The WashingtonPost.com reported that “Seven leading artificial intelligence companies have reached deals to deploy their technology in classified Pentagon computer networks, the Defense Department said Friday.
“. The May 1, 2026 article entitled ” Top AI companies agree to work with Pentagon on secret data” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/05/01/pentagon-ai-deals-microsoft-amazon-google-classified-military/) included these comments:
The announcement leaves Anthropic — one of the industry’s key players — increasingly isolated as it battles the Trump administration in court over being branded a national security risk by the Pentagon.
“It’s irresponsible to be reliant on any one partner,” Emil Michael, the department’s chief technology officer, told CNBC Friday. “When we learned that one partner didn’t really want to work with us in the way we wanted to work with them, we went out and made sure we had multiple different providers.”
The department said it planned to use AI technology to analyze data and improve decision-making on the battlefield.
A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on the financial terms of the deals.
Defense officials have been trying to push Anthropic aside after a clash over whether the Pentagon would accept restrictions on the use of its Claude model to conduct mass domestic surveillance or power fully autonomous weapons.
At the time, defense officials said they could not agree to limits that they viewed as giving a private company a veto over national security decisions and instead demanded the freedom to use the technology for “all lawful purposes.”
But the precise implications of that standard have remained unclear, and the agreements announced Friday include limits on autonomous weapons and surveillance, according to a defense official and a portion of the text reviewed by The Washington Post.
No surprises here!