AI executive Dario Amodei on the red lines Anthropic would not cross
"It's about the principle of standing up for what's right," said Dario Amodei, CEO of the artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, who has found himself at the center of a new kind of firestorm. What's wrong, in his view, is why the AI company he co-founded has been banned from the federal government.
"It feels very punitive and inappropriate, given the amount that we've done for U.S. national security," he said.
Anthropic created Claude, an AI chatbot you might use at work or school. Since last summer, its government version has been deeply embedded in military intelligence and classified operations at the Pentagon. This past week, in the lead-up to the attack on Iran, the Defense Department demanded Anthropic hand over its AI without restrictions for lawful military use. The company refused.
"We have these two red lines," said Amodei. "We've had them from Day One. We are still advocating for those red lines. We're not gonna move on those red lines."
Those red lines? Not allowing Anthropic's AI to perform mass surveillance of Americans, and prohibiting its AI from powering fully-autonomous weapons without any human involvement.
Amodei said, "It doesn't show the judgment that a human soldier would show – friendly fire or shooting a civilian, or just the wrong kind of thing. We don't want to sell something that we don't think is reliable, and we don't want to sell something that could get our own people killed, or that could get innocent people killed."
It's a question of who should control the most advanced technology ever created: a private tech company, or the federal government?
Asked if he believes Anthropic knows better than the Pentagon, Amodei replied, "One of the things about a free market and free enterprise is different folks can provide different products under different principles. Our model has a personality. It's capable of certain things. It's able to do certain things reliably. It's able to not do certain things reliably. And I think we are a good judge of what our models can do reliably and what they cannot do reliably."
After several weeks of talks, President Trump on Friday directed the U.S. government to halt all use of Anthropic's AI, cancelling more than $200 million in federal contracts. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth labeled Anthropic "a supply chain risk to national security" – a first for an American company.
Asked about the president referring to Anthropic as "a left-wing woke company," Amodei said, "I can't speak for what other parties are doing, and what they're doing. … But we, I think, have tried to be very neutral. So, this idea that we've somehow been partisan, or that we haven't been even-handed? We've been studiously even-handed."
The Trump administration's actions regarding Anthropic have been called by critics an abuse of power. Asked if he agrees, Amodei replied, "Again, I would return to the idea that this is unprecedented."
But is it an abuse of power? "This has never happened before," he said. "This designation has never happened before with an American company. And I think it was made very clear in some of their statements, in some of their language, that this was retaliatory and punitive. I don't know what else to call it. Retaliatory and punitive."
As Amodei and Anthropic face a government ban, his main rival, Sam Altman, of OpenAI (maker of ChatGPT), struck his own deal with the Pentagon on Friday.
Amodei says Anthropic plans to take legal action. "All we've seen," he said, "are tweets from the president and tweets from Secretary Hegseth." And, he says, Anthropic remains at the negotiating table, hoping to talk.
Asked what he might say to President Trump, Amodei said, "We are patriotic Americans. Everything we have done has been for the sake of this country, for the sake of supporting U.S. national security. We believe in defeating our autocratic adversaries. We believe in defending America.
"The red lines we have drawn, we drew because we believe that crossing those red lines is contrary to American values," he said. "Disagreeing with the government is the most American thing in the world. And we are patriots. In everything we have done here, we have stood up for the values of this country."
Story produced by David Rothman. Editor: George Pozderec.
