A fight is underway to control artificial intelligence, just as the United States tests the technology in conflicts from Venezuela to Iran.
In its interventions in Venezuela and Iran, the US military reportedly used Anthropic’s Claude chatbot to analyze battlefield data. At the same time, a monumental discussion has broken out about the future capabilities of this revolutionary technology.
Donald Trump’s administration severed its partnership with Anthropic and banned defense contractors from using Claude, after Anthropic insisted it should not be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of American citizens. These are not current uses, but the Pentagon sees ruling them out as an obstacle to keeping up with China.
For Samuel Hammond, chief economist at the Foundation for American Innovation, the ban is counterproductive.
“Designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk is generally reserved for adversaries,” he said, “for Chinese companies seeking to attack our systems.”
It is the first time that a sanction of this type has been applied to a US company. And now, the Trump administration has drawn up strict rules that AI companies must obey in future government contracts, according to the Financial Times.
Hammond argues that Anthropic’s market success contradicts President Trump’s description of the company as radical “left-wing crazy jobs.”
“There is misinformation within the Department of Defense, within elements of the White House that believe Anthropic is a very left-wing company with extreme views,” Hammond said, “when in fact they are currently the number one download on the App Store.”
Anthropic has threatened to sue the Pentagon, while also trying to contain the fallout and defend its values.
Asked whether right-wing libertarian think tanks like his had helped increase support for Trump, paving the way for him to wield power in this way, Hammond said: “This feels like a betrayal, both of his stated mission (on AI policy) and of general libertarian values. It is not a libertarian value to seek to destroy a particular company.”
“Who is the final arbiter of how these tools are used? … This is a longer-term process that we’re going to have to resolve through the democratic process.”
Watch this week’s Tech 24 to learn more about what happens when a power-hungry government is faced with the possibility that someone else wants to make the decisions about the most useful and promising technology of the day.
