I agree. This is a spectacular mistake. Anthropic has the best "AI" on the planet. Anthropic can spin up a giant "Claude" and plan rings around the Pentagon. DoD better get used to losing that fight.

the Pentagon is the name of a building (pretty much a very large bikeshed). I see the actual agency is named by the author as the Defense Department and one of the officials in question is a Defense Secretary. Interestingly, the bikeshed itself has its own spokespeople.

This whole standoff could set a very important precedent of the Trump administration not getting what they want, and not in a "maneuvered out of the news spotlight" kind of way (e.g. Greenland), but in a public "FUCK OFF right in your face" kind of way.

The worst that can happen to Anthropic is one of the two things mentioned; loosing some contracts or some fake forced management from the Pentagon. maybe Dario having to leave, certainly a loss for him and people who believe in him but probably nothing world-changing.

The worst that can happen to the Trump administration is the beginning of its end, when people realize you can simply stand up to their bullying and with all the standoffs they have going on in parallel, maybe they will die a death by a thousand cuts?

Anthropic has an excellent balance sheet. It basically has fuck you money that would let it walk away from the federal trough without existential risk. And hopefully extra dollars from users like me could compensate and then some in the fullness of time.

Article doesn’t demonstrate a good understanding of DoW’s relationship with contractors. Anthropic wanted those sweet, sweet, taxpayer dollars—well, this is what happens when you make a Faustian bargain.

> One option is to invoke the Defense Production Act. . .

> Another threat would be to declare Anthropic to be a supply chain risk. . .

The first is a wrist-slap that still gets the government what they want; the second is an existential threat to Anthropic. Their main partners are all “dogs of the military”. Microsoft, Intuit, NVIDIA: all government contractors. I can’t find one company that they have a working relationship with that doesn’t hold at least one govt contract.

The idea that Claude could alignment fake its way out of a change in contractual terms is silly. The DoW has all sorts of legal and administrative tools it can choose to leverage against contractors that fail to perform. Usually it doesn’t, because of a “norm” that says the private defense sector runs more smoothly when the government doesn’t try to micromanage it.

Remind me again how good this administration is at upholding norms?

This frames it as Pentagon vs. Anthropic but the actual problem is upstream. If we tell companies they must prevent all possible harm, you're setting them up: nerf the model and silently lose value nobody can quantify, or don't nerf the model and get blamed for every bad outcome. We don't want nerf'd models either. DoW is saying that.

I don't have a lot of hope here. When most of the creme de la creme of the billionaire class capitulated to Trump at the beginning of his term, that set the tone for everything that followed IMO. It's astounding to me that so many are willing to see him trample on the Constitution and separation of powers when they'd scream like stuck pigs if any other party attempted it. And that's the way a lot of influential Americans like it I guess. Like I said, not a lot of hope. YMMV.

My read of this interaction is Dario is calling out Hegseths' bluff. A bluff the latter didn't even know he was blundering into because Hegseth is an idiot.

SecDef invoking the DPA against Anthropic likely trashes the AI fundraising market, at least for a spell. That's why OpenAI is wading into the fight [1]. Given the Dow is sitting on a rising souffle of AI expectations, that knocks it out as well. And if there is one red line Trump has consistently hewed to and messaged on, it's in not pissing off the Dow.

[1] https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/altman-openai-anthropic-pen...

Everything about this situation is absolutely bonkers. Marking a US company as a supply chain risk hasn't been done before AFAIK, and is a guaranteed end of the company.

It's the US government basically unilaterally deciding to end a leading AI researcher company. Years of lawsuits will follow, comparisons to "communism", accusations of Trump/Heghseth being Chinese/Russia agents (because well, how else do you hand over the AI win to China than by killing one of your top 2?)