Co-founder Dario Amodei has made safety and social responsibility central to Anthropic’s approach to AI. Usage restrictions governing its contract with the Pentagon stipulate that its AI cannot be used for domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon, which objects to outside limits on what its troops can do, wants unrestricted access for all lawful purposes… If Anthropic was too inflexible, the Pentagon could have simply terminated the contract. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went further, declaring on X that “no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.” Such declaration, according to commentators, amounted to “corporate murder”, The “message sent to every investor and corporation in America: do business on our terms, or we will end your business.”

Excerpt from Greg Ip, Anthropic’s Pentagon Battle Matters to Every Business, WSJ, Mar. 13, 2026