U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has summoned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to the Pentagon for a high-stakes meeting on Tuesday.
The summons follows a breakdown in negotiations over how the U.S. military utilises Anthropic’s flagship AI model, Claude.
According to reports from Axios, the discussion is not a casual introduction but a "sh*t-or-get-off-the-pot" meeting intended to resolve a monthslong impasse regarding usage guardrails on classified networks.
The core of the dispute lies in the Pentagon's demand that AI developers allow their tools to be used for "all lawful purposes," including battlefield operations, intelligence gathering, and weapons development.
Anthropic has maintained strict ethical prohibitions against using Claude for mass surveillance of American citizens and the development of fully autonomous lethal weapons that operate without human intervention.
While competitors like OpenAI, Google, and xAI have reportedly shown more flexibility in unclassified settings, Anthropic remains the only provider whose models are currently integrated into the military’s most sensitive classified systems.
Pentagon officials have grown increasingly frustrated with what they characterise as "ideological" restrictions that could jeopardise warfighter success. The Department of Defense has reportedly threatened to designate Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" — a label typically reserved for hostile foreign entities. Such a designation would effectively blacklist the company from the defense sector, requiring all federal contractors and vendors to certify that they do not use Anthropic’s technology in any of their workflows.
Despite the escalating tension, Anthropic maintains that it is engaged in "good faith" conversations with the Department of War.
The company recently highlighted its commitment to national security, noting it was the first to provide customised models for classified environments. However, the outcome of Tuesday’s meeting at the Pentagon is expected to set a critical precedent for the relationship between the Trump administration’s push for military AI dominance and the self-imposed ethical boundaries of the private tech sector.