Pentagon says US military to be an 'AI-first' fighting force

Anthropic's tools, including a version of its Claude chatbot, are still currently in use in many US government and defence agencies, as it was the first AI company to be deployed for classified work. But earlier this year the relationship broke down as Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei went public with fears that powerful AI tools could be used to conduct mass domestic surveillance and to deploy fully autonomous weapons of war. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth moved within days to label Anthropic a "supply chain risk" meaning it was deemed too dangerous for use in government settings. Anthropic's legal challenge to that ruling is expected to go to court in September. In the meantime the row appears to have opened the door for other AI companies to work more closely with the government and military. OpenAI was the first company to ink a new deal with the Pentagon in the wake of Anthropic's row. The ChatGPT-maker signed a contract at the end of February. A company spokeswoman said that Friday's announcement from the defence department was simply a formalisation of that deal. "As we said when we first announced our agreement several months ago, we believe the people defending the United States should have the best tools in the world," the OpenAI spokeswoman said. While Google's Gemini was also already in use of the government, this will be the first time the chatbot is being used to handle any government work at a classified level.

Earlier this week, hundreds of Google employees, including many from DeepMind, a part of the company that does much of the development work behind its AI models and tools, urged the company not to deepen its work with the government in a letter sent to chief executive Sundar Pichai and viewed . A Google spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment. As for SpaceX, it is now the parent company of xAI , the AI startup Elon Musk formed after he acquired Twitter. The company operates the controversial AI chatbot Grok , but is widely considered to offer less advanced AI capabilities than the likes of Anthropic, OpenAI and Google. A representative of SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. Nvidia and the startup Reflection will both have their open-source AI models, Nemotron and Reflection 70B, respectively, in use . Nvidia is not providing any hardware as part of the deal. Nvidia declined to comment and Reflection did not respond to a request for comment. Microsoft, AWS and Oracle have for years provided the cloud services purpose-built to enable government work that happens online. Microsoft and AWS did not reply to a request for comment, while Oracle said its defence work "enables the Department of War to build, deploy, and scale any model, without vendor lock-in." Friday's announcement from the Pentagon marked a continuation of those services, which will now be used to deploy more AI models and tools than ever for military use.

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