Anthropic’s fight with the Pentagon shows how AI could threaten a crucial safeguard of democracy

In February, the United States Department of Defense threatened to designate the AI firm Anthropic a “supply-chain risk” after a dispute over the military’s use of the company’s Claude models. This designation would not only put the company’s $200 million Pentagon contract at risk, but would require all defence contractors to cut ties with the company. At the centre of the dispute were two uses that Anthropic said it would not permit: fully autonomous weapons and the mass surveillance of…