The Pentagon vs. Anthropic + An A.I. Agent Slandered Me + Hot Mess Express
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Well, you know, speaking of Kim Jong, have you heard about his successor? No. Well, it appears that he is preparing to name his daughter, who we believe is just 13 years old, as his successor. And the reason that we know this is because state media has shown photos of the two of them where she is walking in front of him and appears taller than him. Whoa. And the thinking is they would not do this unless they were prepping her to rule a country. So we are about to get the greatest sequel to the Princess Diaries of all time. Imagine the Princess Diaries, but you are in charge of a nuclear state that is a global pariah.
Yeah, I'll say it. I think 13 is too young to run a dictatorship. Kevin, stop gatekeeping.
If it's old enough to look at Instagram reels... It's not!
In Australia and several other places, it is not old enough to look at Instagram reels. Here's my new rule. Here's my new proposed tech regulation. Until you're old enough to go on social media, you can't run a dictatorship. I'm Kevin Reuss, a tech columnist at the New York Times. I'm Casey Newham from Platformer.
And this is Hard Fork. This week, it's one battle after another between Anthropic and the Pentagon. Who will blink first? Then, developer Scott Shambaugh joins us to tell the strange tale of the autonomous AI agent who wrote a hit piece about him. And finally, the hot mess express returns to the station. Talk about a trolley problem.
So let's start today by talking about the ongoing dispute between the Pentagon and Anthropic. And before we do that, let's make our disclosures. My boyfriend works at Anthropic, and I work at the New York Times, which is suing OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity. So, Casey, have you been following this story?
I have very closely because I am actually quite concerned about what it would mean for the U.S. government to have access to the kinds of technologies they seem to want.
Yes. So this story has been developing quickly over the past few days, but basically the latest developments is that the Pentagon is upset with Anthropic over the terms of a contract that they are negotiating. And they are threatening not only to drop a $200 million contract that they signed with Anthropic, but also to designate Anthropic and its models a supply chain risk, which would be a very serious, almost unprecedented escalation against a US company. And it would have all kinds of implications for Anthropic's ability to work with the Defense Department with contractors who work with the Defense Department. And so this has become a huge political battle.
Got it. Well, okay, so tell us a little bit about the contract that Anthropic and some of these other big AI labs have with the Pentagon. How is the Pentagon using AI right now? So a couple of ways.
One is that the Pentagon has a platform where service members from all of the departments of the U.S. military can use the various AI models that they have contracted with. So right now there are four sort of labs that are included in that. There's Anthropic, there's OpenAI, there's Google, and there's XAI. And so they can use that for administrative tasks, office tasks, whatever. There's also a classified system that is run through Palantir and Amazon Bedrock, which are two of these sort of platform companies that provide access to AI models that lets the U.S. military use Claude in specific classified situations for things like helping them capture the president of Venezuela. That was reportedly a use that Claude was involved in last month.
Hmm. First ever claw napping. Yes. So they have this contract and they want to be able to do sounds like almost whatever they want with it. What are the sticking points here?
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–11:15
2
How did the Anthropic–Pentagon contract dispute begin and who are the key players?
11:15–25:11
3
What does the Pentagon’s “all‑lawful uses” demand actually require from AI companies?
25:11–29:38
4
Why did Anthropic refuse Pentagon terms and what carve‑outs did it seek?
29:38–34:37
5
What would a ‘supply chain risk’ designation mean for Anthropic and its partners?
34:37–59:49
6
How could AI be used for domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons today?
59:49–1:06:11
Speakers
6 identifiedMore from Hard Fork
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