The Battle Over AI in Warfare

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:05)
The US attacks on Iran have unfolded at unprecedented speed and precision.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:10)
The Department of War launched Operation Epic Fury, the most lethal, most complex, and most precise aerial operation in history.

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:20)
That's thanks in part to a cutting-edge weapon never before deployed on this scale, artificial intelligence. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has stressed the creation of, quote, an AI-first war-fighting force, and the tech the Pentagon has relied on most heavily is Anthropics. But our colleague Keach Hagey says there's irony in the fact that the Pentagon has used Anthropics Clawed in Iran.

**Keach Hagey** (0:45)
So literally hours before those strikes were ordered, the president directed the federal government to stop working with Anthropic.

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:55)
President Trump also called Anthropic, quote, left-wing nutjobs. The Trump administration is trying to cancel its contracts with Anthropic and to designate it as a security threat that no federal agency can do business with. Yesterday, Anthropic struck back, suing the administration. At the heart of the dispute, which has been going on for months, is a fight over values and how AI can be used in warfare.
And you've been reporting on this saga, right, between the Anthropic, the Pentagon. How would you characterize the drama here?

**Keach Hagey** (1:32)
It's completely unprecedented. I've been asking people around in DC over the last week, have you ever seen anything like this, where a vendor to the US government became this public punching bag in this way, and no one can think of an example? I think it really shows us that AI is a different kind of technology, right? It asks new questions of our society that we just have not worked out yet.

**Jessica Mendoza** (1:58)
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Tuesday, March 10th. Coming up on the show, the battle over AI in warfare.

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**Jessica Mendoza** (4:01)
Can you introduce us to the two men, the center of this fight, Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, and Anthropic CEO, Dario Amadei?

**Keach Hagey** (4:11)
It would be hard to imagine two more different men.
Pete Hegseth, famously, is a former Fox News host. He has sort of made his brand as being a critic of wokeness and DEI in the military.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:26)
For too long, we've promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons. Based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts.

**Keach Hagey** (4:37)
He has this very sort of brusque take no prisoners style. And Secretary Hegseth has made using AI and using the sort of innovation of Silicon Valley as a key touchstone of his strategy for the department.

**Jessica Mendoza** (4:54)
Dario Amadei, on the other hand, is known for being more of a philosopher. He's a lifelong vegetarian who writes in-depth about AI safety.

**Keach Hagey** (5:03)
He's a scientist, he has this curly hair that he sort of twirls when he thinks. He loves to communicate in these long, and I mean long, philosophical tracks.

**Dario Amadei** (5:13)
If you look at the situations I found myself in, and the situations humanity has found themselves in, there's so many times where it's very hard and there's this enormous suffering, and yet there's also this incredible inspiration that kind of...

**Keach Hagey** (5:30)
He also sort of believes in hashing out these things sort of in public, right? Let's have a public thinking through.