iStockphoto / Greggory DiSalvo
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has moved to sever all ties with Anthropic’s Claude AI in recent days. It began with President Trump ordering US agencies to cease using Claude AI and soon led to Anthropic suing the U.S. Government over the decision.
With each passing day, we learn more about why the Department of Defense is at odds with Anthropic’s Claude AI models. And today, Defense Department CTO Emil Michael went on CNBC to speak his mind about Claude AI.
Defense Department Believes Claude AI Will ‘Pollute’ Supply Chain
Emil Michael, former SVP at Uber and COO at Klout, now the current Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering at the Department of Defense, had a lot to say during his CNBC appearance this morning.
According to him, the stance of the U.S. Government is Anthropic’s Claude AI has “a different policy preference” baked into the model that is at odds with the government.
On Squawk Box, Emil Michael said “we can’t have a company that has a different policy preference that is baked into the model through its constitution, its soul, its policy preferences, pollute the supply chain so our warfighters are getting ineffective weapons, ineffective body armor, ineffective protection. That’s really where the supply chain risk designation came from.”
In reference to Anthropic suing the U.S. Government for terminating their contract and claiming the company is being “irreparably” harmed in the process, Emil Michael said “this is not meant to be punitive.” He pointed to Anthropic’s “huge commercial business” as the bulk of their needs and how the U.S. Government only represented a “tiny fraction” of their scope. Michael added “the Department of War is not reaching out to companies to tell them what to do, so long as it’s not in our supply chain.”
Here is the full segment from CNBC Television in case you missed it earlier:
From Anthropic’s viewpoint, it is easy to see why the consumer side of the business would be impacted by U.S. government officials publicly terminating their contract and speaking broadly about the reasons they were doing so. From the Department of Defense’s perspective, it seems they simply have different needs from current artificial intelligence than what Claude AI’s models are offering.
With Anthropic suing the U.S. Government, we are certain to learn a lot more in the coming days.