Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an open letter refusing the Department of Defense's demands over the terms on which Claude could be used. The Pentagon had pressed for language authorizing "any lawful use" — a model free of usage-policy constraints that might limit lawful military applications — which Anthropic read as permitting mass surveillance of Americans and lethal targeting by fully autonomous weapons without meaningful human authorization. Amodei wrote that the threats did not change the company's position and that it could not in good conscience accede, while stressing it was not refusing to work with the department: it was the department's prerogative to choose contractors, but given the value Anthropic's technology provided to the armed forces, he hoped it would reconsider. Months of negotiation had broken down over a single clause, putting the question of how far an AI company can hold a line against its government into the open.