Tech Companies Shouldn’t Be Bullied Into Doing Surveillance
from the surveillance-ai dept
The Secretary of Defense has given an ultimatum to the artificial intelligence company Anthropic in an attempt to bully them into making their technology available to the U.S. military without any restrictions for their use. Anthropic should stick by their principles and refuse to allow their technology to be used in the two ways they have publicly stated they would not support: autonomous weapons systems and surveillance. The Department of Defense has reportedly threatened to label Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” in retribution for not lifting restrictions on how their technology is used. According to WIRED, that label would be, “a scarlet letter usually reserved for companies that do business with countries scrutinized by federal agencies, like China, which means the Pentagon would not do business with firms using Anthropic’s AI in their defense work.”
In 2025, reportedly Anthropic became the first AI company cleared for use in relation to classified operations and to handle classified information. This current controversy, however, began in January 2026 when, through a partnership with defense contractor Palantir, Anthropic came to suspect their AI had been used during the January 3 attack on Venezuela. In January 2026, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote to reiterate that surveillance against US persons and autonomous weapons systems were two “bright red lines” not to be crossed, or at least topics that needed to be handled with “extreme care and scrutiny combined with guardrails to prevent abuses.” You can also read Anthropic’s self-proclaimed core views on AI safety here, as well as their LLM, Claude’s, constitution here.
Now, the U.S. government is threatening to terminate the government’s contract with the company if it doesn’t switch gears and voluntarily jump right across those lines.
Companies, especially technology companies, often fail to live up to their public statements and internal policies related to human rights and civil liberties for all sorts of reasons, including profit. Government pressure shouldn’t be one of those reasons.
Whatever the U.S. government does to threaten Anthropic, the AI company should know that their corporate customers, the public, and the engineers who make their products are expecting them not to cave. They, and all other technology companies, would do best to refuse to become yet another tool of surveillance.
Reposted from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.
Filed Under: ai, defense department, pete hegseth, surveillance
Companies: anthropic
Comments on “Tech Companies Shouldn’t Be Bullied Into Doing Surveillance”
If they allow their tools to be used for war crimes and illegal acts, they should not expect they will escape without consequence.
Also more execs should remember the boardroom scene of the original Robocop.
Stand strong.
Well, they need more distractions from the fact that Trump has never exceeded 50% jobs approval rating. The. Only. President. Ever. They know surveillance will be needed when the MAGA crowd finally gets wise to the fact Trump is all wind and they’ve been duped by Droopy Don.
I don't see bullying here
Hegseth wants to use AI for U.S. citizen surveillance and autonomous weapons, Anthropic says it will not provide it.
So Hegseth looks for someone who does. That’s not bullying but normal business.
If you want to look for newsworthy details, there are more than enough. One is that the U.S. army apparently is breaking its contractual obligations and reacts with entitlement when caught. Another is that Hegseth appears to be in the market for a lot of stuff that definitely has not been run through Congress for approval although being right within its purview.
A lot of really sinister stuff here. “Bullying” is underselling what happens here by focusing on the least problematic angle.
Re:
You’re skipping over the threats to blacklist, etc.
That is itself an example of literally bullying, and not normal business.
Sadly, this piece is already outdated
“Now, the U.S. government is threatening to terminate the government’s contract with the company if it doesn’t switch gears and voluntarily jump right across those lines.”
And that’s exactly what they’ve now done: Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge
New AI poison pill
AI companies should build a poison pill into their corporation and technology that the company’s tech cannot be used for specific military purposes and, if forced to, the company and the technology automatically will shut down rather than comply.
Re: "tech cannot be used for specific military purposes"
How is the tech supposed to reliably identify what it’s being used for? Remember, there is no concept of meaning in the processing that Large Language Models do. They’re simply text generators.
I am not going to buy meat from the butcher if they only want to sell me tongues and tails.
If anthropic does not provide the product the government wants, the government is not going to buy.
That is not “bullying”, you leftist freaks.
Re: DPA
Using the Defense Production Act to compel Anthropic to produce AI for Surveillance and Autonomous weapons is going quite a way past choosing another butcher.
But keep drinking the Kool-aid
It’s time for safety pledges to go into the articles of incorporation and all agreements with customers/vendors (in other words, make it effectively impossible to break a promise).
AI and the Government
Governments should Not regulate AI. We do not need 50 different AI policies and we don’t need the Federal Government to regulate it as that would be Unconstitutional. AI will be developed that with or without a USA Federal Law. It will be developed in almost every country. Trump and You More Government Regulation People will not be able to stop that.
Technology is Freedom