House amendment responding to Pentagon-Anthropic conflict fails committee vote

"A $380 billion hyperscaler, Anthropic has warned the Pentagon and the public of the potential misuse of its product for mass surveillance of U.S. citizens and for autonomous killing machines that could exceed human constraint. They seek reasonable guardrails. The Pentagon's bureaucrats and lawyers believe they know better. They told Anthropic that if they sought guardrails, they'd blacklist the company as a supply chain threat preventing any other government agency from buying their software."

"We haven't even figured out what to do on artificial intelligence as a body. So the idea that we're going to figure that out and jam it into this amendment I think is problematic."

Rep. Sam Liccardo introduced an amendment to the Defense Production Act that would prohibit federal agencies from blacklisting companies that refuse to deploy high-risk technology products. The amendment specifically addressed the conflict between the Department of Defense and Anthropic, which declined to relax AI safety standards for Pentagon use. Following Anthropic's refusal, President Trump ordered all federal agencies to remove Anthropic products from government systems within six months. The amendment failed in committee with a 16-25 vote split along party lines. Democratic supporters argued Anthropic sought reasonable guardrails against mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, while Republican opponents contended the amendment was inappropriate for the Defense Production Act and premature given ongoing AI policy debates.

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