'Hegseth to meet Anthropic CEO as Pentagon threatens banishment'

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has summoned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to the Pentagon on Tuesday morning for what sources say is likely to be a tense meeting over terms for military use of Anthropic's Claude.

• "Anthropic knows this is not a get-to-know-you meeting," a senior Defense official told Axios. "This is not a friendly meeting. This is a sh*t-or-get-off-the-pot meeting."

Why it matters: Claude is the only AI model available in the military's classified systems, and the most capable model for sensitive defense and intelligence work. The Pentagon doesn't want to lose access to Claude but is furious with Anthropic for refusing to lift its safeguards entirely.

State of play: The two sides are heading into the meeting on two totally different pages.

• An Anthropic spokesperson said: "We are having productive conversations, in good faith."
• Defense officials say negotiations have shown no progress and are on the verge of breaking down.

Anthropic is willing to loosen its usage restrictions, but wants to wall off two areas: the mass surveillance of Americans, and the development of weapons that fire without human involvement.

• The company "is committed to using frontier AI in support of US national security," the spokesperson said.
• The Pentagon says it's unduly restrictive to have to clear individual uses with the company, and has demanded that all AI labs make their models available for "all lawful uses."

Friction point: The Pentagon has threatened to declare Anthropic a "supply chain risk" — not only voiding its contracts, but forcing other companies that work with the Pentagon to certify they aren't using Claude in those workflows.

• The Pentagon is discussing other potential tools to force Anthropic's hand. A Defense official said Hegseth would effectively be presenting Amodei with an ultimatum.
• It would be a massive task to offboard Anthropic, which is deeply entrenched, and replace it with another AI lab that currently has inferior capabilities.

Setting the scene: Amodei has been very vocal about the risks of AI-gone-wrong, and has positioned his company as the safety-first AI leader.

• Officials have described a culture clash between Hegseth's brash Pentagon and the Silicon Valley firm.
• The senior Pentagon official said: "The problem with Dario is, with him, it's ideological. We know who we're dealing with."

Reality check: Beyond the personalities that will sit across from each other on Tuesday, there are deeper questions about the role AI can and should play in national security.

• Anthropic isn't alone in worrying that U.S. law hasn't caught up to the way that AI can supercharge surveillance, or in worrying about where entrusting AI to power weapons systems might lead.

Flashback: The use of Claude in the Maduro raid in January escalated the feud between the Pentagon and Anthropic.

In the room: Leading the meeting from the Pentagon side will be Hegseth, Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg and Under Secretary for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, who has been leading the negotiations with Anthropic and three other AI model-makers.

https://www.axios.com/2026/02/23/hegseth-dario-pentagon-meeting-antrhopic-claude