Mike Sheppard

Well, it's not just significant that it happened.

It's also, Cara, that it happened so quickly after the Pentagon decided that it would walk away from its relationship with Anthropic, which had been in place for roughly a year.

And Anthropic had really worked itself into the classified space that is crucial for the Pentagon, being able to deploy artificial intelligence in some fashion during critical operations, including combat.

And Anthropic's

Products have been used by Palantir as part of this so-called Maven system that colloquially might be thought of as Windows for War, where battlefield commanders can have access to information and have it interpreted and processed and analyzed and assessed in a much faster fashion and presented to them.

Now, what this means is that within six months, the Pentagon must transition to a new provider.

And OpenAI, an arch rival to Anthropic, is stepping in.

And what they are saying also is that they are willing to take the terms that Anthropic thought were unacceptable.

terms that OpenAI says still respects its own guidelines when it comes to two key areas, and that is mass surveillance of Americans and also deployment of fully autonomous weapons.

OpenAI says that the contract and the relationship with the Pentagon

are strong enough that those two requirements by the firm are respected.

Anthropic, from its standpoint, did not see the same in the contract language.

And it'll be interesting to see how this unfolds, Carol, because the U.S.

government has declared Anthropic a supply chain risk and also ordered it off U.S.

government agency networks elsewhere.

Well, that's right, Carol.

We are seeing some of this popular sentiment swell in Anthropic's favor.

Certainly online, there is a lot of applause in favor of Dario Amadei and what is seen as a principled stance by many against the Pentagon, against the administration that that.

You know, look, if you thought that you couldn't do business with Anthropic, why not just cancel the contract, declaring them a supply chain risk was seen by many as going a step too far and being vindictive.

It's also important to remember that Claude's products are gaining popularity because many see them as quite good.