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A top Pentagon official said Anthropic’s dispute with the government<\/a> over the use of its artificial intelligence technology in fully autonomous weapons came after a debate over how AI could be used in President Donald Trump’s future Golden Dome missile defense program<\/a>, which aims to put U.S. weapons in space.<\/p>\n U.S. Defense Undersecretary Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer, said he came to view the AI company’s ethical restrictions on the use of its chatbot Claude as an irrational obstacle as the U.S. military pursues giving greater autonomy to swarms of armed drones<\/a>, underwater vehicles and other machines to compete with rivals like China that could do the same.<\/p>\n \u201cI need a reliable, steady partner that gives me something, that\u2019ll work with me on autonomous, because someday it\u2019ll be real and we\u2019re starting to see earlier versions of that,” Michael said in a podcast aired Friday. “I need someone who\u2019s not going to wig out in the middle.\u201d<\/p>\n The comments came after the Pentagon formally designated<\/a> San Francisco-based Anthropic a supply chain risk, cutting off its defense work using a rule designed to prevent foreign adversaries from harming national security systems. <\/p>\n Anthropic has vowed to sue over the designation, which affects its business partnerships with other military contractors.<\/p>\n Trump has also ordered federal agencies to immediately stop using Claude, though the Republican president gave the Pentagon six months to phase out a product that\u2019s deeply embedded in classified military systems, including those used in the Iran war<\/a>.<\/p>\n Anthropic said it only sought to restrict its technology from being used for two high-level usages: mass surveillance of Americans or fully autonomous weapons.<\/p>\n Michael, a former Uber executive, revealed his side of months-long talks with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in a lengthy conversation with Silicon Valley venture capitalists Jason Calacanis, David Friedberg and Chamath Palihapitiya, co-hosts of the \u201cAll-In” podcast. <\/p>\n A fourth co-host, former PayPal executive David Sacks, is now Trump’s AI czar and was not present for the episode but has been a vocal critic of Anthropic, including for its hiring of former Biden administration officials shortly after Trump returned to the White House last year.<\/p>\n As talks hit an impasse last week, Michael lashed out at Amodei on social media, saying he \u201chas a God-complex\u201d and \u201cwants nothing more than to try to personally control” the military. In the podcast, however, he positioned the dispute as part of a broader military shift toward using AI.<\/p>\n Michael said the military is developing procedures for enabling different levels of autonomy in warfare depending on the risk posed.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is part of the debate I had with Anthropic, which is we need AI for things like Golden Dome,\u201d Michael said, sharing a hypothetical scenario of the U.S. having only 90 seconds to respond to a Chinese hypersonic missile.<\/p>\n A human anti-missile operator \u201cmay not be able to discriminate with their own eyes what they\u2019re going after,\u201d but an autonomous counterattack would be a low risk \u201cbecause it\u2019s in space and you\u2019re just trying to hit something that\u2019s trying to get you.\u201d<\/p>\n In another scenario, he said, \u201cwho could oppose if you have a military base, you have a bunch of soldiers sleeping, that you have a laser that can take down drones autonomously?\u201d<\/p>\n In response to the podcast comments, Anthropic pointed to an earlier Amodei statement saying \u201cAnthropic understands that the Department of War, not private companies, makes military decisions. We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael, the defense undersecretary for research and engineering, was sworn in last May and said he took over the military’s \u201cAI portfolio\u201d in August. That’s when he said he began scrutinizing Anthropic’s contracts \u2014 some of which dated from President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration. Michael said he questioned Anthropic over terms of use that he deemed too restrictive.<\/p>\n \u201cI need to have the terms of service be rational relative to our mission set,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we started these negotiations. It took three months and I had to sort of give them scenarios, like this Chinese hypersonic missile example. They\u2019re like, \u2018OK, we\u2019ll give you an exception for that.\u2019 Well, how about this drone swarm? \u2018We\u2019ll give an exception for that.\u2019 And I was like, exceptions doesn\u2019t work. I can\u2019t predict for the next 20 years what (are) all the things we might use AI for.\u201d<\/p>\n That’s when the Pentagon began insisting Anthropic and other AI companies allow for \u201call lawful use\u201d of their technology, Michael said.<\/p>\n