Don't bet that the Pentagon or Anthropic is acting in the public interest | Bruce Schneier and Nathan E Sanders

"At issue is Anthropic's insistence that the US Department of Defense (DoD) could not use its models to facilitate mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, provisions the defense secretary Pete Hegseth derided as woke. It all came to a head on Friday evening when Donald Trump issued an order for federal government agencies to discontinue use of Anthropic models."

"AI models are increasingly commodified. The top-tier offerings have about the same performance, and there is little to differentiate one from the other. The latest models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, in particular, tend to leapfrog each other with minor hops forward in quality every few months."

"In our free-market economy, both are, and should be, free to sell and buy what they want with whom they want, subject to longstanding federal rules on contracting, acquisitions, and blacklisting. The only factor out of place here are the Pentagon's vindictive threats."

OpenAI has been selected as the AI supplier for US defense department systems, displacing Anthropic following a week of government pressure. The conflict centered on Anthropic's refusal to allow its models for mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons systems, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth criticized. Trump issued an executive order discontinuing Anthropic model use across federal agencies, enabling OpenAI to secure potentially hundreds of millions in government contracts. Despite the political drama, this outcome may benefit both Anthropic and the Pentagon. In the commodified AI market, top-tier models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google show minimal performance differentiation, with user preference margins around 60 percent. Military applications of AI technology are inevitable, as with all technological innovations.

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