Full interview: Anthropic CEO responds to Trump order, Pentagon clash

We appreciate you taking the time. You are Dario Amadei, the CEO of Anthropic.

Is that right?

That's correct.

Great.

Well, my first question to you is, why won't you release Anthropic's AI without restrictions to the U.S. government?

Yeah, so we should maybe back up a bit for a little bit of context. So Anthropic actually has been the most leaned forward of all the AI companies in working with the US government and working with the US military. We were the first company to put our models on the classified cloud.

We were the first company to make custom models for national security purposes. We're deployed across the intelligence community and military for applications like cyber, combat support operations, various things like this. And the reason we've done this is I believe that we have to defend our country.

I believe we have to defend our country from autocratic adversaries like China and like Russia. And so we've been very lean forward. We have a substantial public sector team, but, you know, I have always believed that, you know, as we defend ourselves against our autocratic adversaries, we have to do so in ways that defend our democratic values and preserve our democratic values.

And so we have said to the Department of War that we are OK with all use cases, basically 98% or 99% of the use cases they want to do, except for two that we're concerned about. One is domestic mass surveillance. There, we're worried that things may become possible with AI that weren't possible before.

An example of this is something like taking data collected by private firms, having it bought by the government, and analyzing it en masse by AI. That actually isn't illegal. It was just never useful before the era of AI. So there's this way in which domestic mass surveillance is getting ahead of the law. The technology is advancing so fast that it's out of step with the law. That's

case number one. Case number two is fully autonomous weapons. This is not the partially autonomous weapons that are used in Ukraine or could potentially be used in Taiwan today. This is the idea of making weapons that fire without any human involvement. Now even those, I think that our adversaries may at some point have them, so perhaps they may at some point be needed for the defense of democracy, but we have some concerns about them. First, the AI systems of today are nowhere near reliable enough to make fully autonomous

weapons. Anyone who's worked with AI models understands that there's a basic unpredictability to them that in a purely technical way we have not solved. And there's an oversight question, too. If you have a large army of drones or robots

that can operate without any human oversight, where there aren't human soldiers to make the decisions about who to target, who to shoot at, that presents concerns. And we need to have a conversation about how that's overseen. And we haven't had that conversation yet.

And so we feel strongly that, you know, those two use cases should not be allowed.

NAWAZ WOLFF, The Washington Post): The Pentagon has told us that they have agreed in principle to these two restrictions, and they wanted to strike a deal. Why couldn't an agreement be reached?

So, there were, you know, there were kind of several stages of this all done quickly and kind of all, you know, determined by the kind of three-day, you know, the kind of very limited three-day window that they gave us, right? They gave us an ultimatum to agree to their terms

in three days or be designated a supply chain risk or defense production act. I guess we'll get to that later. But during that time, there were a few back and forth. At one point, they sent us language that appeared on the surface to meet our terms,

but it had all kinds of language like if the Pentagon deems it appropriate or to do anything in line with laws. So it didn't actually concede in any meaningful way. And there were further steps of it that also did not concede in any meaningful way. We have wanted to strike a deal since the beginning. If you want to get a sense of the Pentagon's position of it, the Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, the day before, he reiterated their position, we only allow all lawful use. And this was the same as when they sent us their terms.

So they have not exceeded in any way, agreed to our exceptions in any meaningful way.

The president posted today in response to the situation, their selfishness, referring to Anthropic, is putting American lives at risk our troops in danger and our national security in jeopardy is What do you think what's your response?

So, you know in in the statement we issued yesterday and also in the one we issued today We said that we were willing even if even if the Department of War or even if the Trump administration takes these unprecedented measures against us, this kind of supply chain designation that's normally used against foreign adversaries, we have said that even if they take these extreme actions, we'll do everything we can to support the Department of War to provide its technology for as long as it takes to off-board us and onboard a competitor who's willing to do

these things that we are not willing to do.

Prepared to exit.

Yeah, so we have offered continuity. We're actually deeply concerned about this. We're deeply concerned about the kind of interruption of service, which is exactly what's happening when we're designated a supply chain risk. When we're designated a supply chain risk, When we're designated a supply chain risk, they say like you have to be off all of our systems.

I've talked to people on the ground, uniformed military officers who say this is essential. Not having this will set us back six months, 12 months, maybe longer. So that's why we've tried so hard to try to get it to try to try to get a deal But again the three-day ultimatum the risk to designate us a supply chain

The whole timeline has been driven by the Department of War not by us. We are trying to provide continuity We are trying to provide the services. We are trying to provide it. We are trying to reach a deal here

So then what does this mean for the safety of Americans?

Yeah, you know, I would say a couple things. You know, in the short run, it means, and you know, it's up to the Department of War, you know, we're still trying to reach a deal with them. We're still trying to talk to them.

Are they talking with you?

We've received various communications. We haven't seen anything that, you know, that satisfies our... we haven't seen anything that satisfies our concerns. But you know, I mean that just in the broad sense that we are still, you know, we are still interested in working with them as long as it is in line with our red lines.

But it sounds like you're still really far apart. And now Secretary Hegseth has determined you all a supply chain risk and said what he said. So do you think it's possible at this point to come to an agreement?

You know, I look, an agreement requires both sides. We for our side are willing to serve the national security of this country. We are willing to provide our models to all branches of the government, including the Department of War, the intelligence community, you know, the more civilian branches of the government under the terms that we've provided under our red lines. We are always willing to do that, right? You know, we're, you know, we don't take offense here.

The reason we're providing our technology in this way is that we want to support the, you know, national security of the United States. We're not doing it, you know, for the sake of Pentagon officials. We're not doing it for the sake

of a particular administration. We're doing it because it's good for the national security of the United States, and we're going to continue to do that.

Why do you think that it is better for Anthropic, a private company, to have more say in how AI is used in the military than the Pentagon itself?

So first I would say, and I think this is an important point, no one on the ground has actually, to our knowledge, run into the limits of any of these exceptions. These are 1% of use cases and ones that we have seen no evidence on the ground have been done. Now again, I can't say what their plans are. We don't know. But we have no evidence that these use cases have actually run into trouble. We've spread across the Department of War and other parts of the government without running into any of these problems.

Now in terms of these one or two narrow exceptions, I actually agree that in the long run, we need to have a democratic conversation. In the long run, I actually do believe that it is Congress's job. If, for example, there are possibilities with domestic mass surveillance, government

buying of bulk data that has been produced on Americans, locations, personal information, political affiliation, to build profiles, and it's now possible to analyze that with AI. The fact that that's legal, that seems like the judicial interpretation of the Fourth Amendment

has not caught up, or the laws passed by Congress have not caught up. So in the long run, we think Congress should catch up with where the technology is going. But Congress is not the fastest moving body in the world. And for right now, we are the ones

who see this technology on the front line. I would expect that the Department of War, I would expect them to be thoughtful about these issues, to proactively thoughtful about these issues, to proactively think about these issues. And so I would have expected them not to have any concern

and for us to have a conversation. But I think in the absence of that, we need to look at the technology. We need to look at what it's capable of in terms of reliability. And we need to look at the technology. We need to look at what it's capable of in terms of reliability, and we need to look at the ways in which it's getting ahead of the law,

and in which it's escaping the intent of the law. Those are some very narrow areas, but I think they're important. These are things that are fundamental to Americans, right? The right not to be spied on by the government, right? The right for our military officers

to make decisions about war themselves and not turn it over completely to a machine. These are fundamental principles.

But in the name of fundamental principles, why should Americans trust you, the CEO of a private company, to make these decisions instead of the federal government?

Well, I would give two answers to that. One, we are a private company, right? We can choose to sell or not sell whatever we want. There are other providers. If the DOW, the government, doesn't like the services we provide or the way that we make them, they can use another contractor. This would have been the normal way to handle this, right? Just to say, I would have disagreed, but I would have respected them if they said, DOW, we don't want to work with Anthropic, our principles are not aligned with yours,

we're gonna go with one of the other models. But they've both extended that to parts of the government beyond the DOW and tried to punitively revoke our contracts beyond DOW. And they've done this supply chain designation thing, which basically says that if you're another private company who has military contracts, you can't use entropic in a way

that touches those military contracts. So they're reaching in to the behavior of private enterprise. And it's very hard to interpret this in any way other than punitive. To our knowledge, the supply chain designation has never been applied to an American company.

It has only been applied to adverse American company. It has only been applied to, you know, adverse, like, you know, Kaspersky Labs, which is a Russian cybersecurity company that, you know, that is, you know, suspected of ties to the Russian government, Chinese chip suppliers. You know, being lumped in with them, it feels very punitive and inappropriate, given the amount that we've done for U.S. national security.

So you say you've done so much for U.S. national security, you're adhering to these two restrictions that you want to keep. Do you think that Anthropic knows better than the Pentagon here?

We don't look, you know, one of the things about a free market and free enterprise is different folks can provide different products under different principles. Remember, this isn't just about terms of use. This isn't just about, you know, this is what our model is legally allowed to do. Our model has a personality. It's capable of certain things.

It's able to do certain things reliably. It's able to not do certain things reliably. And I think we are a good judge of what our models can do reliably and what they cannot do reliably. And I think we do have a good view into how the technology, again, is getting ahead of the law.

But I would say, I would say again, I actually agree with you that this is not tenable in the long term. I don't think the right long term solution is for a private company and the Pentagon to argue about this. I think Congress needs to act here.

And we are thinking about that. We are thinking about what Congress could do to impose some of these guardrails that don't hinder our ability to defeat our adversaries, but that allow us to defeat our adversaries in a way that's in line with the values of our country. But as you know, Congress doesn't move fast.

So I think in the meantime, we do need to draw a line in the sand.

So until Congress acts, you're saying you are going to hold firm here. But there are so many other companies out there that do business with the U.S. government. Boeing builds aircraft for the U.S. military. Boeing doesn't tell the U.S. military what to do with that aircraft. How is this any different?

Again, I would say two ways that it's different. One, I would point again to the newness of the technology, right? When a technology is well established, then, you know, the, you know, I mean, there are lots of technical things about aircrafts, but, you know, I think, you know, a general has a pretty good understanding of, like, how an aircraft works.

Aircrafts have been around for a long time. But there's plenty of innovation inside the aerospace industry.

Sure, but not at the pace that we see with AI. AI is moving so fast. I've talked often about how AI is on an exponential trend. The models, the amount of computation that goes into the models doubles every four months. We have never seen anything like this pace of innovation.

But if that pace continues apace, then the U.S. government will never be caught up. So how does that logic apply if you have long argued that you want to work with the U.S. government to provide the appropriate national security. If it's going to be such a fast development for the foreseeable future, Congress can't catch up, then why turn your back on this?

I think there's only catching up once, right? So the pace of the technology is fast. The issues that arise are few but very important. Again, we only have two of these, domestic mass surveillance, fully autonomous weapons. We need to have a conversation with Congress

to help them understand some of the risks associated with it. Again, this is the most American thing in the world. No one wants to be spied on by the U.S. government. No one wants to be spied on by the U.S. government.

At the exact same time, some of our greatest adversaries have technology that is either quickly catching up to us or will eventually do so, perhaps already caught up. And so if our military is critical to defending the American people and critical to our democracy, freedom, the republic. Why stay in this position and say, no, we're not going to cooperate?

You know, again, that's an abstract argument, but let's look at the actual two uses. Domestic mass surveillance does not help the U.S. catch up with its adversaries. Domestic mass surveillance is, you know, is an abuse of the government's authority, even where it's technically legal.

So that one we can rule out. Fully autonomous weapons, there I actually am concerned that we may need to keep up. You know, it's not, you know- You do. The technology is not ready. And so we are not, as I said, we are not categorically against fully autonomous weapons. We simply believe that the reliability is not there yet and that we need to have a conversation

about oversight. And we have offered to work with the Department of War to help develop these technologies, to prototype them in a sandbox. But they weren�t interested in this unless they could do whatever they want right from the beginning. And so, you know, again, we need to balance the existential need�no one has emphasized it more than me�to defeat our adversaries. But we need to fight. We need to fight in

the right way. You know, this is like saying...

There are plenty of countries and adversaries...

If our adversaries commit war crimes, shouldn't we commit war crimes as well? I'm not saying this amounts to war crimes. What I'm saying is that the essence of our values is that we have to find a way to win in a way that preserves those values. We can't just be a total race to the bottom. We have to have some principles, and these are very few. This technology can radically accelerate

what our military can do. I've talked to admirals, I've talked to generals, I've talked to combatant commanders who say, this has revolutionized what we can do. And these are just the very limited use cases we�ve deployed so far. And so why harp on the 1 percent of use cases that are against our values when we can pursue the

99 percent of use cases that are in favor of our, that advance our democratic values and that defend this country, and we can even try to study that last 1% of use cases to understand if there is a way to do them consistent with our values. That is our position, and I think that's very reasonable.

Give me one or two examples of what could go wrong.

So the kind of thing that we, there are two classes of things that I can imagine could go wrong. So the kind of thing that we did I there there are two classes of things that I can imagine could could go wrong. One again is around this idea of reliability which is just it targets the wrong person, it shoots a civilian, it doesn't show the judgment that a human that a human soldier would show. Friendly fire or shooting a civilian or just the wrong kind of things. We don't want to sell something that we don't think is reliable,

and we don't want to sell something that could get our own people killed or that could get innocent people killed. Second is this question of oversight. If you think about it, human soldiers, there's a whole chain of accountability that assumes a human uses their common sense. Suppose I have an army of 10 million drones,

all coordinated by one person or a small set of people. I think it's easy to see that there are accountability issues there, right? That concentrating power that much doesn't work. It doesn't mean we shouldn't have this fleet. Again, I don't know.

Maybe we need it at some point because our adversaries will have it. But we need to have a conversation about accountability, about who is holding the button and who can say no. And I think that's very reasonable.

President Trump has called Anthropic a left-wing woke company. Is this decision at all driven by ideology?

Look, I can't speak for what other parties are doing and what they're doing.

But you and you're in Anthropic.

Yeah, look, but we, I think, have tried to be very neutral. We speak up on issues of AI policy where we have expertise. We don't have views. We don't have views, we don't think about general political issues, and we try to work together whenever there's common ground. For example, I went to an event in Pennsylvania

with the president, with Senator McCormick, about provisioning energy, provisioning enough energy to power our AI models, provision our AI models in the US. I spoke to the president. I expressed that I agreed with many aspects of what

he's doing. We also did a pledge around using AI for health. And we've done a number of other things. When the administration's AI action plan came out, we said that there were many, perhaps most, aspects of it that we agreed with.

So this idea that we've somehow been partisan or that we haven't been even-handed, we've been studiously even-handed. And again, we can't control if someone, even the president, you know, has an opinion about us. That's not under our control.

What's under our control is that we can be reasonable, we can be neutral, and we can stand up for what we believe.

One to ten, will there be an agreement with the federal government on this in the future, or do you think this is over?

Look, I have no crystal ball. For our part, our position is clear. We have these two red lines. We've had them from day one. We are still advocating for those red lines. We're not going to move on those red lines.

If we can get to the point with the department where we can see things the same way, then perhaps there could be an agreement. For our part and for the sake of U.S. national security, we, you know, we continue to want to make this work. But, you know, again, it takes two parties to have an agreement. If you had a moment with the president right now, tonight, what would you say to him? You know, again, I would say we are patriotic Americans.

We have done 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. We believe in defeating our autocratic adversaries, we believe in defending America.

The red lines we have drawn, we drew because we believe that crossing those red lines is contrary to American values. And we wanted to stand up for American values. And when we were threatened with supply chain designation and Defense Production Act, which

are unprecedented intrusions into the private economy when we were threatened with supply chain designation and defense production act, which are

unprecedented intrusions into the private economy by the government. We exercised our classic first amendment rights to speak up and disagree with the government. 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.

Do you think Anthropic can survive this as a business?

You know, when the president, when Secretary Hegseth tweeted out the supply chain designation, he said something that was inaccurate, that far exceeds their lawful authority. He said that any company that has a military contract can't do business with Entropic at all. That is not what the law said. We put out a statement that pointed to the law. All the law says is that as part of its military contracts,

any company cannot use Entropic as part of those military contracts. That is a much more limited impact.

So you're confident that Anthropic can survive this?

Not only survive it, we're going to be fine. The impact of this designation is fairly small. Now, the nature of the tweet that the secretary put out was designed to create uncertainty, was designed to create a situation where people believed the impact would be much larger, was designed to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt. But we won't let that succeed.

We will be fine.

critics call this an abuse of power, what the Pentagon is doing and what the White House is doing. Do you believe this is an abuse of power?

You know, again, I would return to the idea that this is unprecedented.

But is it an abuse of power?

You know, this has never happened before. This designation has never happened before with an American company. And I think it was made very clear in some of their statements, in some of their language, that this was retaliatory and punitive. I don't know what else to call it. Retaliatory and punitive.

So will you take legal action?

I've stated in our statement. Again, all we've received is a tweet. We haven't received an actual supply chain designate. There's been no actual action by the government. There's just been tweets saying what they're going to do, saying what they claim they're

going to do.

AMNA NAWAZ You haven't received any formal information?

STEVE CASEY We haven't received any formal information whatsoever. All we have seen are tweets from the president and tweets from Secretary Hegseth. When we receive some kind of formal action, we will look at it, we will understand it, and we will challenge it in court.

What do you think that says about their ability to navigate major national security issues if this is the way that you say they're communicating with you?

Again, you know, I don't want to make this about this particular administration. I don't want to make this about particular people. We are trying to do whatever we can to support U.S. national security. That's why we're committed to trying to find a deal. If we can't find a deal, that is why we're committed to off-boarding in a smooth way that allows our war fighters to continue to be supported as they go into

conflicts. And that's why we're committed to standing up to actions that we think are not in line with the values of this country. It's not about any particular person. It's not about any particular administration. It's about the principle of standing up for what's right.

AMNA NAWAZ. Dario Amadei, CEO of Anthropic, thank you very much. I appreciate your time. I appreciate your time.

DARIO AMADEI, CEO, Anthropic, Inc.