Pentagon drops Anthropic, signs new deal with OpenAI

Anthropic refused to fully accept U.S. Department of Defense terms and stated Claude would not be used for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance. The Pentagon then terminated a reported $200B contract and labeled the company a supply chain risk.

Federal agencies are required to phase out Claude within 6 months. President Trump publicly criticized Anthropic and called for agencies to stop using its technology.

At the same time, OpenAI signed a new agreement with the Department of Defense to deploy its models inside the Pentagon’s secure cloud network for national security use. OpenAI will form a Forward Deployed Engineer team to support on site deployment.

Both companies reportedly insisted on restrictions around mass surveillance and human oversight in use of force decisions. Only one of them kept the contract.

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