Anthropic and the Pentagon are reportedly arguing over Claude usage | TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 1:11 PM PST · February 15, 2026 Image Credits:Tom Brenner/Bloomberg via Getty Images Anthony Ha Anthropic and the Pentagon are reportedly arguing over Claude usage The Pentagon is pushing AI companies to allow the U.S. military to use their technology for “all lawful purposes,” but Anthropic is pushing back, according to a new report in Axios. The government is reportedly making the same demand to OpenAI, Google, and xAI. An anonymous Trump administration official told Axios that one of those companies has agreed, while the other two have supposedly shown some flexibility. Anthropic, meanwhile, has reportedly been the most resistant. In response, the Pentagon is apparently threatening to pull the plug on its $200 million contract with the AI company. In January, the Wall Street Journal reported that there was significant disagreement between Anthropic and Defense Department officials over how its Claude models could be used. The WSJ subsequently said that Claude was used in the U.S. military’s operation to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Anthropic did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. A company spokesperson told Axios that the company has “not discussed the use of Claude for specific operations with the Department of War” but is instead “focused on a specific set of Usage Policy questions — namely, our hard limits around fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance.” Topics AI, Anthropic, department o...