Ruthless exclusive: Pentagon CTO reveals reasoning for Anthropic removal

In an exclusive interview with the "Ruthless Podcast," Emil Michael, the under secretary of war for research and engineering and Department of War chief technology officer, explained why Anthropic was removed from the Pentagon.

"I got the [artificial intelligence (AI)] portfolio," Michael said in an interview released Thursday morning. "Six months into the job, I read the [Anthropic] contract. ‘You can't use AI for battlefield management.’ I was like, ‘What does that mean?’ 'You can't use AI to defend yourself from a missile attack.' What?’"

This spring, the Pentagon froze its relationship with the AI company while signing new contracts with competitors SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA, Reflection, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.

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The Pentagon’s move is currently being litigated in federal court. Anthropic has publicly argued against the Department of War’s authorization policy to use the technology for "all lawful purposes."

In the interview, Michael blamed the Biden administration for its handling of the previous contract.

"[This contract was from] the Biden administration," Michael, who previously served as chief business officer at Uber, quipped. "Maybe someone didn't read it."

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According to Michael, through its computer regulations, the Biden White House selected Anthropic as the "chosen AI company."

Later in the interview, Michael gave a behind-the-scenes look at the high-stakes meeting with the makers of the popular Claude product. He said he wanted to change the scope of the agreement.

"So I called [Anthropic] in, and I was like, OK, you guys, you know, got to change this," Michael told the Fellas. "We’ll use it lawfully, for all lawful purposes, but it's artificial general intelligence. You don’t get to tell me where I could fly a plane to. We decide when we buy a plane from Boeing or Lockheed. And they're like, ‘We think these are our moral values. We have our own constitution.’"

Podcast co-host Comfortably Smug noted that this approach to technology is becoming more prevalent among leading companies.

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"These are E.A. people who are the effective altruists who are just like a menace essentially," Smug said of the growing trend in Silicon Valley.

Smug also noted that the current administration’s changes to the relationship between the government and tech are already providing results, including in recent operations.

"To your credit, by bringing in Grok, Gemini, OpenAI, the climate has shifted where tech companies are now seeing some kind of like leadership and direction," Smug said. "They're happy to get involved. And that's enhanced the capabilities of this Pentagon, where I remember [Nicolas] Maduro got taken in less time than you can get a pizza from Domino's. Something has changed."

Fox News Digital reached out to Anthropic for comment.