Anthropic Dario Amodei calls White House response ‘retaliatory’ in AI safety dispute

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has slammed White House actions as "retaliatory” in response to Pentagon’s decision to designate the AI company a supply chain risk to national security.

Talking to CBS News, Amodei said the actions were unprecedented and punitive, aiming to punish the company for refusing to accept the Pentagon’s AI military proposal.

This is for the very first time that the Pentagon has designated an American company to supply chain risk.

Amodei said, “We believe that crossing those lines is contrary to American values, and we wanted to stand up for American values.”

“Disagreeing with the government is the most American thing in the world. And we are patriots. In everything we have done here, we have stood up for the values of this country,” he added.

Anthropic CEO continued, “Everything we have done has been for the sake of this country, for the sake of supporting U.S. national security. Our leaning forward in deploying our models with the military was done because we believe in this country.”

In a blogpost, Anthropic also hit back at the Pentagon, calling this act “legally unsound” and dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government.

The tech company rejected AI military use because of two grave reasons, involving mass surveillance of American citizens and management of autonomous weapons.

On Friday, the Trump administration ordered all the federal agencies to stop using Anthropic Claude immediately.

Later, OpenAI CEO announced a deal with the Pentagon, allowing the US military to deploy AI models on classified networks.