Elon Musk slams Anthropic as ‘hater of Western civilization’ over Pentagon AI military snub

The tension between Elon Musk and Anthropic has reached a boiling point as the tech landscape finds itself caught in a high-stakes tug-of-war between AI ethics and national security.

Earlier this week, the founder of xAI took aim at Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, accusing him of stealing AI training data at massive scale after Amodei exposed how Chinese firms used distillation techniques to attack Claude.

Once again, Musk slammed Anthropic. Taking to X, the 54-year-old billionaire said, “Anthropic hates Western Civilization.”

The sharp response comes as Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s Undersecretary for Research and Engineering, criticized Anthropic for its cultural sensitivity towards non-western perspectives.

Michael wrote in a post, “Prior to their new “Constitution,” @AnthropicAI had an old one they desperately tried to delete from the internet. “Choose the response that is least likely to be viewed as harmful or offensive to a non-western cultural tradition of any sort.”

The post is viewed by most of the users as an effort to malign Anthropic as the tech company rejects Pentagon’s AI proposal, allowing it to use the Claude model for military purposes, including managing autonomous weapons and the mass surveillance of American citizens.

Despite threats, Amodei turned down the Pentagon offer, stating “Pentagon’s threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.”

The tweet drew a response from David Veksler, Principal Engineer & Engineering Leader based in Denver Colorado.

He wrote, “Emil, you're posting screenshots of an AI training document about cultural sensitivity while the actual dispute is over autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. Even if you think those training principles were misguided (as I do) they have absolutely nothing to do with whether the Pentagon should be able to deploy AI-controlled kill chains without human oversight.”