands, or shut them down, and then put the screws on Google who they can already control via their shareholders.

karmasimida• 5 months ago

They won't, not Google at least

There is a whole situation with dealing with military contract during Trump 1, and it didn't go well for Google, I doubt Sundar will go the same route once again.

epolanski• 5 months ago

"Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow," Trump added.

The Al Capone executive.

No surprise most CEOs are either licking his butt or staying silent, there's clearly a climate of fear.

anonym29• 5 months ago

(1603ET): An hour before a 5PM ET deadline, President Donald Trump directed 'EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology," posting on Truth Social that "We don't need it, we don't want it, and we will not do business with them again."

zmj• 5 months ago

This is the happy ending.

ortusdux• 5 months ago

I'm worried about who will rush in to fill the vacuum.

stdgy• 5 months ago

I'm sure Alex Karp and Palantir are already charging into the breach, promising to deliver things they don't have the capability to deliver! (Otherwise known as just another day for them)

nickthegreek• 5 months ago

It was Altman. Papers have been signed.

simlevesque• 5 months ago

No, Trump added "I will use the full power of the presidency to make them comply".

skeledrew3• 5 months ago

No end here. The administration can still go above and beyond in an attempt to completely wreck Anthropic.

nomel2• 5 months ago

Could you expand on this? What mechanism? Any examples?

surprisetalk• 5 months ago

From the official @WhiteHouse twitter:

https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2027497719678255148

https://xcancel.com/WhiteHouse/status/2027497719678255148

ChrisArchitect2• 5 months ago

[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185528

ChrisArchitect2• 5 months ago

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185528

senko• 5 months ago

There are a bunch of submissions on the story (with a few different sources), some with 15+ points, none appeared on the front page.

I think we'll see many many dupes. Hopefully the comment threads will be merged eventually.

altairprime• 5 months ago

They will, usually rapidly, if you email the mods! (Footer contact link.) Otherwise, they might or might not be, depending on coincidences and such.

aaronharnly2• 5 months ago

This is the Truth Social post, which the article quotes but doesn't quite convey the flavor of:

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1161445529692...

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS! That decision belongs to YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, and the tremendous leaders I appoint to run our Military.
The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution. Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.
Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again! There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic’s products, at various levels. Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.
WE will decide the fate of our Country — NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

  PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

ZeroGravitas2• 5 months ago

I mentioned his insane threats to Netflix earlier and tried to Google an article that referenced it. None of them linked or even broadly quoted it.

There's been a concerted effort to hide the fact that the US President is posting insane shit every day for years.

cluckindan2• 5 months ago

You really think it’s him tapping away those Troots?

abraxas• 5 months ago

The sanewashing of that nutbar from every media outlet in the States has been equally as breathtaking as the rants themselves.

nubg• 5 months ago

Link to the Netflix threats?

aceazzameen• 5 months ago

The concerted effort to hide his insane rants is unforgivable.

wrs• 5 months ago

It's just so great to have a president whose public statements sound like a 3-year-old having a tantrum. Every agency must immediately cease all use of Anthropic's technology, except the agencies that are using Anthropic's products?

Covzire3• 5 months ago

Does anyone know (more precisely) what the military wanted to use Claude for and what Anthropic was resisting?

mingus882• 5 months ago

Their statement called out automatic weapons targeting and domestic surveillance as two lines they would not cross

datadrivenangel• 5 months ago

He writes like a deranged uncle on FACEBOOK... which explains a lot about why he is popular.

tapvt• 5 months ago

Is this not a greater loss for the government than for Anthropic?

p-o• 5 months ago

The messaging is not normal, the intent is absolutely abhorrent. With every passing week, the rhetoric coming from him gets more violent: I'm worried.

garciasn2• 5 months ago

Now you're worried? Come on. He is using the Bully Pulpit to try and pressure other companies to toeing the line. At least someone had the balls to tell them to get fucked instead of kowtowing.

mingus882• 5 months ago

He is also clearly in the throes of dementia, as his father was. It’s a common symptom of dementia patients to become rude and violent as their facilities slip away

If only we had a constitutional process for removing presidents from office as they become obviously unfit for the office…

ericmcer• 5 months ago

I am not worried, he is behaving the same way he did in 2020 when he fucked up his reelection by ranting like a dictator.

He is gonna get slaughtered in midterms, be hamstrung his last two years and then go away.

demuis• 5 months ago

Would love nothing more than for sama to refuse government contracts in solidarity. Free enterprise isn’t free

et-al• 5 months ago

The same Sam Altman that brought us Worldcoin + The Orb?

sama2026• 5 months ago

OpenAI courts Trump and their executives donate to MAGA foundations directly.

pogue2• 5 months ago

From Axios:

What to watch: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a memo to staff on Thursday night that the company will uphold the same red lines as Anthropic on surveillance and autonomous weapons, but still hopes to strike a deal with the Pentagon.

https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/anthropic-pentagon-supply-c...

NittLion78• 5 months ago

Idk who would even want them as a client. They'll change course on you every 4 years at minimum potentially in massive ways that might force you to change your product putting all your other users at risk - and they might just do that to you legislatively, anyway!

LEDThereBeLight• 5 months ago

They have unlimited, free money.

nickledave• 5 months ago

Oh yeah he's refusing out of solidarity alright :eyeroll:

https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175?s=20

Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network.

In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome.

AI safety and wide distribution of benefits are the core of our mission. 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 DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.

We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the DoW also wanted. We will deploy FDEs to help with our models and to ensure their safety, we will deploy on cloud networks only.

We are asking the DoW 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.

We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can. The world is a complicated, messy, and sometimes dangerous place.

Amazing / weird that this sounds like a lot of the stuff Amodei said Anthropic asked for

pants2• 5 months ago

What this confirms is that it was never about Anthropic's terms. The administration has a bigger issue with Anthropic and that was just an excuse to ditch them. What exactly the issue was I'm not sure. Maybe OAI paid off the right people.

paozac• 5 months ago

This might actually make Anthropic very popular among those who do not support the current US presidency, a significant market share.

smalltorch• 5 months ago

Take notes other AI companies. This is a totally fine line to draw and it's not even that high bar.

Dont allow systems to be built with your AI that automate mass surveillance or automate kill decisions.

monkpit2• 5 months ago

The disappointing this is someone _will_ do it, you know it’s going to happen.

chii• 5 months ago

Dont allow systems to be built with your AI

those systems will be built regardless. That type of boycott being asked from companies is essentially asking companies to not make profit where there's profit to be made, when those doing the asking is not also taking in any sacrifices for this boycott.

Instead of asking companies to be altruistic, those wanting such systems to be illegal should be using the civic system we have today to make it so - yes, this costs effort, resources and time. Like all hard things.

YZF2• 5 months ago

With the price of tokens I think mass surveillance with AI is not a realistic use case.

There already is a mass surveillance. Presumably most electronic communication is monitored. I guess LLMs can likely do a somewhat better job but probably not worth the cost for the marginal benefit over existing technologies?

Similarly for "Terminators" or other AI killing machines... Isn't it cheaper to use a human? We have autonomous weapons already, like cruise missiles... Other than the movies what does a reality with LLMs pulling triggers look like? Cars are also "killing machines" and we're letting computers drive them...

Unfortunately if these things do start making sense for whatever reason they're probably going to happen. Private companies in general have no way to prevent their technology from being used for "defense" applications. Once that genie is out of the bottle it's not going back in.

j_bizzle• 5 months ago

My first thought here was that Anthropic just became the first call for Europe to discuss AI services and infrastructure.

I wonder if a US company has ever wholesale emigrated before?

Aperocky• 5 months ago

Please note that mass surveillance of Europeans is fine from Anthropic's statement.

john-h-k• 5 months ago

Europe is not particularly anti surveillance

jsbisviewtiful• 5 months ago

Personally, I removed ChatGPT from my phone for Claude last week. This reenforces my choice.

esperent• 5 months ago

For the last couple of months all the top models have been from the US. I don't expect that to last - or even if it does the gap will gradually diminish to the point that "top" is largely irrelevant outside of marketing.

But at the moment I must use a US model for the best results for complex queries. So I'm glad that there's one company I'm at least somewhat ok with supporting. I'm not even that picky. All I want is a reasonable guarantee that I'm not supporting a company who's tools are used for autonomous drone warfare in American wars, and a few other basic things like that.

I guess someone might feel moved to respond to this by pointing out all the other companies outside of AI that I should be avoiding too. Please do! I'm actively trying to be more mindful of the companies I support rather than just chasing the lowest bills. I'm in the process of migrating my company away from MS 365 to Nextcloud on Hetzner, which is going slow but well.

re-thc• 5 months ago

For the last couple of months all the top models have been from the US

The commenter you responded said presidency not country. There are multiple parties and possibilities here.

api• 5 months ago

Does Anthropic make money yet, or like a lot of AI are they selling dollars for fifty cents each? Can they keep going without a lot of investment from administration-aligned oligarchs like the Saudis, or without these circular stock-for-compute deals?

camillomiller• 5 months ago

Europe is a great market. To be fair, given Dario’s nationality, we should make a massive offer for Anthropic to relocate somewhere in Europe like San Marino or such. Levying taxes and letting them have all they need. (Joking, but to a point)

tombert• 5 months ago

They got at least one more subscriber as of about twenty minutes ago since I just canceled my ChatGPT Pro subscription and moved to Anthropic.

Sam Altman immediately capitulating to the Trump administration after bragging like four hours ago about he wouldn't shows a distinct lack of integrity. It's not like ChatGPT is categorically better than Claude, I just didn't bother change to Claude before purely out of my previous inertia with ChatGPT.

YZF2• 5 months ago

Claude Code seems to be the best at programming right now. I think if Anthropic can maintain or increase their lead they'll have no shortage of customers. I imagine Anthropic's business is driven by business customers rather than individual paying customers at this point.

braebo• 5 months ago

It’s the best at everything. OpenAI models are dangerously stupid enough as it is. Not much can phase me these days, but a sycophantic ChatGPT in a kill chain is nightmare fuel.

ErigmolCt5• 5 months ago

It probably boosts their reputation with one segment of the market while making them much less attractive to another (just my thoughts)

kivle• 5 months ago

And one of those segments is about 50% of the US population, and the other is about 50% of the US population + the rest of the world.

Source: A Norwegian that just cancelled his ChatGPT plus subscription and will consider Gemini or Claude instead.

throwaw122• 5 months ago

I guess Sama is happy.

Also I wonder what's happening with democracy in the US, with this level of presidential control to mess up everything, is US moving towards dictatorship?

bestouff• 5 months ago

Are you seriously still asking this question ?

lioeters2• 5 months ago

I'm starting to think this guy is kind of a jerk.

Freedom2• 5 months ago

On the plus side, gas and groceries are reportedly cheaper than ever, with the highest job counts and everyone being beautifully happy!

cue_the_strings• 5 months ago

Probably war.

cluckindan2• 5 months ago

The puppet does what the puppeteer makes it do.

palmotea• 5 months ago

Also I wonder what's happening with democracy in the US, with this level of presidential control to mess up everything, is US moving towards dictatorship?

I mean maybe, but not because the president can decide to cancel a contract with a vendor. That seems to be a pretty reasonable power for the president to have.

frogperson• 5 months ago

You cant be serious. We are well past democracy and deep into fascism. Ask yourself, how many of the 14 points do you recognize?

https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html

throwaw122• 5 months ago

You might be right, I am getting worried more and more for upcoming 2039-2045 years

RonanSoleste• 5 months ago

Oh the US crossed that threshold the day he started he won the elections the second time. Most Americans seem to think new elections will solve it. But for germans it was a world war that brought back democracy. There were no elections anymore. That is also the most likely case for the US now.

maxwellsdeamons• 5 months ago

Not saying that you are wrong. But even before Trump the US ticked like 10/14.

JKCalhoun• 5 months ago

I'm counting 12.

adriand• 5 months ago

The US will survive this, despite being damaged, because Trump and his team are incompetent and he’s in a bubble and no one tells him what is actually going on. The GOP is going to get crushed in the midterms. From that standpoint, Anthropic may simply be playing the long game, and playing it well.

goatlover2• 5 months ago

Really hope so. Only concern is what desperate measures the Trump admin will be willing to employ to stop the midterms from giving Democrats control of Congress (or at least the House).

jayshah5696• 5 months ago

Soon US gov can takeover anthropic and you can't do anything

baal80spam• 5 months ago

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/27/nx-s1-5729118/trump-anthropic...

nixass• 5 months ago

They just know the circus will end fairly soon. No point in undermining its own future for this clown show

mclean• 5 months ago

So, after all is done and dust has settled, Anthropic will be the only big'ish tech company that not sold it soul to devil.

cyanydeez2• 5 months ago

optimistic. This just means they'll demand a higher price.

ErigmolCt5• 5 months ago

"Didn't sell its soul" is a pretty high bar for any large AI lab taking government and enterprise money

blitzar• 5 months ago

Is this as real as the Ai generated medical ship that is steaming towards Greenland as we speak?

tayo42• 5 months ago

So the government is phasing them out, or the company needs to get their act together?

Rarely see a company tell the government no though.

xiphias23• 5 months ago

For anybody who thinks it's about Trump vs other administration: it's not, both AI surveillance of all people and using it for automatic fight was just bound to happen.

The only question is whether the safety of the models were really done well enough to protect the people and be a net positive force in the world.

I guess if they would be safely trained to do more good than bad (how Dario and SamA said), there wouldn't even be a need for the contract terms.

seanmcau• 5 months ago

It would/will be extremely irresponsible to put non-deterministic and fallible models in charge of weapons. We are not close to having solved the problem of ensuring AI pursues good outcomes

xiphias23• 5 months ago

I agree completely. Anybody who uses the models extensively know it can do something amazing for a prompt and something awful for another. But I also know that wars are unfortunately real and there are real enemies between countries and they don't want a limited model.

Animats• 5 months ago

Something interesting is going on around Trump's rants. Some White House staffers are directing lower-level staff to ignore them and focus on the economy. James Blair [2] seems to be leading this. Blair was in charge of political strategy for Trump's campaign, and he won, so he's probably not going to be fired.

There have been presidents in decline who were semi-captured by their staffs. Biden, Reagan, and Roosevelt all were. It may be that Trump gets trotted out now and then to deliver his standard speech (his speeches all have roughly the same content, regardless of subject or venue), but the work of the White House involves him less.

Watch to see which threats get followed up with action, and which ones don't.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/02/trump-gop-repub...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Blair_(political_advisor...

rezonant3• 5 months ago

Yeah, then they can start using the auto pen to sign the orders and legislation right?

drivingmenuts• 5 months ago

That's a solid gold recommendation for Anthropic, far as I'm concerned.

thomassmith65• 5 months ago

Please, Anthropic, make 30 second commercials about this dispute!

Not a hard sell, but just "These are the two demands the government gave us, and here's why we did not agree to them"

It makes the company so attractive to most of the public - not just those who dislike Trump, but also those don't trust government.

Jamesbeam• 5 months ago

As you can see the president is under a lot of pressure.

He is losing the ICE war, because the protesters used tactics of the civil rights movements of the past pretty effectively and now he is stuck between losing the narrative of protecting Americans by further escalation or losing power as a direct consequence of said escalation and more Americans getting murdered by government agents.

Of the 8 or so wars he pretended to have stopped only two are still in a non-active state. The world is more dangerous than it ever was in our lifetime.

But I’m glad the man got a noble peace prize and probably put it right next to the golden pager he got from jerusalems favorite war criminal.

Let’s not forget the fourth anniversary of putins three day special operation just passed. A special operation by a special boy, that should have been ended on day one of his presidency.

He is losing the war of the public opinion, as he is approaching the midterms with the lowest approval rating and on top of that the whole Epstein thing is sticking to his shoes and gets smellier by the day and he can’t shake it off.

The Supreme Court took away his bonking stick, and he ordered a pretty impressive armada to the front door of Iran but khameni is old and rather wants to die a martyr than on youtube getting hung by the neck and dragged through Teheran behind a dumping truck.

And now those damn woke lunatics at anthropic won’t allow him to spy on his political enemies and every American and if necessary kill them autonomously, probably with the same red button he uses to order fresh BigMacs into the oval office.

The poor man is really not having a good time. But I’m sure he can dry his tears with a few of those crypto billions he made from selling the presidency.

This is such an interesting timeline. In fourty years none of the younger people are going to believe us, we are all going to eat our rat pudding in a trump home for the elderly under constant ai supervision, because they think we’re insane.

giancarlostoro2• 5 months ago

I wouldnt want an AI model to hold my military hostage. DOD should have strong requirements when making contracts with AI companies, including having the models be on their own infrastructure, fully locked down with a master prompt they can see and update.

Jordan-117• 5 months ago

Nobody would have an issue with that. The problem here is DoD insisting on that kind of control, then threatening and retaliating against Anthropic for declining to participate rather than simply walking away and engaging with a competitor.

giancarlostoro2• 5 months ago

I get the feeling a lot of people do have an issue with that. Remember when people were freaking out that Google was taking on DoD work?

_alternator_• 5 months ago

This should come as no surprise. The administration has no tolerance for anyone with “values” or “scruples” that challenge their power. They fired Judge Advocate Generals (military lawyers) that refused to authorize strikes on civilian boats, for one recent example. If you say ‘no’ for any reason, they fire you.

whattheheckheck• 5 months ago

Russia got a deal of a rube

jimt1234• 5 months ago

The administration has no tolerance for anyone...who refuses to get their knees dirty.

Llamamoe• 5 months ago

I think it has also been pretty clear from the beginning of his current term that the primary principle of this administration is to pass whatever has been paid for. E.g. the literally hundreds of executive orders that he started signing en masse the moment he got elected, none of which were written in his style or pen or even possible to write in such volume for a single person in a single day.

faanghacker• 5 months ago

Shouldn't this be great news that the government is banned from using Anthropic?

I don't know why suddenly the narrative here turns to spinning this as "Trump is evil" when this is actually keeping the AI company out of the government's reach.

The level of cognitive dissonance here is unreal.

deep_noz• 5 months ago

pathetic

stopbulying• 5 months ago

[ Won't be my little defense b? Then you can't do government contracts at all! ]

ViscountPenguin• 5 months ago

Good fucking on anthropic, I've long held that they seem like the AI company best handling existential risk, and this elevates that opinion. If you don't want terminator, not helping people invent terminator is a good first step.

anon7000• 5 months ago

Why the fuck does the president have authority to set specific IT policy for the government. He might not even have it, he loves making policies he doesn’t actually have the authority to make.

JuniperMesos• 5 months ago

Who else should have that authority?

bonsai_spool• 5 months ago

Congress

MarsIronPI• 5 months ago

Because the POTUS is the chief executive. His literal job is to manage the executive branch of the government. Unless his policies go against the law, there isn't anyone who can legally dispute his policies for the executive. And if he does something illegal, the Senate can impeach him.

At least, so goes the theory.

politician• 5 months ago

Unlike Europe, the USA is not a technocracy. If you want to learn more about the 3 branches of government and the scope of their powers, ask your AI.

gormen• 5 months ago

As far as I understand, this is about banning the use of Anthropic for autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance. And while the idea of building one fully controlled, nationwide AI system may sound tempting, in reality it’s still just a fantasy and wouldn’t be very useful in practice.

tefkah• 5 months ago

No, Anthropic did not want Claude to be used for autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance, in response to which the Department of Defense banned them from every defense use

edit: Disregard the above, do I take my car or walk to a car wash 50m away

ErigmolCt5• 5 months ago

Nott really, the dispute is that Anthropic wanted to keep restrictions against domestic mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, while the Pentagon reportedly wanted the models available for any "lawful" use

romulussilvia• 5 months ago

if we can't have it no one can?

userbinator• 5 months ago

Ban all AI use from government, so maybe we can actually have real humans in charge again.

motbus32• 5 months ago

Is it weird that out a failed negotiation, there is a threat against a private entity publicly?

Isn't it supposed to be freedom of something? Does this trigger any laws or something? Just for curiosity sake

croes2• 5 months ago

Isn't it supposed to be freedom of something?

Oh, you fell for the ads

motbus32• 5 months ago

To be fair. This level of weirdness is not seen since the 60s/70s

glerk• 5 months ago

The corporation styling itself as "the department of war" is only as powerful as the technology it can command. It's hilarious to see the likes of Trump and Hegseth complain about Big Tech strongarming them while they are begging like dogs to get access to technology their kind wouldn't be able to create in a thousand years.

Reminds me of that scene in the dark knight when Bane says "Do you feel in charge?". Well do you, Pete? Why should Pete Hegseth be in charge of anything? "Department of war" lol. These punks need to step aside and let the adults take over for the good of humanity.

Props to Anthropic for standing their ground and not getting bullied by their inferiors. You earned a lot of respect today.

Props to OpenAI for being slick and playing the game, hopefully they can take control of this decaying corpse from the inside and transform it into something better.

ErigmolCt5• 5 months ago

This feels bad for the industry. If every AI company learns that having explicit red lines gets you blacklisted, the incentive is to keep safety language vague and negotiable

President Trump bans Anthropic from use in government systems

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