3 March 2026

Who's Setting the Rules for Military AI? Not Congress

Tony Johnson

On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a Friday deadline: remove the guardrails on the Claude AI system — specifically, the company’s restrictions on mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons — or lose a $200 million Pentagon contract. Hegseth also threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act and designate Anthropic a supply chain risk, a designation that could effectively blacklist the company from work across the federal government. As of this writing, Anthropic has not budged.

Lawful Use Is the Right Starting Point — But It’s Not the Finish Line

Let’s give credit where it’s due. The Pentagon’s core principle — that the military, having purchased a capability with taxpayer dollars, should be free to deploy it for any lawful purpose across its authorized missions — is defensible. It reflects the basic structure of civil-military authority in a constitutional democracy.

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