Anthropic Relaxes Safety Pledge as Pentagon Sets Friday Deadline for Military Access

Overview

• Anthropic updated its 2023 Responsible Scaling policy to say it will no longer pause risky development if it believes it lacks a significant lead over competitors.
• After CEO Dario Amodei met Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon gave the company until 5:01 p.m. Friday to allow unrestricted military use or face a Defense Production Act order and a supply‑chain risk designation.
• The dispute centers on Anthropic’s refusal to permit mass surveillance of U.S. citizens or fully autonomous weapons uses for its Claude models.
• The Defense Department confirmed Elon Musk’s Grok for classified use and described OpenAI and Google as close to similar approvals, increasing pressure on Anthropic.
• Separately, Anthropic announced ten enterprise plug‑ins spanning investment banking, wealth management and HR, developed with partners including LSEG, FactSet, Slack (Salesforce) and DocuSign, with clients such as Thomson Reuters and RBC Wealth Management.