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Pentagon tech chief: Anthropic wants to put itself on par with elected presidents

Pentagon Tech Chief Emil Michael: Anthropic Wants a Seat Beside Elected Presidents

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanSeptember 15, 2026 · 5 min read
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The Pentagon’s top technology official has escalated his public fight with Anthropic, accusing the San Francisco company of trying to put itself on the same level as elected presidents in deciding the future of the technology. Speaking with Martha MacCallum on Fox News’s The Story on Sept. 14, 2026, Under Secretary Emil Michael said Anthropic’s push for a global slowdown in advanced model development reflects “a deep-rooted ideology that’s pretty dystopian.”

Michael, who serves as the Defense Department’s under secretary for research and engineering and its chief technology officer, has been the administration’s lead voice in a dispute that began early this year, when the Pentagon cut Anthropic out of its supply chain over the company’s refusal to drop limits on how the military could use its Claude models.

“A marketing vehicle”

MacCallum asked whether the Pentagon backing away from Anthropic explained why the company was “lashing out,” or whether there was something more Americans should worry about. Michael rejected the idea that Anthropic was simply angry about lost business. “I don’t think they’re angry about it. They’re making tons of revenue elsewhere,” he said.

Instead, he said, Anthropic was trying to intervene in the commander in chief’s responsibilities at the Department of War “as a marketing vehicle” to sway a political side toward its product. Then he went further. “I think it comes from a deep-rooted ideology that’s pretty dystopian,” Michael said. “And this was articulated in TV by the CEO of that company the other night, where they want a transnational governance process on AI that includes companies. So they put themselves on the par of our president and other democratic presidents.”

He closed with a warning about relying on such vendors. “I think it’s important for people to be worried about companies that have a different idea of what democracy is,” Michael said. “Frankly, they have a globalist view. We have a democratically elected view.”

He also dismissed the idea that China would sign on to any sweeping deal to slow down development, calling it “extreme naivete” on the part of some companies, “particularly Anthropic, that there’s going to be some grand nuclear-like treaty for AI that happens in a day on a visit.”

What set it off

The CEO Michael referred to is Dario Amodei. On Sept. 12, Amodei published an essay urging AI companies to slow how quickly they improve their most advanced models. According to CNBC, the plan has three steps: outside evaluators with employee-level access to verify safety practices, coordination among leading companies in democratic countries on common safety standards, and finally coordination between democratic and authoritarian governments. Amodei acknowledged on CBS’s Sunday Morning that the hardest part is China. “Honestly, I don’t know if it’s possible, but we should try,” he said.

Beijing’s answer came fast. At a Sept. 14 press conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said, as reported by NPR, that “fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance.” China’s state-run Global Times called the essay a “Cold War playbook” for the sector. President Trump, NPR reported, pushed back against calls for his administration to slow AI development, calling such efforts part of a “SICK conspiracy” that could let China eclipse the United States. Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are expected to discuss AI governance when they meet on Sept. 24.

Not everyone in the industry opposed Amodei. CNBC reported that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said “the direction is correct.” White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks was sharper, writing that if the companies want to slow down, they can simply do it, and that demanding a preferred regulatory framework as the price “will look like blackmail of the public and the political system.”

How the Pentagon and Anthropic split

The feud predates the essay by months. As Fortune reported in March 2026, Anthropic drew two red lines in its dealings with the military: its models would not be used for mass domestic surveillance or for autonomous weapons. The Pentagon’s position was that it will use the technology in any lawful scenario and will not accept company-imposed limits that go beyond what the law already requires.

When talks failed, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk, a label that bars contractors from using its products for military work. Fortune reported that President Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic and gave the Pentagon six months to phase it out, while the department turned to other providers.

Michael explained the reasoning on CNBC in March. “We can’t have a company that has a different policy preference that is baked into the model through its constitution, its soul, its policy preferences, pollute the supply chain so our warfighters are getting ineffective weapons, ineffective body armor, ineffective protection,” he said. “That’s really where the supply chain risk designation came from.” He also acknowledged that the department could not “just rip out” the technology overnight and said it had a transition plan.

Anthropic sued to reverse the designation, calling the government’s actions “unprecedented and unlawful” and saying hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts were in jeopardy, according to CNBC. The company has described itself as patriotic and committed to the defense of the United States.

Who decides

Strip away the technical details and the dispute is about authority. Anthropic argues that some uses of powerful technology are dangerous enough that a company should refuse them. The Pentagon argues that in a constitutional republic, the limits on how the military fights are set by law, by Congress and by an elected commander in chief, not by the terms of service of a vendor. Michael’s charge is that Amodei’s global-governance proposal extends that same instinct from the battlefield to the world stage, giving companies a seat at a table that belongs to governments accountable to voters.

Americans can debate how fast this technology should move. But the question of who sets the rules for the U.S. military has already been answered, and it is not a boardroom in San Francisco.

The commander in chief answers to voters, and no contractor’s red lines outrank the people who elected him.

Sources

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