Hegseth gives Anthropic Friday deadline to accept Pentagon's 'any lawful use' terms or face blacklisting

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth set a Friday deadline for Anthropic to agree to the Pentagon's demand for "any lawful use" terms for Claude, which would permit mass surveillance and lethal autonomous weapons. The Pentagon threatened to classify Anthropic as a "supply-chain risk," a designation normally reserved for foreign cyber threats. The showdown has escalated with Emil Michael, the former Uber executive now serving as Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, driving the hardball negotiation alongside Deputy SecDef Steve Feinberg, the Cerberus Capital billionaire. OpenAI and xAI have reportedly already accepted the same terms.

View full digest for February 25, 2026