Category: World

A public showdown between the Trump administration and Anthropic, maker of the Claude AI model, has escalated into a sweeping federal ban, a Pentagon blacklist and a state based squeeze that appears to be designed to force the company to abandon its safety restrictions.

“THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS! That decision belongs to YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, and the tremendous leaders I appoint to run our Military.

The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic… pic.twitter.com/aIEx92nnyx

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 27, 2026

On 27th February, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, announced a ban on Anthropic in a long social media post on Truth Social in which he called the company a threat to national security. His stand was followed by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in his social media post. Both the leaders framed the restrictions imposed by Anthropic as an unacceptable attempt by a private company to dictate how America fights wars.

The dispute between the White House and Anthropic is not about whether Anthropic should work with the US military. According to the company’s statement, it already does on an extensive level. The fight is about whether the US military should get access with no guardrails at all, which includes mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons that remove humans from the loop.

Anthropic says those two use cases are dangerous, incompatible with democratic values and beyond what today’s AI can safely deliver. However, the US President does not agree with the company’s stand.

What triggered the standoff

Chief executive of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, said in a statement that Claude is already deployed across the Department of War and other national security agencies for mission critical work that includes intelligence analysis, modelling and simulation, operational planning and cyber operations.

He further claimed that Anthropic has taken national security aligned decisions that hurt its own revenues, including cutting off use by firms linked to the Chinese Communist Party and supporting stronger chip export controls.

Despite that, the Department of War demanded that Anthropic remove safeguards and accept a broad standard that would permit “any lawful use”. Hegseth articulated that the administration’s position is that suppliers cannot impose operational terms, and that “lawful” national security needs should be the only boundary.

Anthropic’s red lines, mass surveillance and all AI weapons

What Amodei said in his statement draws a sharp line around two categories. The first is mass domestic surveillance. Anthropic says AI driven surveillance at scale creates novel risks to fundamental liberties. It argues that the law has not caught up with AI’s ability to stitch together scattered, individually innocuous data into an intimate, comprehensive picture of a person’s life, automatically and at massive scale. In short, it fears an internal dragnet made dramatically more powerful by frontier models.

Internal dragnet can be defined as a wide, sweeping surveillance net aimed inward at a country’s own people, not foreign targets. In this context, it implies the state using powerful tools like AI to collect, combine and analyse massive amounts of data about citizens at scale to map their movements, contacts, behaviour and associations, often without individualised suspicion. To understand it in simple terms, think of it as a fishing net thrown over the whole population, rather than a targeted investigation.

The second is fully autonomous weapons, systems that select and engage targets without human involvement. Anthropic says today’s frontier AI is not reliable enough to power such weapons safely. Furthermore, without proper oversight, these systems cannot be trusted to exercise the judgement that trained troops apply. Anthropic, reportedly, has offered to work on research and development to improve reliability but that offer was rejected by the government.

The company’s position is not that autonomous capabilities will never be needed. It is that the technology and the oversight structures are not there yet, and the costs of being wrong are catastrophic.

Trump’s order, immediate halt and a six month phase out

After the Pentagon deadline passed, Trump posted on Truth Social ordering every federal agency to immediately cease all use of Anthropic’s technology. The order included a six month phase out for the Department of War and other agencies where Anthropic’s tools are embedded. This move is intended to prevent disruption while forcing a rapid transition.

The confrontational language Trump used has an unmistakable political tone. He accused Anthropic of trying to strong arm the Department of War and called it a “radical left” company. Trump warned of using “the full power of the presidency” with “major civil and criminal consequences” if the company did not cooperate during the phase out.

Whatever the rhetoric, the practical effect is simple. A company that was reportedly integrated into sensitive systems now faces a government directed offboarding across the federal ecosystem.

The supply chain risk label, a death choke for a contractor ecosystem

Trump’s attack on Anthropic was not all. Hegseth announced that the Department of War would designate Anthropic a “supply chain risk to national security”, and that effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the US military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.

This week, Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon.

Our position has never wavered and will never waver: the Department of War must have full, unrestricted…

— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) February 27, 2026

This can be seen as the key escalation. It is not just the government stopping its own usage. It is effectively telling the sprawling universe of defence contractors and military linked vendors that they cannot touch Anthropic at all, even at a commercial level. According to Anthropic, that sort of designation has historically been reserved for US adversaries, and its use against an American firm is unprecedented.

In effect, the label operates like a choke point. A huge slice of corporate America sells something to the Pentagon, directly or indirectly. If those firms are barred from dealing with Anthropic, the company’s access to partnerships, distribution channels, cloud arrangements and integration pipelines can be crippled.

Pressure on partners, divestment rumours and the chilling message to industry

Anthropic is not the only company facing pressure and the wrath of the “almighty” White House. According to some reports, Hegseth is pressuring major technology firms, including Nvidia, Amazon and Google, to divest their shares and unwind partnerships with Anthropic. The logic is straightforward. If Anthropic is branded a supply chain risk, then any large firm that depends on defence business may find it safer to cut ties rather than risk procurement blowback.

The move is less of a procurement decision and more a coercive campaign. It should be seen as a warning shot to the entire AI industry dealing with the US government, especially in terms of military contracts. Sign the contract on the government’s terms or face a blacklist that can make other firms abandon you.

Anthropic’s response, court challenge and refusal to fold

Anthropic has said it will challenge the supply chain risk designation in court. The company has called the move legally unsound and warned that it sets a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government. The company also says it will work to enable a smooth transition to other providers so military planning and operations are not disrupted. However, it has insisted it cannot in good conscience remove the two safeguards.

In other words, Anthropic is offering cooperation on offboarding, but not surrender on principle.

Why this matters beyond Anthropic

This episode is not just about Anthropic and its stand off with the US government. The administration is asserting that the military must have full control over the tools it buys and no company can impose constraints on its use. Anthropic is asserting that certain capabilities are too dangerous to enable, especially when AI is still prone to errors and hallucinations. When the use cases involve either turning the state’s gaze inward or delegating lethal decisions to machines, lack of human oversight can be catastrophic.

Even supporters of a strong national security posture should pause at the precedent. A state that can blacklist a domestic firm as a supply chain risk for refusing to enable mass surveillance or human out of the loop weapons is a state signalling that private sector dissent on ethics will be punished through procurement power.

The most worrying part is not the rhetoric. It is the mechanism. The supply chain risk label is not just a contract dispute tool. It is designed to isolate an entity from a defence linked ecosystem. Used this way, it turns national security procurement into leverage that can reshape the AI industry by force.

The bottom line

Anthropic claims that it has built its brand on AI safety, and it has drawn clear red lines around domestic mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons without human oversight. The Trump administration has responded with an aggressive two step strike, a federal wide cease use order and a Pentagon backed “supply chain risk” designation that threatens to cut Anthropic off from partners and contractors across the defence economy.

For the moment, the message from Washington is blunt. Either an AI company gives the military unrestricted access on the government’s terms, or it risks being treated like an adversary, with consequences that can choke its business to death.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A crowd gathered at a commuter gate at Reagan National Airport on Friday as fog-laden Washington skies caused an hourlong ground stop that backed up passengers hoping to head out from American Airlines’ Terminal D.

But soon the already densely packed area swelled even more, as word spread across nearby gates that, of the hundreds of air travelers coming and going, only one among them was accompanied by a U.S. Secret Service detail, along with uniformed local police officers: former President Joe Biden.

READ MORE: Biden is receiving radiation and hormone therapy to treat his prostate cancer, aide says

Biden, who has rarely made public appearances since leaving office last year, sat, like many of his fellow passengers, awaiting a flight that would take him to Columbia, South Carolina, for an evening event with the South Carolina Democratic Party.

Passengers whispered and gaped in wonder: Why would a man who for a time was leader of the free world be, like they were, at the mercy of airport travel delays, even as he sat ensconced in his security detail?

Maybe for Biden it made more sense than for some other former presidents. Known for years as Amtrak Joe, Biden as a senator prided himself on becoming arguably the nation’s biggest Amtrak fan, regularly taking the train home to Delaware rather than taking up residence in Washington. Now, as a former president, he’s been spotted riding the rails since, taking selfies with and chatting up his fellow passengers.

On Friday, the vibe was about the same, as Biden — seated in the third row of the tiny first class cabin on the commuter jet — boarded the flight ahead of other passengers, along with his detail, members of which were spread throughout the plane.

“God bless you, sir,” one woman said, as she filed past Biden in his window seat, newspaper in his lap.

“Thank you for your service,” a man said, shaking Biden’s hand.

The woman who took the aisle seat next to the former president first set down her coffee on the arm rest they shared, deposited a bag in the overhead compartment, then sat down and realized her seatmate was the nation’s 46th president.

Biden set his hand on her cup to steady it, then met her gaze with a hello as she took her seat.

“I feel like I’m about to cry,” the woman said, as they shook hands and, over the course of the next hour, chatted throughout the flight.

Former presidents and their spouses receive lifelong Secret Service protection under federal law, but there are no provisions guaranteeing the elite levels of private travel that were necessary features of their time in office.

Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery reportedly signed an agreement on a $110 billion deal. The merger would make one of the largest media empires in the world. Paramount could now control two key movie studios, multiple streaming platforms, and two of the biggest news operations on television, CBS and CNN. Geoff Bennett discussed the implications with Roben Farzad of Full Disclosure.

Geoff Bennett:

Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery reportedly signed an agreement today on a $110 billion deal, a merger that will make Paramount one of the largest media empires in the world.

It happened after a dramatic turn of events and after Netflix walked away from its proposal to buy out Warner Bros. Paramount could now control two key movie studios, multiple streaming platforms, major intellectual property brands, along with television and cable channels, and two of the biggest news operations on television. That’s CBS and CNN.

But this isn’t a done deal yet, as it’s now under investigation and awaiting regulatory approval.

For more on all of this, we’re joined now by Roben Farzad, host of public radio’s “Full Disclosure.”

It’s always great to see you, Roben.

Roben Farzad, Host, “Full Disclosure”: Thank you, Geoff.

Geoff Bennett:

So we will get to the concerns about the media consolidation regarding this deal, but on the specifics of the deal itself, when Netflix said that this offer was no longer attractive, what was that really about? Was it just about the price or deeper concerns about taking on Warner Bros.’ debt and its market exposure?

Roben Farzad:

I think Netflix got every signal from this White House and the FCC and Donald Trump being explicit in both with background persuasion that by far he prefers Paramount and the Ellisons taking this over.

He’s obviously cast aspersions on CNN, which is a small part of the economics of the broader Warner Bros. Discovery franchise, but it’s a lightning rod for him. And he’d like to see CNN under new ownership, ideally friendly to the persuasions of Donald Trump.

Geoff Bennett:

So this wasn’t about the offer price. It was about Trump putting his thumb on a scale.

Roben Farzad:

Yes, because Netflix has so much money. And, by the way, this ceased to be uneconomic a while ago, like a bidding war.

And it’s happened in the history of LBOs and massive mergers and acquisitions. Indeed, Warner Bros. Discovery itself is like — they say there’s something about Mary. There’s something about Warner.

For 25, 26 years, everybody has been mega-merging, acquiring, stripping, flipping it off to other people. It was AOL. It was AT&T. It was AT&T, this Discovery disaster, and now it’s being sold off to another multibillionaire. It’s been certainly an ill-starred asset to own.

Geoff Bennett:

So what does Paramount get by acquiring it?

Roben Farzad:

You get this Holy Grail of a mega streaming app, right? Paramount+ or whatever it is, and it’s predecessors’ app, Showtime and the other things, they’re known as the kind of the third-tier apps.

But if you smash HBO Max or whatever they’re going to call it into this, think about “Game of Thrones,” “Sex and the city,” “The Sopranos,” that superior I.P., you suddenly have a value proposition vis-a-vis a Netflix or an Amazon or an Apple to say, hey, we’re big players, we deserve your 25 or 30 bucks a month. You should cancel the other players.

So this is something that Disney is currently duking out. It had acquired massive FOX assets. Amazon and Apple obviously have unlimited amounts to play in this, Google, which owns YouTube. It’s a whole different Hollywood than it was just even 10 years ago.

Geoff Bennett:

The Ellisons’ close proximity to President Trump drawing scrutiny, could that relationship shape the regulatory process?

Roben Farzad:

I think it could, in that every indication has been that it’s going to get smooth sailing, right? The FCC is OK with it.

You saw what the acquisition of Paramount and maybe kind of the hush money paid out, what it was for CBS News. And there are potentially some scalps that are going to have to be delivered in this with CNN. There’s fear there. Again, CNN by itself is hugely profitable. It’s diminishing, but its competitive bogey right now is The New York Times. It’s not these other issues.

It’s not this bottleneck of leadership or ownership or big tech money coming in. The bigger perception is that this was done for political reasons, to fast-track the acquisition of much more important and profitable film and studio and streaming assets.

Geoff Bennett:

And what does it mean that one family potentially could own so much media and entertainment?

Roben Farzad:

And to say nothing else of TikTok, which Larry Ellison and Oracle control 15 percent of.

Geoff Bennett:

Right.

Roben Farzad:

We are in that era right now. If you think about Elon Musk coming in and making an uneconomic acquisition of Twitter, did it matter in the end? Did it bankrupt him? He might have a trillion-dollar SpaceX IPO.

Washington Post and Jeff Bezos, was $250 million supposed to be meaningful to a person maybe worth $200 billion? He still gutted that. It’s a really treacherous time. As you see with the stewardship of the Ellisons and CBS News, they’re willing to cut where others didn’t cut before. And there’s going to be no shortage of debt and cost saving synergy expenses in this and a tremendous amount of fear and loathing in Hollywood, in CNN.

It’s just been a pretty lost decade for all of media and entertainment.

Geoff Bennett:

Roben Farzad, always good to speak with you.

Roben Farzad:

My pleasure.

Geoff Bennett:

For months now, ICE has been quietly buying industrial warehouses around the country, reportedly with plans to turn them into a network of immigration detention and processing centers to hold tens of thousands of detainees.

Our White House correspondent, Liz Landers, begins our coverage with a look into how the national and at times local controversy is playing out in one small Maryland community.

Liz Landers:

A national controversy lands on the agenda of a small Maryland city during an otherwise mundane weekly meeting.

The Hagerstown City Council and mayor represent about 45,000 residents, but the broader community is bracing for the arrival of as many as 1,500 mostly undocumented migrants.

This huge warehouse right here was recently purchased by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a detention facility. This is more than 800,000 square feet, and, if it opens, it could be one of the largest detention facilities of its kind in the country.

During a couple of visits over a week, we saw anti-ICE vandalism, but no visible signs of ICE itself. We ran into Doris Keil-Shamieh and her husband, Greg, as we left the site.

Doris Keil-Shamieh, Maryland Resident:

The administration is ruining this country, and it’s tearing apart communities, tearing apart communities that we need. And they’re good people. This has got to stop.

Liz Landers:

Locally, the facility will be primarily regulated by the Washington County Board of Commissioners.

Man:

All in favor by saying aye.

Man:

Aye.

(Booing)

Liz Landers:

Protesters interrupted their meeting earlier this month shortly after the board unanimously agreed to a resolution welcoming ICE.

Man:

Nobody ever expected it to become a place of residence.

Liz Landers:

We listened last week as the city’s utility director briefed the council on its limited, but critical role governing the facility.

Woman:

Our authority starts and stops with the water.

Liz Landers:

In the audience, community members on both sides of the national and now local debate.

Arthur Larue, Hagerstown, Maryland, Resident:

I don’t think it’s a good thing for Hagerstown if we get that.

Jane Page Thompson, Hagerstown, Maryland, Resident:

I think it’s a great thing. Hagerstown needs as much help as it can get in increasing the income per person. Having this facility will do that with jobs.

Liz Landers:

If there are people that are being held in this facility who haven’t broken the law other than being in this country illegally, are you OK with that happening?

Jane Page Thompson:

I am engaged to a man who was a political refugee from Bolivia who was naturalized as an American citizen. So, for me, it’s really personal that people come to this country legally.

Arthur Larue:

With the things I have heard that are going on in some of the other ICE facilities, I definitely don’t want that in my community. I’d love to see the city do everything they can to fight this. Given our council and our mayor, I’m not sure that they will.

Liz Landers:

ICE already spent $102 million purchasing the warehouse. The Department of Homeland Security responded to our questions with a statement touting its economic benefits and reading in part — quote — “These will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards. Sites will undergo community impact studies and a rigorous due diligence process to make sure there is no hardship on local utilities or infrastructure.”

Bill McIntire, Mayor of Hagerstown, Maryland: We know who bought it, but we don’t know what is actually going to happen there.

Liz Landers:

Bill McIntire, Hagerstown’s nonpartisan mayor, notes that, while the city does have limited authority over water and the new facility will almost certainly need to secure a greater allowance, he’s not eager to pick a fight between his small town and a giant federal agency.

Bill McIntire:

We have never denied water to anyone, so if you do deny this, does the federal government look at this as a political move and are we opening ourselves up to litigation?

Liz Landers:

Earlier this week, Maryland’s attorney general sued the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, saying that the administration failed to conduct an environmental review or seek public input or provide explanation for the purchase, which is required by law.

Joining us now is Douglas MacMillan, a reporter for The Washington Post who’s done extensive reporting about these ICE facilities.

Thank you for joining us.

Douglas MacMillan, The Washington Post:

Thanks for having me.

Liz Landers:

Let’s start with the size and scope of this.

Can you give us an idea of ICE’s efforts to create this system of detention centers throughout the country?

Douglas MacMillan:

Yes, so they’re going all around the country.

We’re seeing this happen all the way from all the way up in New Jersey, New Hampshire, all the way down to Orlando and Florida, all the way out West. They’re trying to build places in Kansas and Oklahoma. This is all over the country. They’re focusing on warehouses they can find a little bit outside of large towns.

So we’re finding these about 45 minutes to an hour outside of large city centers. And they’re trying to fix these near logistics hubs, where it’s easy to move people in and out of the city. So we think that they want to — they have — ICE officials have stated that their objective is to make the system of detention and deportation more efficient.

And the current acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, has actually compared his aspiration to Amazon’s system of moving packages. He said, we want to be able to move humans around the country as efficiently as Amazon ships packages.

Liz Landers:

What’s the overall cost of this? How much is the Department of Homeland Security and ICE spending on this?

Douglas MacMillan:

So they’re projecting to spend $38 billion.

That involves buying the warehouses. Many of them cost around $100 million. That involves significant upgrades in retrofitting these warehouses to basically turn what are empty, vacant shells of buildings into a kind of functioning detention center with housing units, recreation areas, kitchens, outside basketball courts.

They want to kind of, like, build these out and spending a lot up to $150 million for a single facility in some cases.

Liz Landers:

Many of these warehouses are currently just massive empty buildings. We saw this one in Hagerstown. And, apparently, there are four toilets in this huge 800,000-square-foot-plus facility. What is the process going to look like for making these habitable for people?

Douglas MacMillan:

Yes, I mean, these places were built to hold goods and ship goods. They were not meant to hold human beings. So there’s a pretty significant renovation process that has to go under way. And ICE wants it done really rapidly.

So it’s going to be a challenge. For one example, a lot of these are distribution centers built for a company like Amazon where a lot of trucks would have been pulling up to these large bay doors. And so many of these facilities have dozens of bay doors around the perimeter of the building. That’s not a very secure feature if you want a detention center to hold people who are not going to be able to escape.

So one of the first things they might have to do is brick up all those bay doors. Another thing that a lot of these facilities have that is going to be a challenge is that they are built on a thick concrete slab, which is going to make it extra hard to install plumbing and to install wiring and to install kind of the workings of a building that you’re going to need when you’re talking about holding thousands of people.

So it’s going to be a pretty complex job.

Liz Landers:

What’s your reporting on the timeline that ICE has for this? How long is it going to take them to be able to convert these warehouses?

Douglas MacMillan:

So it’s really rapid. They want this whole system of up to 24 facilities to be up and running by the end of the year essentially.

And we have heard internally there’s been a lot of debate over that time frame and that even some companies that they have worked with for many years like GEO Group and CoreCivic, who are the two largest detention contractors in the country, that they have been pushing back and saying that this timeline is too aggressive.

Liz Landers:

The administration has found some of these warehouses that they have purchased in areas that are Republican communities. What has been the reaction in those places?

Douglas MacMillan:

Yes, so I spent time in one of these facilities down in Social Circle, Georgia. It’s a small town 45 minutes east of Atlanta.

It’s projected to be one of the first mega-detention centers. Like, they’re going to turn one of these warehouses and turn it into a detention center holding up to 8,500 people. The people there were really worried and scared and nervous about what this means for their town.

A lot of them say that they support the president and they voted for the president, and they generally agree with his immigration agenda and they agree that illegal immigrants should be locked up and deported from the country, but that they don’t think that this makes sense for them.

Liz Landers:

And, just quickly, how has the administration handled some of the pushback in some of these places?

Douglas MacMillan:

So, very different. In some places, they have just been completely quiet and they have gone about their business just simply buying the facilities and moving forward with their plans to put these up, not really kind of being any mind, giving any mind to the protests and the pushback.

In other places, it sounds — it seems like they have acquiesced and they have actually come to the table. We have seen a few examples now. Just this week, Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee announced that ICE was canceling its plans to host a detention center in her state in Tennessee. We have seen similar announcements from state leaders in New Hampshire and Mississippi.

So it looks like that some Republican leaders who have juice with DHS are striking deals to get these facilities not in their areas. But in other places, including many Democrat-led areas, there isn’t kind of that ability and that the DHS has not really come to the table and meaningfully engaged with the local community.

Liz Landers:

Doug MacMillan, thank you so much for sharing your reporting.

Douglas MacMillan:

Thanks for having me.

The clash between Anthropic and the U.S. government escalated with President Trump ordering every federal agency to stop using any of the AI company’s products. It came after Anthropic wanted to limit how the Pentagon used one of its AI tools. William Brangham discussed more with Michael Horowitz. He previously worked in the Pentagon, where he wrote the policy on AI weapon systems.

Geoff Bennett:

The standoff between the artificial intelligence firm Anthropic and the U.S. government escalated sharply today. President Trump lashed out at the company’s leadership and directed all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s products. And the Pentagon designated the company a supply chain risk to national security.

William Brangham joins us now with more — William.

William Brangham:

That’s right, Geoff.

Anthropic had long said that it didn’t want the U.S. military using one of its programs for any fully autonomous weapons systems or for any mass surveillance of American citizens. Negotiations were ongoing this week, but the president’s order seems to have brought them to an end.

The Pentagon’s designation would bar any company that does business with the Department of War from doing any commercial business with Anthropic.

For more on what this could mean, we are joined by the University of Pennsylvania’s Michael Horowitz. He previously worked in the Defense Department, where he wrote the Pentagon’s policy on artificial intelligence weapons systems.

Michael Horowitz, so good to have you here.

I wonder if you could just give me your first — your reaction to this, to the president saying, we are wiping Anthropic completely out of the federal government and that any Pentagon contractor that also has dealings with Anthropic has to stop those as well.

Michael Horowitz, Former Defense Department Official:

What a day.

I think that the — my initial thought, frankly, is that that escalated quickly and that what seemed like a needless dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon has hit crisis proportions.

I say needless dispute because Anthropic was the first of the frontier A.I. labs willing to work with the Defense — willing to work with the Pentagon in a classified environment. And all of the projects that the Pentagon has asked the Anthropic to work in, Anthropic was happy to work on.

This was a theoretical dispute about future possibilities that between — between Anthropic and the Pentagon that has now really escalated. The president’s order, in combination with the order from Secretary Hegseth, could not just be devastating to the Pentagon’s ability to use Anthropic’s technology, but could be devastating to Anthropic’s core business, depending on how it’s interpreted by the markets and whether Anthropic is able to get — I’m not a lawyer, but Anthropic is able to get a stay of the supply chain designation.

William Brangham:

What does this do to America’s ability to keep up a robust defense?

I mean, Anthropic was already being used in many parts of the Pentagon, according to reports. So, now if the president is saying, get it all out of there, what does that do to our ability to maintain a defense?

Michael Horowitz:

Anthropic’s technology wasn’t just being used in parts of the Pentagon. It was being used in other parts of the government as well.

So this could be pretty devastating in some ways. The only thing that mediates that is the six-month time period that appears both in the president’s announcement and in the supply chain designation by Secretary Hegseth.

If you wanted to be an optimist about the chances that the two sides will come to a deal, the optimistic read would be, in some ways, this sets a six-month clock for negotiations between Anthropic and the government. But that — you have got to squint real hard in some ways to see that optimistic read.

And the winner, in some ways, if Anthropic and the Pentagon can’t make it work, frankly, is China, because the — in a world where there’s been intense A.I. competition between the United States and China, and that includes the military realm, it should be all hands on deck for the American frontier A.I. labs to work with the Pentagon to improve American national defense.

And Anthropic’s have been willing to do that. Over a six-to nine-month period, then you would imagine some of the other A.I. labs will try to cycle in and pick up some of that business if nothing can be done. Note that Elon Musk’s xAI has already stepped up to the plate and said last week that they were willing to now work in the classified environment with the Pentagon on defense challenges.

William Brangham:

That’s right. It’s hard to imagine that there’s not a whole slew of other companies willing to step into the breach there.

I want to ask you about this request, though, that Anthropic was making. They were saying, we’re happy for you to use our product, except in these two instances. And I wonder what you make of that request. It’s hard to think of another defense contractor, a Northrop Grumman, saying, we will sell you jets, but you can only use them in certain ways.

Michael Horowitz:

Absolutely.

I mean, this was what really escalated the dispute between Anthropic and the government, was Anthropic’s insistence that their technology not be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapon systems, although, to be clear, this did not bother the Pentagon when Anthropic — when they signed the original contract with Anthropic less than a year ago.

This is something that really escalated after Anthropic asked Palantir, actually another leading technology company, about whether Anthropic’s technology was used in the Maduro raid in January, where some — where Palantir’s Maven Smart System technology was used, and that platform incorporates some of Anthropic’s technology.

And so we were off to the races from there. In some ways, this is a dispute about personalities and about the role of government masquerading as a policy dispute, because, in a normal atmosphere, Anthropic would decide they want to work on some issues for the Pentagon, but not other issues, and the Pentagon would hire Anthropic to work on some things, but not other things. It would find other vendors.

But this escalated to the point where the department was threatening to either compel them with the Defense Production Act or impose that supply chain designation.

William Brangham:

As you said, what a day.

Michael Horowitz from the University of Pennsylvania, thank you so much for being here.

Michael Horowitz:

Thanks for having me.

Geoff Bennett:

In the day’s other headlines: Pakistan’s defense minister says his country is engaged in an open war with Afghanistan after the neighboring countries exchanged attacks last night.

Pakistan accused the Taliban government in Afghanistan of harboring militant groups, which it says launched strikes across the border in Pakistan. For its part, Afghanistan denies enabling terrorism and says Pakistan broke a previous cease-fire agreement the two sides reached back in October.

Zabihullah Mujahid, Taliban Spokesman (through interpreter):

Whenever aggression has occurred against Afghanistan, the Islamic emirate has always tried to resolve the issue through dialogue and mutual understanding. However, each time, the aggression has persisted.

Geoff Bennett:

In Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, residents there voiced support for the strikes.

Akhtar Shaheen, Karachi, Pakistan, Resident (through interpreter):

The point is, when faced with aggression, you have to respond. Pakistan is a sovereign state. And our nation expects us to defend it.

Geoff Bennett:

Tensions between the two sides have been boiling for months after border clashes in October.

Israel’s high court ruled that aid groups can continue operating in the Gaza Strip. The ruling reverses an earlier government decision that barred the groups for refusing to comply with new Israeli rules. It comes as five people were killed in Israeli drone strikes on two separate police checkpoints today.

Israel says they were in response to a violation of the fragile cease-fire by Hamas. At a funeral today for some of those killed, family members said that the truce has done little to stop the violence.

Ahmed Gouda, Relative of Palestinian Killed (through interpreter): Those three dead are among a number that continues to rise every day. As Israeli violations continue, they have not stopped since the signing of the truce agreement.

Geoff Bennett:

Meantime, some Palestinians from the West Bank were denied entry into Jerusalem for the second Friday of Ramadan prayers. Israeli authorities had said they would only allow up to 10,000 Palestinian worshipers and they’d tighten security across the city.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says that Scouting America will change several policies to maintain Pentagon support, including one targeting transgender youth. The Texas-based organization is keeping its new name, rather than returning to Boy Scouts, and it will continue its service for some 200,000 girls.

But in a video posted to social media, Hegseth said the group will require its members to use their — quote — “biological sex at birth and not gender identity” and that the Pentagon will end its support of the organization if it fails to comply.

Pete Hegseth, U.S. Defense Secretary:

These and other changes that Scouting America’s leadership committed to will hopefully result in a rededication to the foundational ideals that have defined scouting for generations,duty to God and country, leadership, character and service.

Geoff Bennett:

Meantime, in Kansas today, two transgender men are suing the state over a new law that requires that gender markers on a driver’s license or birth certificate match a person’s sex at birth. The Kansas law is the first such measure in the nation.

Democratic lawmakers say they are stunned and deeply alarmed following yet another instance of a laser being used to shoot down a drone near the U.S.-Mexico border. It happened yesterday near Fort Hancock in West Texas. The drone belonged to Customs and Border Protection, and the incident prompted the FAA to temporarily suspend flights.

In a joint statement, the agencies and the Pentagon described the drone as a — quote — “seemingly threatening unmanned aerial system operating within military airspace.” It follows a similar incident earlier this month that grounded commercial flights in nearby El Paso for a few hours.

NASA’s plan to send astronauts back to the moon is getting a revamp. The agency says it’s adding an extra practice mission to its Artemis flight lineup next year, with the goal of one or even two lunar landings in 2028. The shakeup comes just days after NASA’s Artemis II moon rocket returned to its hangar for repairs.

Jared Isaacman, NASA Administrator:

We shouldn’t be comfortable with the current cadence. We should be getting back to basics and doing what we know works.

Geoff Bennett:

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the new plan will inject momentum into the program by reducing yearslong gaps in between flights. In that way, it will be similar to NASA’s fast-paced Apollo program, the first that brought humans to the moon more than a half-century ago.

The financial technology company Block is cutting 4,000 of its 10,000 employees as it embraces the use of artificial intelligence. The 40 percent cut is one of the most dramatic steps taken by a tech company directly because of the use of A.I. Investors welcomed the news, though, with Block’s shares ending nearly 17 percent higher.

Elsewhere, on Wall Street today, stocks slumped amid worries about A.I., inflation and a possible war with Iran. The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 500 points. The Nasdaq dropped more than 200 points. The S&P 500 also ended the week lower.

And there was an unusual scene at Washington’s Reagan National Airport today, as a former U.S. president joined with his fellow travelers in waiting out a flight delay. Joe Biden’s Secret Service detail gave him away as people lined up to take pictures with the nation’s 46th president.

Mr. Biden was flying to South Carolina for an event. The flight was delayed by fog. Once on board, the former president greeted his fellow passengers as they filed past. His seatmate only realized who he was when she sat down. She told a reporter she felt like she was about to cry as she shook hands with the former president. The two chatted throughout the flight.

And we have a passing of note from the world of music. Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka has died. Known for his hits, including “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” “Calendar Girl,” and “Oh! Carol,” Sedaka’s work was a staple of radio stations in the ’60s and ’70s.

A Brooklyn native, Sedaka initially pursued classical music, but as a teenager fell in love with the pop songs of the era. He went on to forge a six-decade career in the business, racking up hits and five Grammy nominations. Luminaries like Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra covered his work,

And Sedaka continued performing well into his 80s. His family said they are devastated by his sudden passing. Neil Sedaka was 86 years old.

President Trump said he was unhappy with the progress of diplomacy with Iran, and indicated he might “have to” use the military. That came in contrast to a statement from the mediator of the talks, who said they are making progress and asked Trump to give it more time. But the U.S. has deployed the largest military presence in the Middle East in more than two decades. Nick Schifrin reports.

Geoff Bennett:

Welcome to the “News Hour.”

President Trump said today he was unhappy with the progress of diplomacy with Iran and suggested he may, as he put it, have to use the military. That came in contrast to a statement from the mediator of the talks, who said they’re making progress. And’s as the U.S. has deployed the largest military presence in the Middle East in more than two decades.

Here’s Nick Schifrin.

Nick Schifrin:

Today, as the U.S. prepares for the prospect of war, President Trump did not hide his disappointment in U.S.-Iran nuclear talks.

President Donald Trump:

We’re not happy with the negotiation. They just don’t want to — they don’t want to say the key words, we’re not going to have a nuclear weapon. They have to say, we’re not going to have a nuclear weapon. And they just can’t quite get there.

Nick Schifrin:

And President Trump stuck to his demand that Iran not be allowed to create any nuclear fuel.

President Donald Trump:

They want to enrich a little bit. You don’t have to enrich when you have that much oil. So, I’m not happy with the negotiation.

Nick Schifrin:

The man in the middle of that negotiation, mediating between Americans and Iranians, has been Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi.

Today, he met with Vice President J.D. Vance and other U.S. officials and afterward told CBS’ Margaret Brennan the talks were making progress.

Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi: So there would be zero accumulation, zero stockpiling, and full verification.

Nick Schifrin:

That suggests Iran has agreed not to store any nuclear fuel, but not necessarily to stop enriching entirely.

Al Busaidi also said that, for the first time, Iran would agree to Americans verifying Iran’s nuclear program.

Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi: If I was President Trump, my only advice is just to give those negotiators enough room and enough space to really close these remaining areas that we need to discuss and agree upon.

Margaret Brennan, Host, “Face the Nation”: And if Israel carries out a strike, or if the U.S. carries out even a limited strike on the ballistic missiles, do you think that you could still get a nuclear deal done?

Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi: Well, diplomacy can reach a deal. I don’t think any other acts can solve this problem, really.

Nick Schifrin:

But the momentum appears to be toward a strike. White House senior adviser Dan Scavino posted on social media a row of B-2 bombers, the same plane used in last summer’s Iran strikes.

And, overnight, also precautions for possible war. The U.S. Embassy in Israel told its staff to consider leaving the country immediately. U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee wrote an internal e-mail obtained by the Associated Press that said there was no need for panic, but — quote — “Those wishing to take authorized departure should do so TODAY,” “today” written in capital letters.

And the U.S. official confirms to “PBS News Hour” the military’s top Middle East commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, briefed President Trump yesterday on options for a strike.

There are negotiations scheduled for next week after yesterday’s meeting in Geneva. Iran says technical talks are supposed to begin Monday. But the U.S. has assembled what President Trump has called an armada, the largest deployment of warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades. And despite the mediator claiming progress, the U.S. has set the theater for an attack.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Nick Schifrin.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of Los Angeles public schools in the nation’s second-largest district, was put on paid leave Friday, two days after the FBI served search warrants at his home and the district’s headquarters.

Authorities have not provided details of the nature of the investigation involving the school district, which serves more than 500,000 students, nor have they accused Carvalho of any wrongdoing.

READ MORE: What to know about the LA school superintendent whose home was searched by the FBI

The Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education unanimously voted to place Carvalho on leave pending the outcome of the investigation after two days of deliberation behind closed doors.

Carvalho became superintendent in 2022. He previously led the public schools in Miami.

Andres Chait, the chief of school operations, will take over the helm while Carvalho is on leave, the district said.

“Our focus remains clear: to ensure stability, continuity, and strong leadership for our students, families, and employees,” Chait said in a statement.

Carvalho has not responded to a request for comment. The FBI on Wednesday also searched a third location near Miami. The Miami Herald reported the Florida property belonged to Debra Kerr, who previously worked with AllHere, an education technology company that had a contract with Los Angeles schools before it collapsed and its leader was indicted for fraud.

In 2024, Carvalho heavily touted a deal with AllHere for an AI chatbot named “Ed” designed to help students. But about three months after unveiling the technology and paying the company $3 million, the district dropped its dealings with AllHere, which collapsed into bankruptcy. Months later, founder Joanna Smith-Griffin was charged with securities and wire fraud, along with identity theft.

The school district said in a statement Wednesday that it “is cooperating with the investigation and we do not have further information at this time.”

Carvalho denied personal involvement in the selection of AllHere, according to the Los Angeles Times. After Smith-Griffin was indicted, Carvalho said he would appoint a task force to examine what went wrong with the LA school district’s project, but there have been no public announcements about it since.

Kerr, an education technology salesperson who connects companies with schools, said she was never paid her $630,000 commission for her work in closing the AllHere deal with the LA district, according to a news organization, The 74, that covered the company’s bankruptcy hearings in 2024.

The 74 reported that Kerr had longstanding ties with Carvalho from when he oversaw the Florida district and that her son who worked for AllHere pitched the technology to LA school leaders after he took over the helm there. The Associated Press was unable to reach Kerr for comment.

Over the past five years in Los Angeles, Carvalho has been lauded for the district’s improvements to academic performance. He won similar praise while overseeing Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Florida’s largest school district, where the national superintendents association named him Superintendent of the Year in 2014.

Spain knighted the Portugal-born administrator in 2021 for his work in expanding Spanish-language programs for Miami-Dade County schools.

Months later, Carvalho took the job in California and became a harsh critic of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, especially following raids in Los Angeles last year.

Carvalho arrived in Los Angeles at a critical moment, as the district found itself flush with funding from state and federal COVID-19 relief money but still struggling with the impacts of the pandemic, including learning losses and declining enrollment. He previously sparred with Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis over his order that schools not require masks during the pandemic.

The Miami-Dade school system said in a statement that it was aware of the investigation involving Carvalho but did not have any comment at this time.

Watson reported from San Diego.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A federal judge on Friday extended an order protecting refugees in Minnesota who are lawfully in the U.S. from being arrested and deported, saying a Trump administration policy turns the “American Dream into a dystopian nightmare.”

READ MORE: These refugees were already admitted to the U.S. The Trump administration is detaining and questioning them anyway

U.S. District Judge John Tunheim granted a motion by advocates for refugees to convert a temporary restraining order that he issued in January into a more permanent preliminary injunction while the case develops further.

The order applies only in Minnesota. But the implications of a new national policy on refugees that the Department of Homeland Security announced Feb. 18 were a major part of the discussion at a hearing held by the judge the next day.

“Minnesota refugees can now live their lives without fear that their own government will snatch them off the street and imprison them far from loved ones,” Kimberly Grano, an attorney with the International Refugee Assistance Project, told The Associated Press.

The Trump administration asserts it has the right to arrest potentially tens of thousands of refugees across the U.S. who entered the country legally but don’t yet have green cards. A new Homeland Security memo interprets immigration law to say that refugees applying for green cards must return to federal custody one year after they were admitted to the U.S. so that their applications can be reviewed.

The judge, however, expressed disbelief in a 66-page opinion.

“This Court will not allow federal authorities to use a new and erroneous statutory interpretation to terrorize refugees who immigrated to this country under the promise that they would be welcomed and allowed to live in peace, far from the persecution they fled,” Tunheim said.

He said the U.S. decades ago promised refugees fleeing persecution that they could build a new life after rigorous background checks.

“We promised them the hope that one day they could achieve the American Dream,” Tunheim said. “The Government’s new policy breaks that promise — without congressional authorization — and raises serious constitutional concerns. The new policy turns the refugees’ American Dream into a dystopian nightmare.”

Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did not immediately return a request for comment Friday.

Justice Department attorney Brantley Mayers said during a court hearing last week that the government should have the right to arrest refugees one year after entering the U.S., but he also indicated that would not always happen.

The judge noted that one refugee in the case, identified as D. Doe, was arrested in January after being told that someone had struck his car.

“He was immediately flown to Texas, where he was interrogated about his refugee status. He was kept in ‘shackles and handcuffs’ for sixteen hours. D. Doe was ultimately released on the streets of Texas, left to find his way back to Minnesota,” Tunheim said.

White reported from Detroit. Associated Press reporter Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this story.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Friday ordered all U.S. agencies to stop using Anthropic’s artificial intelligence technology and imposed other major penalties, culminating an unusually public clash between the government and the company over AI safeguards.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he was designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk, a move that could prevent U.S. military vendors from working with the company.

READ MORE: AP report: Hegseth warns Anthropic to let the military use company’s AI tech as it sees fit

Hegseth’s remarks, delivered in a social media post, came shortly after the Pentagon’s deadline for Anthropic to allow unrestricted military use of its AI technology or face consequences — and nearly 24 hours after CEO Dario Amodei said his company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Defense Department’s demands.

Calling the company “Leftwing nut jobs,” President Donald Trump said Anthropic made a mistake trying to strong-arm the Pentagon. Trump wrote on Truth Social that most agencies must immediately stop using Anthropic’s AI but gave the Pentagon a six-month period to phase out the technology that is already embedded in military platforms.

At issue in the defense contract was a clash over AI’s role in national security. Anthropic had said it sought narrow assurances from the Pentagon that Claude won’t be used for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons. But after months of private talks exploded into public debate, it said in a Thursday statement that new contract language “framed as compromise was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will.”

Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, could afford to lose the contract. But an ultimatum this week from Hegseth posed broader risks at the peak of the company’s meteoric rise from a little-known computer science research lab in San Francisco to one of the world’s most valuable startups. Military officials had warned Anthropic earlier in the week they could deem it “a supply chain risk,” a designation typically stamped on foreign adversaries that could derail the company’s critical partnerships with other businesses.

Trump also said Anthropic could face “major civil and criminal consequences” if it’s not helpful in the phase-out period. Anthropic didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on the new developments.

The president’s decision was preceded by hours of top Trump appointees from the Pentagon and the State Department taking to social media to criticize Anthropic and slam their reluctance to acquiesce to the administration’s demands.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the penalties on Anthropic “combined with inflammatory rhetoric attacking that company, raises serious concerns about whether national security decisions are being driven by careful analysis or political considerations.”

The dispute stunned AI developers in Silicon Valley, where a growing number of workers from Anthropic’s top rivals, OpenAI and Google, voiced support for Amodei’s stand in open letters and other forums.

The move is likely to benefit Elon Musk’s competing chatbot, Grok, which the Pentagon plans to give access to classified military networks, and could serve as a warning to two other competitors, Google and OpenAI, that also have contracts to supply their AI tools to the military.

Musk sided with Trump’s administration on Friday, saying on his social media platform X that “Anthropic hates Western Civilization.”

But one of Amodei’s fiercest rivals, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, sided with Anthropic and questioned the Pentagon’s “threatening” move in a CNBC interview, suggesting that OpenAI and most of the AI field share the same red lines. Amodei once worked for OpenAI before he and other OpenAI leaders quit to form Anthropic in 2021.

“For all the differences I have with Anthropic, I mostly trust them as a company, and I think they really do care about safety,” Altman told CNBC.

Retired Air Force Gen. Jack Shanahan wrote on a social media that “painting a bullseye on Anthropic garners spicy headlines, but everyone loses in the end.”

Shanahan said Claude is already being widely used across the government, including in classified settings, and Anthropic’s red lines are “reasonable.” He said the AI large language models that power chatbots like Claude are also “not ready for prime time in national security settings,” particularly not for fully autonomous weapons.

“They’re not trying to play cute here,” he wrote Thursday on LinkedIn.

O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.