Emil Michael

Well, what happened is we've been negotiating in good faith on the Department of War side for about three months, and we're working pretty diligently, and we sent over a proposal that we thought made a lot of concessions

to the language that anthropic wanted and then you know without any notice they published uh an article where we thought we were getting close saying that they were breaking off talks well before the deadline which is generally not good uh partner oriented practice if you will so emil this is what they're asking for as far as we understand and let me share this with the audience it doesn't want its technology used for surveillance of u.s citizens or for autonomous lethal strikes without a human in the loop that's the ask what were the concessions

Yeah, the concessions are pretty simple.

We agreed in writing to ensure that the Department of War was following all laws and regulations, including the National Security Act of 1947, the FISA Act, and all other applicable laws and regulations, because mass surveillance of Americans is already illegal.

So we were...

offering to put all of that language and affirm that we were following all laws in the contract.

When it comes to autonomous weapons, similarly, we said we'll follow all laws, including a DOD directive that's been in place for years that governs how we would

use any such weapons.

And then we affirmed that there would be human oversight over every kind of part of the development process or engagement process or use of autonomous weapons.

And he didn't like the word, I guess, as appropriate at the end of that sentence.

But we believe we conceded to all their substantive demands.

So it was surprising that out of nowhere they'd cut off negotiations.

Yeah, that's what was surprising, is usually if your differences are minor, you get in a room, you try to hash them out, and instead, without any notice, publishes something about his conscience, and then doesn't engage.

And it was difficult to understand why, because we were working pretty diligently on this.

And we're at the final stages of a few words here or there where we agreed to what they wanted in substance.

So it was very surprising given that we negotiate with hundreds of technology companies, and this is the only one we've ever had that behavior from.

They're two different things, and I think, depending on how today goes, at 5 o'clock, the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, gets to make the decision on how to reply.

I've maintained my openness to continue dialogue through that deadline, but they seem to have launched sort of a PR campaign that was planned well before these negotiations sort of restarted on Tuesday.

So I don't know.

Their behavior is, frankly, unpredictable.