The U.S. Department of Defense is urging artificial intelligence firms to permit military use of their technology for any legal application, though Anthropic has notably resisted this pressure, as detailed in a recent report. This same request has reportedly been extended to OpenAI, Google, and xAI.

According to an unnamed former Trump administration official, one of these companies has already agreed to the terms, while the other two have indicated some willingness to negotiate. Anthropic, however, has emerged as the most opposed.

In reaction to this resistance, the Pentagon is now considering terminating its substantial $200 million contract with Anthropic. Earlier this year, it was revealed that serious disputes existed between Anthropic and Defense Department leadership regarding the permissible uses of its Claude AI models.

Subsequent reporting indicated that the Claude system was employed in a U.S. military operation targeting the capture of then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. A spokesperson for Anthropic clarified that the company has “not discussed the use of Claude for specific operations with the Department of War,” emphasizing that their discussions are “focused on a specific set of Usage Policy questions - namely, our hard limits around fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance.”