A guide to the Pentagon’s dance with Anthropic and OpenAI

Late last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered an ultimatum to Anthropic, the only company that had provided the Pentagon with artificial intelligence technologies for use on classified systems.

If Anthropic did not allow the Pentagon to deploy these technologies for “all lawful uses,” Hegseth said, he would sever ties with the San Francisco startup.

The threat set off a chain of events that resulted in the Defense Department’s labeling Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” which would prevent all military contractors from using the company’s technologies, and signing an agreement with OpenAI, its biggest rival.