In one weekend, the U.S. used Anthropic’s AI to fight a war—and blacklisted it from any further government work. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has borne the brunt of the blame for starting a conflict between the military and the leading-edge AI developer. Really, though, this fight started when Anthropic demanded the right to set the terms on which the military would use its technology.
That’s not a confrontation that a private company should be getting into.
I founded and run a defense AI company. I’ve been working with AI language models long before almost anyone outside tech had heard of them, but my life has been dominated by defense since long before that. My father flew A-10s. My brother is a brigadier general. My dissertation was on algorithms used in war. When I watch an industry I work in debate whether the military should have access to AI tools during an active conflict, I’m thinking about the people in my life who depend on those tools to keep all of us safe.
