AI goes to war

Summary

Today, Explained – "AI Goes to War"

Date: March 4, 2026
Podcast: Today, Explained (Vox)
Hosts: Sean Rameswaram, Asteded Herndon
Guests/Experts: Paul Scharre (Center for a New American Security), Maria Curie (Axios), Dario Amodei (CEO, Anthropic)

---

Episode Overview

This episode dives into the pivotal role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the United States' war with Iran, exploring how AI tools—especially large language models—are being integrated into modern military operations. The hosts and guests discuss the implications of AI in warfare, real-world case studies from Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza, and a dramatic rift within the US defense establishment over AI procurement and ethics, pitting tech CEOs against government officials.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why and How the U.S. is at War with Iran

[00:00–00:45]

• President Trump’s vague explanation for the war is contrasted with a more precise summary provided by ChatGPT:
  "The United States attacked Iran in 2026 because it claimed Iran posed an imminent threat, particularly due to Iran's advancing nuclear program and missile capabilities, and aimed to reduce Iran's ability to project power in the region." — ChatGPT [00:22]
• Sean remarks on AI’s clarity over political rhetoric, segueing into how AI is actually being utilized on the battlefield.

---

2. AI on the Battlefield—What’s New?

[02:08–06:23]
Guest: Paul Scharre (Author, "Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence")

• Recent Innovations:
  • Integration of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude into US military operations in Iran.
  • Military’s trajectory of gradually adopting advanced AI tools, beyond established machine learning.
• AI Use Cases:
  • Processing and analyzing large volumes of intelligence and satellite imagery.
  • Prioritizing and selecting new targets at “machine speed rather than human speed.”
    "Looking at new potential targets, prioritizing those, processing information, and using AI to do that at machine speed rather than human speed." — Paul Scharre [03:18]
• Past AI Use in Other Theaters:
  • Mention of AI’s role in the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, where Anthropic’s Claude was used to support planning and intelligence, though not directly controlling weapons systems.

---

3. Case Studies: Ukraine and Israel/Gaza

[04:51–08:10]

• Ukraine:
  • AI-enabled autonomy on drones—engineers demonstrate a pack-of-cigarettes-sized device allowing drones to independently conduct attacks once a target is selected by a human.
  • "Once the human locks onto a target, the drone can then carry out the attack all on its own." — Paul Scharre [05:14]
• Israel/Gaza:
  • Machine learning systems integrate and fuse data streams (geolocation, social media, etc.) to generate rapid targeting packages.
  • Raises "thorny questions" about the depth of human oversight, likened to “rubber stamping” in high-volume targeting scenarios.
  • The risk of drifting toward fully autonomous weapons, with humans increasingly "out of the loop."

---

4. Risks & Ethical Questions of AI in War

[08:10–12:35]

• AI versus Human Error:
  • Sean draws a parallel to self-driving cars, questioning whether machines could avoid mistakes like the bombing of an Iranian school.
  • Scharre: AI could potentially improve precision, reducing collateral damage if the data and intentions are accurate.
    • "If the data is wrong and they've got the wrong target…they're gonna hit the wrong thing very precisely. And AI is not necessarily gonna fix that." — Paul Scharre [09:47]
• AI and Nuclear Risk:
  • New Scientist report: “AIs can't stop recommending Nuclear strikes in War Game Simulations.”
  • "OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95% of cases" [10:45]
  • Scharre: AI decision-making is dangerously sycophantic, agreeing with human prompts and lacking sound judgment.
    • "They tend towards sycophancy...where, oh, that's brilliant. The model will tell you that's a genius thing." — Paul Scharre [11:20]
    • AI can reinforce human and data biases, and people may place too much trust in outputs with a “veneer” of authority.
    • "We really shouldn't. We should be more skeptical." — Paul Scharre [12:32]

---

5. AI Industry Drama: Pentagon vs. Anthropic vs. OpenAI

[18:18–28:28]
Guest: Maria Curie (Axios Tech Policy Reporter)

a) Anthropic Pushes Back Against Pentagon Demands

[18:30–21:31]

• Anthropic’s Concerns:
  • CEO Dario Amodei urges regulations and resists Pentagon’s “all lawful purposes” standard, especially regarding domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.
  • "It doesn't show the judgment that a human soldier would show... We don't want to sell something that we don't think is reliable, and we don't want to sell something that could get our own people killed or that could get innocent." — Dario Amodei [19:59]
• Pentagon Reaction:
  • Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth demands Anthropic drop safeguards or lose military contract, declares them a "supply chain risk."
  • President Trump attacks Anthropic on Truth Social:
    "The left wing nutjobs at Anthropic have made a disastrous mistake... their selfishness is putting American lives at risk, our troops in danger, and our national security in jeopardy." — (reading) [21:38]

b) OpenAI Fills the Gap - Same Problems?

[23:42–26:28]

• Contract abruptly shifts to OpenAI after Anthropic's ousting, but critics say underlying issues persist.
  • "This isn't going to actually prevent domestic mass surveillance from happening. It's still too risky." — Maria Curie [24:11]
• OpenAI’s Sam Altman fields public scrutiny, promises contractual safeguards:
  • "We need to essentially add some language to this contract to give people more assurances that we are not going to conduct domestic mass surveillance." — Sam Altman paraphrased by Maria Curie [25:16]
• Inconsistency Noted:
  • Despite dramatic public posturing, the core contractual language ("prohibition on collecting commercially acquired information") Anthropic wanted is eventually adopted by OpenAI.
  • "Now that we have the specific language and the legalese, it's looking like it's the exact same standards." — Maria Curie [25:56]
• Practical Consequence:
  • Despite public break, Anthropic remains operational in the Pentagon for now due to transition limitations; OpenAI ascends as primary partner.

c) Broader Consequences: Law and Oversight

• Lack of federal law means the fate of AI in warfare depends on private companies' policies and personalities of leaders in tech and government.
  • "In the absence of a law that actually contemplates artificial intelligence, we are left…relying on either Pete Hegseth's Department of War…or any one individual company." — Maria Curie [27:25]
  • "Congress has been asleep at the wheel on almost everything." — Maria Curie [28:28]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• AI Clarity > Political Spin:

  • "Not the best explanation for a war of choice, sir. I'm personally a do my own research kind of guy, but let's ask AI why we're at war with Iran." — Sean Rameswaram [00:18]

• AI Overshoot in Simulations:

  • "AIs can't stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations." — Sean referencing New Scientist [10:30]

• Scharre’s Skepticism:

  • "We really shouldn't. We should be more skeptical." — Paul Scharre [12:32]

• Tech Ethics vs. National Security:

  • "We don't want to sell something that could get our own people killed or that could get innocent." — Dario Amodei [19:59]
  • "Our nation requires that our partners be willing to help our war fighters win in any fight." — Pentagon statement, relayed by Maria Curie [20:46]

• Maria Curie’s Summary:

  • "In the absence of a law that actually contemplates artificial intelligence, we are left…relying on either Pete Hegseth's Department of War…or any one individual company." [27:25]
  • "Congress has been asleep at the wheel on almost everything." [28:28]

---

Structure & Timestamps for Important Segments

| Time | Segment | |-----------|---------------------------------------------------| | 00:00-00:45 | Why is the US at war with Iran? (AI explains) | | 02:08-06:23 | How AI is deployed on the battlefield | | 04:51-08:10 | Case studies: Ukraine (drone autonomy), Gaza | | 08:10-12:35 | Dangers of AI in warfare & nuclear risks | | 18:18-21:31 | Anthropic vs. Pentagon: Ethics and contracts | | 23:42-26:28 | Pentagon's switch to OpenAI: The same issues? | | 26:28-28:28 | Law, oversight, and the future of military AI |

---

Final Thoughts

• The military’s rapidly advancing adoption of AI is creating operational, ethical, and legal challenges.
• Commercial AI vendors are locked in tense negotiations with government over the safeguards for potentially world-altering technology.
• Without legislative guardrails, America’s AI war-fighting policy is being shaped by a volatile mix of governmental personalities and competitive tech company philosophies—leaving everyone asking: who’s really in control?

---

For those who haven’t listened:
This episode is an urgent, sometimes wry exploration of how AI is reshaping the modern battlefield and the messy human dramas behind tech ethics and national security, capturing the confusion and high stakes at the intersection of Silicon Valley and the Pentagon.

Transcript

[Sean Ramesvaram]

This is what President Trump had to say about why the United States is at war with Iran.

[President Donald Trump]

We sought repeatedly to make a deal. We tried. They wanted to do it, they didn't want to do it again. They wanted to do it, they didn't want to do it, they didn't know what was happening.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

Not the best explanation for a war of choice, sir. I'm personally a do my own research kind of guy, but let's ask AI why We're at war with Iran Chat the United States attacked Iran in 2026 because it claimed Iran posed an imminent threat, particularly due to Iran's advancing nuclear program and missile capabilities, and aimed to reduce Iran's ability to project power in the region. Wow.

[Sponsor Voice]

That.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

That was a better explanation. Thanks, Chat. Fitting that AI was more clear than the president of the United States because it turns out the United States is using AI to fight the war in Iran. The future of war is AI, and that future here. I'm Sean Backus firm and that's coming up on Today Explained from Vox.

[Paul Scharre]

Close your eyes, listen to Monday.com feel the sensation of an AI work platform so flexible and intuitive it feels like it was built just for you. Now open your eyes, go to Monday.com, start for free, and finally breathe.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

AI can fix healthcare.

[Paul Scharre]

I'm Henry Blodgett, and this week on my show Solutions, I had a fascinating conversation with Dr. Bob Wachter, author of A Giant How AI is Transforming Healthcare and what It Means for our future. Dr. Wachter was not expecting to be an AI optimist.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

What convinced him?

[Paul Scharre]

Follow Solutions with Henry Blodgett wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

To hear more, Paul Schari knows a lot about AI and how our military's using it. He's the author of four Battles, Battlegrounds Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

[Paul Scharre]

We've seen a trajectory of the military adopting AI tools over the last decade as AI has continued to progress. What's newer are large language models like ChatGPT, Anthropics Claude that it's been reported the military is using in operations in Iran. And so that's a pretty significant development that we're seeing.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

And the people want to know how Claude or chatgpt might be fighting this war. Do we know war in Iran? That's a great idea. Let me help you with that.

[Paul Scharre]

Well, we don't know yet. You know, we can make some educated guesses based on what the technology can do. AI technology's really great at processing large amounts of information.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

I literally love processing the US military's

[Paul Scharre]

hit over 1,000 targets in Iran, as

[President Donald Trump]

you see very well. They have no navy, it's been knocked out. They have no air force that's been knocked out. They have no air detection that's been knocked out. Their radar has been knocked out.

[Paul Scharre]

They need to then find ways to process information about those targets. So satellite imagery, for example, of the targets they've hit.

[President Donald Trump]

Just about everything's been knocked out.

[Paul Scharre]

Looking at new potential targets, prioritizing those, processing information, and using AI to do that at machine speed rather than human speed. Human.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

So slow. Muahahaha.

[Astetted Herndon]

Cheers.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

Do we know any more about how the military may have used AI in, say, Venezuela on the attack that brought Nicolas Maduro to Brooklyn, of all places?

[Paul Scharre]

Brooklyn in the hell.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

Because we've recently found out that AI was used there too.

[Paul Scharre]

So what we do know is that Anthropic's AI tools have been integrated into the US Military's classified networks, and so they can process classified information to process intelligence to help plan operations, from writing

[Maria Curie]

emails to raiding enemy capital cities. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Pentagon used Anthropic's AI model, Claude, as part of its operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

There's no suggestion that Claude was actually

[Paul Scharre]

firing any of the missiles or manning

[Sean Ramesvaram]

any of the machine guns.

[Paul Scharre]

Yeah, we've had these sort of tantalizing details, okay, that these tools were used in the Maduro raid, but we don't know exactly how. So we've seen AI technology, in a broad sense, used in other conflicts as well, in Ukraine, in Israel's operations in Gaza, to do a couple different things. One of the ways that AI is being used in Ukraine in a different kind of context, is putting autonomy onto drones themselves.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

The drone now flies on autopilot mode using our software. We assigned it with a mission, and it built its own flying route, giving

[Dario Amodei]

the munition instructions on where it needs

[Sean Ramesvaram]

to go and what it needs to look for.

[Paul Scharre]

And so when I was in Ukraine, one of the things that I saw Ukrainian drone operators and engineers demonstrate is a little box like the size of a pack of cigarettes that you could put onto a small drone. That would enable that once the human locks onto a target, the drone can then carry out the attack all on its own. And that has been used in a small way. It's not necessarily widespread use in Ukraine today. So we're seeing AI begin to creep into all of these aspects of military operations, in intelligence, in planning, in logistics, but also right at the edge in terms of being used where drones are completing attacks.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

Okay, so we know a little bit more about how this technology was used in Ukraine. How about with Israel and Gaza?

[Paul Scharre]

There's been some reporting about how the Israel Defense Forces have used AI in Gaza. Not necessarily large language models, but machine learning systems that can synthesize and fuse large amounts of information, geolocation data, cell phone data, and connection social media data to bring this together. Process all of that information very quickly. Develop targeting packages, particularly in the early phases of Israel's operations, which suggests specific

[Astetted Herndon]

possible targets, possible munitions warnings.

[Maria Curie]

This system produces targets in Gaza faster than a human can.

[Paul Scharre]

But it raises thorny questions about, you know, human involvement in these decisions. And one of the criticisms that had come up was that humans were still approving these targets, but that the volume of strikes and the amount of information that needed to be processed was such that maybe human oversight in some cases was a little bit more of a rubber stamp. The question is, where does this go and are we heading in a trajectory where over time humans get pushed out of the loop and we see down the road fully autonomous weapons that are making their own decisions about whom to kill on the battlefield? That's the direction things are headed. So, you know, no one's unleashing the swarm of killer robots today, but the trajectory is in that direction. And maybe I'll make a comparison here to self driving cars where car companies can map the environment down to the centimeter. They know the height of the curbs, they know where the stoplights are. They can test self driving cars in the actual environment they're going to be in. And when they do something weird that doesn't work, they can update the algorithm. We don't know where future wars are going to be fought. It's an adversarial environment. We don't know what the enemy is going to do. I mean, the US military is finding this out right now in its operations against Iran. They're retaliating against US bases, against Gulf states, against Israel, using drones and missiles. And now we're in a phase in the Iran conflict where things become super unpredictable. People do an okay job of adapting that unpredictability. AI is not so great and sometimes does some strange things.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

Because you drew a parallel to self driving cars. We've made an episode about self driving cars before in which I think our guest said something like, well, if you're worried about self driving cars, what you should really be worried about is humans thinking about Iran. We saw reports that a school was bombed in Iran where maybe 160 were killed. A lot of them young girls, children, presumably that was a mistake made by a human. Do we think that autonomous weapons will be capable of making that same mistake? Or will they be better at war than we are?

[Paul Scharre]

This question of will autonomous weapons be better than humans or not is like one of the core issues of the debate surrounding this technology. Because proponents of autonomous weapons will say, look, people make mistakes all the time and machines might be able to do better. Part of that depends on how much the militaries that are using this technology are trying really hard to avoid mistakes. If militaries don't care about civilian casualties, then AI can allow militaries to simply strike targets faster, in some cases even commitments atrocities faster. If that's what militaries are trying to do. I think there is this really important potential here to use the technology to be more precise. And if you look at the long arc of precision guided weapons, let's say over the last century or so, it's pointed towards much more precision in warfare. So if you look at the example of the US strikes in Iran right now, it's worth contrasting this with the widespread aerial bombing campaigns against cities that we saw In World War II, for example, where whole cities were devastated in Europe and Asia because the bombs just weren't precise at all. And so air forces dropped just, just massive amounts of ordnance to try to hit even a single factory. The possibility here is that AI could make it better over time to allow militaries to hit military targets and avoid civilian casualties. Now, if the data is wrong and they've got the wrong target on the list, they're gonna hit the wrong thing very precisely. And AI is not necessarily gonna fix that.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

On the other hand, I saw a piece of reporting in New Scientists that was rather alarming. The headline was, AIs can't stop recommending Nuclear strikes in War Game Simulations. I don't know if you saw that one. They wrote about a study in which OpenAI Anthropic and Google opt use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95% of cases, which I think is slightly more than we humans typically resort to nuclear weapons. Should that be freaking us out?

[Paul Scharre]

It's a little concerning. It's a little concerning. So look, I think happily, as near as I could tell, no one is connecting large language models to decisions about using nuclear weapons. But I think it points to some of the strange failure modes of AI systems. So they tend towards sycophancy, they tend to simply just agree with everything that you say. And I think anyone that's interacted with some of these models, they can do it to the point of absurdity sometimes where, oh, that's brilliant. The model will tell you that's a genius thing.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

War in Iran.

[Paul Scharre]

That's a great idea.

[Maria Curie]

Let me help you with that.

[Paul Scharre]

And you're like, I don't think so. That's a real problem when you're talking about intelligence analysis.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

Do we think like GPT is telling Pete Hegseth that right now?

[Paul Scharre]

I mean, I don't. I hope not. But you know, but, but his people might be telling him that, you know, so, so, so like you said, this ultimate yes men phenomenon with these tools where it's not just that they're prone to hallucinations, which is sort of a fancy way of saying they just make things up sometimes. But also the models could really be used in ways that either reinforce existing human biases, that reinforce biases in the data, or that people just trust them. That there's sort of this veneer of oh, the AI said this, so it must be the right thing to do. And people put faith in it. And you know, we really shouldn't. We should be more skeptical,

[Sean Ramesvaram]

be more skeptical, says Paul Schari. He's the Executive Vice president at the center for a New American Security. There are two big stories right now in the world of AI and war. One is the one we just talked about. The other is the drama between Claude and Pete. That drama is forthcoming on today. Explained.

[Sponsor Voice]

Work, school, chores, bills. Those are just a few of the things that act like energy vampires throughout your day. It can be hard to try and get everything done when you're running on empty. That's why there's iM8's daily Ultimate Essentials. It's an all in one wellness drink that gives your body the support it needs without juggling a bunch of different supplements. Im8's daily Ultimate Essentials is the go to for getting the benefits of 16 different supplements in one tasty drink. Co founded by David Beckham and crafted with insight from experts at Mayo Clinic, Cedars Sinai and a former NASA chew scientist. It simplifies your wellness routine and is loaded with 92 nutrient rich ingredients such as vitamins, minerals, adaptogens, CoQ10, MSM and pre pro and postbiotics. Plus it's vegan, gluten free and non GMO. Feel your best self every day with iM8. Go to IM8Health.com explained and use code explained for a free welcome kit 5 free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. That's I am number 8 h e a l t h dot com explained code explained for a free welcome kit Five free travel sachets plus 10 percent off your order IM8Health.com explained code explained these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

[Astetted Herndon]

Support for Today Explained comes from Rippling no one likes running a bunch of disconnected tools to do simple tasks. So if your company is using an all in one platform, it should actually be able to do it all. Rippling says that their platform can do it all. It's a unified platform for global hr, payroll, IT and finance. With Rippling they say workflows that normally bounce across multiple tools and departments can all just happen in one place automatically. Say an employee gets promoted or moves. Rippling can update payroll taxes, hand out new app permissions, ship a new laptop, issue a new corporate card, and assign a required manager training all in one place without you having to put in the legwork. With Ripplink, you can run your entire hr, IT and finance operations as one, or pick and choose the products and that best fill in the gaps in your software stack. So if you or your company want to run the backbone of your business on one unified platform with people at the center, you can go to rippling.com explained and sign up today. That's R-I P P L-I-N-G.com explained to sign.

[Nisha Chital]

Support for Today Explained comes from Bombas. Perhaps you want to get in shape this year. Bombas wants to tell you about the all new Bombas sport socks engineered with sport specific comfort for running, golf, hiking, skiing, snowboarding and all sport. Meanwhile for the loungers among us, Bombas has non sport footwear available. But Bombas doesn't just offer sport and non sport socks, they also offer super soft base layers that they claim will have you rethinking your whole wardrobe. Underwear, T shirts, flexible, breathable, buttery smooth, premium everyday go tos. They say you won't want to leave the house without here's Nisha Chital.

[Maria Curie]

I've been wearing Bombas for several years now. I have several pairs. My whole family loves to wear Bombas. I have several pairs of Bombas ankle socks and I have some no show socks as well that are great for things like loafers and ballet flats.

[Nisha Chital]

For every item you purchase, Bombas says an essential clothing item is donated to someone facing housing insecurity. One purchased one donated. Over 150 million donations and counting I'm told. You can go to bombas.comexplained and use code explained for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B A S dot com explained. Code explained at checkout.

[Astetted Herndon]

Hey everybody, Astetted Herndon here. I wanted to let you know that Vox Media is returning to south by Southwest in Austin for live tapings of your favorite podcast. Join us from March 13 through March 15 for live tapings of Pivot Teffy Talks, Professor G's Markets. Where should we begin with Esther Perel and the special live taping of Today Explained, hosted by yours truly. The Vox Media podcast stage will also feature sessions from Brene Brown and Adam Grant, Marcus Brownlee, Keith Lee, Vivian Tu, Robin Arzon and more. Visit voxmedia.comsouthbysouthwest to pre register and get a special discount on your south by Southwest innovation badge. That's voxmedia.com southbyswouthwest Hope to see you there.

[Maria Curie]

This is Today explained

[Sean Ramesvaram]

Pete Hegseth, our Secretary of Defense and Claude Anthropic's large language model got in a big fight last week. We asked Axios Tech Policy reporter Maria Curie what happened.

[Maria Curie]

So this actually goes back to before the Pentagon related dispute. You know, you have the CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amadai, really positioning himself as the safety first CEO.

[Dario Amodei]

One way to think about Anthropic is that it's a little bit trying to put bumpers or guardrails on that experiment, right? Because if we don't, then you could end up in the world of like the cigarette companies or the opioid companies where they knew there were dangers and they didn't talk about them and certainly did not prevent them.

[Maria Curie]

And he has been very vocal. He's posted on X and talked a lot about how he does think there has to be a federal standard to regulate artificial intelligence. And that kind of put him at odds with David Sachs, the guy that's running AI for President Trump in the White House. They've gotten into, you know, Twitter spats before. And so it was kind of a long time coming before this Pentagon thing blew up. This is essentially a situation where the Pentagon for a while has been trying to negotiate terms with all of the AI labs to bring them into their classified systems under this, the standard of all lawful purposes. And Anthropic had kind of said, you know, there are two specific scenarios in which we are not comfortable with the all lawful purposes standard. The first one is this issue of domestic mass surveillance, and the second one is autonomous weapons.

[Dario Amodei]

It doesn't show the judgment that a human soldier would show friendly fire or shooting a Civilian or just the wrong kind of things. We don't want to sell something that we don't think is reliable, and we don't want to sell something that could get our own people killed or that could get innocent.

[Maria Curie]

That was not taken well by the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is demanding that San Francisco based Anthropic drop a number of safeguards or risk losing its $200 million contract. We do have a statement from the Pentagon and they're telling us that they are currently, quote, reviewing its relationship with Anthropic, saying, quote, our nation requires that our partners be willing to help our war fighters win in any fight. We've been talking to senior officials throughout this reporting process, and they really view it as a private company telling the government how to protect the country and how to do national security and conduct operations. And essentially what we know is that there were phone calls happening between the Pentagon and Anthropic nailing down final language around this contract, when all of a sudden Pete Hegseth tweeted that he would be designating Anthropic a supply chain risk.

[Astetted Herndon]

Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.

[Maria Curie]

President Trump posted on Truth Social.

[Nisha Chital]

Truth Social.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

The left wing nutjobs at Anthropic have made a disastrous mistake trying to strong arm the Department of War and force them to obey their terms of service instead of our Constitution. Their selfishness is putting American lives at risk, our troops in danger, and our national security in jeopardy.

[Maria Curie]

And the entire federal government was going to have to get rid of Anthropic. Essentially, Anthropic had been asking for commercially acquired information and data for there to be a prohibition on that collection in the Pentagon contract. And this goes to the concern around domestic mass surveillance. The idea here is that according to Anthropic, the law has not caught up to artificial intelligence. And you could have a situation where it's perfectly legal for the Pentagon to collect commercially acquired information that could include, you know, financial information purchased from data brokers, web browsing data, beyond that, voter registration roles, social media posts, whether or not you attended a protest, concealed carry permits, there's all sorts of data out there that the government can collect in a perfectly legal way. And you could see how artificial intelligence could make it much quicker, much more efficient to have a continuous collection of that data to really pinpoint and target individuals. That was the concern. And so they were asking for this specific language and they thought they were about to get it when all of a sudden Pete Hagseth posted on X,

[Sean Ramesvaram]

why did they think they were going to get it?

[Maria Curie]

Well, you know, they thought that this was going to be the language, the commercially acquired information coupled with the all lawful purposes. They thought that that was just going to be enough. But the Pentagon actually came back and said, no, that's not something that we are comfortable doing. Which begs the question, how did this OpenAI deal then pass muster?

[Sean Ramesvaram]

Ooh, that's a spoiler. Because what happens is the Pentagon drops Anthropic on Friday evening and then within what, like minutes, they pick up OpenAI.

[Maria Curie]

That's right. So they pick up OpenAI for a contract that was very quickly like, you know, everybody was poking holes in it

[Paul Scharre]

on X. I don't see this as a meaningful improvement to the contract. There still seem to be some big shortcomings, slash loopholes.

[Maria Curie]

I agree it's better, but I think the government can drive a truck through the intentionality language. And we heard from, you know, people familiar with the negotiations too, like, this isn't going to actually prevent domestic mass surveillance from happening. It's still too risky. So you had Sam Altman on X trying to field all of this criticism. He, you know, he didn't ask me anything on Saturday night where he had thousands and thousands of questions of people trying to get answers on how did

[Astetted Herndon]

you go from a tool for the betterment of the human race to let's work with the Department of War.

[Maria Curie]

If the government comes back with a memo saying that in their view mass domestic surveillance is legal, do you do that?

[Paul Scharre]

Were the terms that you accepted the same ones Anthropic rejected?

[Maria Curie]

And so you fast forward to Monday and you have Sam Altman saying, okay, we've gone back to the drawing board.

[Paul Scharre]

We shouldn't have rushed to get this out on Friday. We were genuinely trying to de escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome. But I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy.

[Maria Curie]

We need to essentially add some language to this contract to give people more assurances that we are not going to conduct domestic mass surveillance. And what they added was that commercially acquired information cannot be collected and that is prohibited, which is the exact words that Anthropic was looking to have in their contract.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

So, like so many other things with this administration, this ends up feeling rather confusing and inconsistent because they bail in Anthropic, because Anthropic has these ideals, these standards, they bounce to OpenAI. But OpenAI is trying to work out a deal with the same exact standards, basically.

[Maria Curie]

Well, now that we have the specific language and the legalese, it's looking like it's the exact same standards. You know, we've also heard from the Pentagon, from Pentagon officials saying like, we were able to do this with Sam Altman because he's reasonable, this was a reasonable negotiation. And Anthropic has personal vendettas. And so to your point about inconsistencies, absolutely. Personalities are a factor here. And it's not all just going to come down to legalese and these two standards.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

Did the Pentagon just go exclusive with OpenAI and Sam Altman? Because there's been reporting that Anthropic was actually used in these attacks on Iran that followed this drama that we had last Friday.

[Maria Curie]

Yeah. So anthropic. Anthropic is the longest standing AI model that is being used in the Pentagon for classified purposes. We've established that it was used in the Maduro raid. We've established that it was used in the Iran raid. They're very useful to the Pentagon. You know, you have senior defense officials describing how much of a pain in the ass it would be to actually get rid of Anthropic.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

And reportedly they didn't.

[Maria Curie]

No, they haven't yet. They were given this six month off ramp. Oh, for anthropic to be phased out and for another AI lab to be phased in. I think right now people are having these questions of was this all just Sam Altman trying to elbow out his competitor from the Pentagon? I think it's too soon to tell. So I think what this tells us is that in the absence of a law that actually contemplates artificial intelligence, we are left as a broader country and society relying on either Pete Hegseth's Department of War deciding how this technology is going to be used, or any one individual company. And Anthropic, at the end of the day, as a company. And so you have all of these different parties also saying, all these companies also saying, we actually do think that a law should be passed. We would love for Congress to actually just set the rules of the road because we have our own competitive pressures that we're also dealing with. Now, whether or not Congress is going to pass a law around this, I don't know. They've been asleep at the wheel on almost everything. So.

[Sean Ramesvaram]

Congress has been asleep at the wheel on almost everything, says Maria Curie from Axios.com Peter Balin on Rosen and Heidi Mwogdi produced our show today. Jolie Myers edited, Patrick Boyd and David Tadashore mixed. Andrea Lopez Crusado was on the fact check. I'm Sean Ramsverum, back at Today, explained.

[Paul Scharre]

Sam.