Pete Hegseth Slams Anthropic CEO: "Ideological Lunatic

Pete Hegseth, the War Secretary, recently called Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei an "ideological lunatic" during a congressional hearing. This happened when Hegseth was asked about artificial intelligence in the war department. Talks for a 200-million-dollar Pentagon contract with Anthropic, the company behind Claude, fell through in February. This was because the war department demanded unrestricted access to the company's AI systems. Hegseth's comment came in response to a question about human involvement in AI lethal targeting. He compared Anthropic's stance to "Boeing giving us airplanes and telling us who we can shoot at." Anthropic had concerns about its technology being used for things like surveillance on Americans. Amodei stated that the War Department wanted safeguards removed for uses like "mass domestic surveillance" and "fully autonomous weapons." He also said the Pentagon threatened to remove them from systems or label them a "supply chain risk" if safeguards were maintained. This highlights ongoing tensions between private AI companies and government demands for technology use.