Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders analyze the fallout from Anthropic's refusal to allow the US Department of Defense to use its AI models for mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. After Defense Secretary Hegseth labeled the restrictions 'woke,' Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic, and OpenAI quickly stepped in to claim the government contracts. The authors argue this is largely a normal market transaction complicated by the Trump administration's vindictive use of national security designations and threats to invoke the Defense Production Act against a domestic company. They contend Amodei's moral posturing may actually benefit Anthropic's brand while potentially trapping OpenAI politically. The deeper lesson, they argue, is not about corporate heroism but about the need for democratic legal structures to govern military AI use, autonomous weapons, and government procurement practices.
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