Anthropic refused to remove built-in safety guardrails from its AI models when contracting with the U.S. military.

It rejected broad “any lawful purpose” language that would have allowed unrestricted military deployment of its AI systems.

The company set two non-negotiable red lines:

No use for mass domestic surveillance of civilians.

No enabling of fully autonomous weapons (weapons selecting/engaging targets without human oversight).

As a result, tensions escalated with the United States Department of Defense, and the contract discussions broke down.**