Exclusive: Luckey says Pentagon could have been "more forceful" against Anthropic
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Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey backs the Pentagon's decision to blacklist Anthropic — and says if it were up to him, he would have reacted even more forcefully.
- He made the comments in an interview with Colin Demarest on "The Axios Show," our series featuring top Axios reporters interviewing newsmakers shaping politics, business, tech, and culture.
Why it matters: The Pentagon's designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk is a move historically reserved for foreign adversaries. It means that other companies who do business with the Pentagon may have to cut ties with the AI giant.
- This puts hundreds of companies that do business with Anthropic and the department in limbo. Microsoft, for one, asked for a pause to avoid potentially hampering soldiers.
What he's saying: The Pentagon would face a slippery slope if it allowed every company it does business with to have its own special provisions, Luckey said.
- "What you end up with very quickly is a patchwork of different regulations across all these different companies. And the department now has to ask: Is this operation, is this planning element, is this tool, compliant with these five different companies' versions" of their limitations?
Catch up quick: The relationship between the Pentagon and Anthropic broke down during contract negotiations over the latter's efforts to ensure its models are not used for domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.
- Anthropic rival, OpenAI, was able to strike a deal with the Pentagon, and says it has the same safeguards accounted for in its contract.
Zoom out: The dispute, which has upended the tech industry, is a matter of both policies and personalities, Luckey said.
- "Somebody probably could have gotten something equivalent to those policies by talking about it in exactly the right way ... and making sure to not to rub the wrong people the wrong way," Luckey said.
- "Personalities always enter into it. I'd be naive to say otherwise," he said. The personalities involved probably didn't approach negotiations in the most "collaborative way," he added.
- But ultimately, the Pentagon wins because it made sure the chain of command, not a company, is responsible for use of force, he said.
The intrigue: The Pentagon is continuing to use Anthropic, without violating the company's terms of use, and is offering senior leaders an extension beyond the 6-month phaseout period as needed.
- "If we're in a conflict six months from now and we have a sensitive operation that we need to continue ... obviously we're going to make exceptions so we don't put current operations at risk," Defense undersecretary Emil Michael said on CNBC.
