Why the Pentagon Wants to Destroy Anthropic [View all]
This article about the breakdown in the DoD-Anthropic contract is quite long (does the NYT have no editors anymore), but well worth reading. According to the article, Hegseth wants to use AI as much as possible, but we all know that AI makes mistakes. One question the media should be asking is whether the US military bombed a girl's school, killing 175 children, teachers, and parents, because AI mistakenly targeted it. The excuse Hegseth is giving is that it was close to a military site. How close? Supposedly we have precision targeting.
We should also be asking why the US military wants the capability to spy on every US citizen. The obvious intention of an untrustworthy administration to collect such data without cause should alarm everyone.
"Anthropic was the company most enthusiastic about these national security uses, and they came to an agreement with the Biden administration to do this with a couple of usage restrictions: Domestic mass surveillance was a prohibited use, in addition to use for fully autonomous lethal weapons.
In the summer of 2025, during the Trump administration — and full disclosure, I was in the Trump administration when this happened, though not at all involved in this deal — the administration made the decision to expand that contract and kept the same terms. So the Trump administration agreed to those restrictions, as well.
Then in the fall of 2025 — I suspect that this correlates with the Senate confirmation of Emil Michael as under secretary of war for research and engineering. He comes in, he looks at these things, I think, or perhaps is involved in looking at these things, and he comes to the conclusion that no, we cannot be bound by these usage restrictions."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-dean-ball.html?unlocked_article_code=1.RFA.zSlw.jv3YqgBQyyBz&smid=url-share
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