Trump administration turns a new page with Anthropic: "They did what we asked - and came back to the right side"
US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick announced that the administration now trusts Anthropic, signaling the end of a high-profile standoff regarding the company's refusal to allow military use of its AI products.
End of the conflict: US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said yesterday that the administration now trusts Anthropic, in what appears to be the end of the high-profile confrontation between the AI company and the administration.
The conflict between the parties erupted earlier this year after the company refused to allow the US military to use its products for "all lawful uses," including the actual execution of offensive military operations and surveillance of civilian populations within the US. This confrontation led to the Trump administration's decision to ban the US military from working with Anthropic's products (while opening the door to competitors' products) and to define the company as a "supply chain risk," a definition usually reserved for companies in hostile countries.
In May, the Pentagon signed agreements with leading AI companies, including OpenAI, Google, and Elon Musk's SpaceX, to deploy their AI capabilities in classified computing systems, with the goal of using their products as a replacement for Anthropic's Claude models. Last week, a federal court ruled that the administration's decision to blacklist Anthropic constituted a violation of its constitutional rights.
Yesterday, in an interview with the Axios website at the G20 Innovation Ministers' conference, when asked if he trusts Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Lutnick said:
"We trust Anthropic. They did what we asked. They came back to the right side. So the answer is: yes."
Later, Lutnick introduced Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown to the conference participants before a joint conversation between the two. "I am very excited about our conversation," he said. Brown himself heaped praise on Donald Trump and his remarks regarding data centers, according to which communities that oppose their establishment will remain poor:
"I really liked Trump's post where he pointed out that data centers are a huge source of prosperity. They create tons of jobs. They generate taxes. And in the way we design them, they actually bring more electricity to the grid."
