Pentagon Pressures Anthropic Over AI Superweapon Concerns
The Department of Defense is pushing to bring Anthropic's AI under government control, sparking a heated national security debate.
The Pentagon and Anthropic are locked in a fight over the future of advanced AI — and commentator Noah Smith argues the military has a point.
Smith's core thesis: AI could become a superweapon. If that happens, nation-states need to maintain their monopoly on the use of force. Letting a private company control potentially civilization-altering technology without government oversight isn't just risky — it's structurally incompatible with how modern states function.
The Department of Defense is reportedly trying to coerce the AI company into cooperation. Smith frames this not as overreach but as a logical extension of how governments have historically handled transformative military technologies.
Anthropic, known for its safety-focused approach to AI development, now finds itself at the center of the most consequential power struggle in tech: who gets to control AI when the stakes are existential?