A high-profile historian says the biggest story in the world right now isn’t the economy or foreign policy. It’s artificial intelligence.
“This is the most important thing happening in the world right now,” Rutger Bregman wrote on X.
He was reacting to an Associated Press report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave AI company Anthropic a deadline: open its technology for unrestricted military use or risk losing its Pentagon contract.
“The administration wants killer drones + mass surveillance of Americans,” Bregman wrote.
“Anthropic refuses to build it. While most tech companies fall in line, they are prepared to pay the price for their principles.”
A Pentagon Deadline
The AP reported that Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a Friday deadline during a meeting Tuesday.
According to a person familiar with the discussion, the message was clear: allow the military to use the company’s AI systems as it sees fit or face consequences.
Anthropic, which makes the chatbot Claude, is the last major AI company that hasn’t fully supplied its models to a new internal Pentagon AI network.
The Defense Department has already awarded contracts worth up to $200 million each to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI.
But Anthropic has drawn firm lines around how its technology can be used.
Amodei has repeatedly warned about the risks of unchecked government use of AI.
In an essay last month, he wrote:
“A powerful AI looking across billions of conversations from millions of people could gauge public sentiment, detect pockets of disloyalty forming, and stamp them out before they grow.”
According to the AP, Amodei didn’t budge in the meeting with Hegseth on two areas Anthropic says it won’t cross: fully autonomous military targeting operations and domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens.
Pentagon officials argue that military tools can’t come with built-in limits if they’re going to be effective.
A senior Pentagon official told the AP that the department has only issued lawful orders and that using Anthropic’s tools legally would be the military’s responsibility.
Behind the scenes, defense officials warned they could designate Anthropic a supply chain risk or even invoke the Defense Production Act to expand the military’s authority over its products.
The Pentagon’s Vision For Military AI
Hegseth has been direct about what he wants from AI companies.
In a January speech at SpaceX in South Texas, he said he was shrugging off any AI models “that won’t allow you to fight wars.”
He added that his vision for military AI systems means they operate “without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications,” before saying the Pentagon’s “AI will not be woke.”
Other AI firms appear willing to comply. OpenAI recently announced it would join the Pentagon’s secure but unclassified AI network, GenAI.mil, enabling service members to use a custom version of ChatGPT for certain tasks.
Musk’s xAI, which makes the Grok chatbot, has also moved toward classified military settings.
Anthropic’s Safety-Focused Approach
Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, has long marketed itself as more safety-minded than its competitors.
It previously aligned with President Joe Biden’s administration in volunteering to subject its AI systems to outside scrutiny. Amodei has warned that AI risks are growing quickly.
In January, he wrote that “we are considerably closer to real danger in 2026 than we were in 2023” but argued those risks should be managed in a “realistic, pragmatic manner.”
The dispute also reflects broader tensions between Anthropic and President Donald Trump’s administration.
Trump’s top AI adviser, David Sacks, accused the company in October of “running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering.”
That comment came after Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark wrote about balancing technological optimism with “appropriate fear” about increasingly powerful AI systems.
Calls For Oversight
Civil liberties advocates say Congress may need to step in if the Pentagon is rapidly adopting AI systems that could be used for surveillance.
Amos Toh of the Brennan Center wrote that “The law is not keeping up with how quickly the technology is evolving,” adding, “But that doesn’t mean DoD has a blank check.”
A Defining Moment For AI And Government
For Bregman, the story isn’t just about one contract dispute. It’s about the direction of the country and the future of AI.
He framed it as a defining moment: an administration pushing for advanced military AI capabilities, including autonomous weapons and broad surveillance powers, and a company that says it won’t cross certain ethical lines, even if that decision results in losing lucrative government work.
Whether Anthropic ultimately keeps or loses its Pentagon contract remains unclear.
What’s clear is that the fight over how far AI should go in war and domestic security is no longer theoretical.
It’s happening now, and it’s playing out at the highest levels of government and the tech industry.