Pentagon CTO Emil Michael explains why Anthropic was dropped from defense AI program

During an exclusive conversation on the Ruthless Podcast, Emil Michael, who serves as Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering and the department’s chief technology officer, detailed why the Pentagon terminated its partnership with Anthropic. Six months into his tenure, Michael discovered a contract provision that prohibited the use of AI for battlefield management, including defending against missile attacks, which he found unacceptable.

He blamed the original wording on the Biden administration’s earlier contract and suggested it had not been properly reviewed. The department has frozen the Anthropic deal and is now contracting with competitors such as SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA, Reflection, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, while the legal battle proceeds in federal court. Anthropic has publicly contested the department’s interpretation of its authorization policy for lawful AI applications. Podcast co-host Comfortably Smug noted that this reflects a growing trend of major tech companies aligning with government initiatives, citing recent operational successes linked to new AI tools.