Amodei apologizes for saying Anthropic was banned for not giving “dictator-style” praise to Trump
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has apologized for a leaked internal memo criticizing the Donald Trump administration, after the company was officially designated a supply chain risk.
Amodei told the Economist he wanted to “completely apologize” for the memo, in which he said Anthropic was blacklisted by the government because it didn’t give “dictator-style praise” to Trump.
He explained that the memo was written on Friday, shortly after Trump ordered the removal of Anthropic services from the federal government, the Department of War (DoW) labeled the company a supply chain risk, and its rival, OpenAI, announced a deal with the Pentagon.
“It was among the most disorienting times in Anthropic’s history,” Amodei said, and added that he posts a lot on the company’s Slack channel, and the memo wasn’t a “refined version” of his thinking.
Amodei said he apologized for his remarks to people within the DoW and said he was “happy to speak to others within the administration.”
According to Amodei's memo reported by the Information, the “real reason” the DoW and Trump disliked Anthropic is that it hasn’t donated to POTUS as much as OpenAI and its president, Greg Brockman.
“We’ve told the truth about a number of AI policy issues (like job displacement), and we’ve actually held our red lines with integrity rather than colluding with them to produce ‘safety theater’ for the benefit of employees,” Amodei said.
The Pentagon blacklisted the company after it refused to remove its guardrails against using its artificial intelligence (AI) tools for “domestic mass surveillance” and “powering autonomous weapons.”
Bloomberg and the Financial Times reported on March 5th that Anthropic had resumed talks with the DoW, hoping to strike a new deal over the military use of AI tools.
However, Undersecretary of War Emil Michael denied the claims by stating on X that there’s no active negotiation between the DoW and Anthropic.
Despite Amodei’s apology, the DoW said it has officially informed Anthropic that the company and its products “are deemed a supply chain risk, effective immediately.” This is a designation historically reserved for companies from foreign adversaries, such as China’s Huawei.
Anthropic claims the designation applies only to the use of its chatbot Claude by customers as a direct part of contracts with the DoW, not all use of Claude by customers who have such contracts.
Nevertheless, the company is now preparing to sue the Pentagon, stating it doesn’t believe the supply chain risk designation “is legally sound.”
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