Supremacy can be fleeting in the AI race. But two months into 2026, Anthropic's Claude is upending U.S. national security, roiling financial markets and redefining how startups are built, Axios' Zachary Basu reports.

• Why it matters: The company is in the middle of the most important fight of the era — how much power to give AI in the face of threats, real and virtual.

Anthropic said this week it's loosening the core safety pledge that defined the company, acknowledging that going it alone on restrictions won't work when rivals face none.

• The remarkable reversal came the same day the Pentagon threatened to effectively kick Claude out of government in a fight over its appropriate military uses.

🔭 The big picture: Two years ago, Anthropic was virtually unknown outside of San Francisco. Today, the startup is valued at $380 billion — raising $30 billion this month from some of the biggest financial and tech investors in America.

• Users consistently rank Claude above rivals for complex reasoning, nuanced writing and reliability.

🦾 State of play: Rivals are scrambling to catch up. OpenAI is expected, as soon as today, to release ChatGPT 5.3, or "Garlic" — the product of CEO Sam Altman's "code red" directive in December.

• But the biggest wild card is China, where the upcoming release of DeepSeek's V4 model threatens to reignite a U.S. market panic that wiped $1 trillion from tech stocks last January.

Zoom out: For now, Claude has established its dominance across three engines of American power.

1. In Washington, Anthropic is locked in a high-stakes dispute with the Pentagon over whether Claude can be used for mass surveillance of Americans and for lethal weapon systems that don't require human involvement.

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has given Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei until Friday to loosen Claude's military guardrails or face a potential "supply chain risk" designation.
• If that happens, anyone doing business with the Pentagon would be required to certify they don't use Claude — a potentially massive disruption, given it's already used by eight of the 10 largest U.S. companies.

2. On Wall Street, new releases by Anthropic have triggered five separate stock market gyrations in four weeks — a phenomenon traders have dubbed the "SaaSpocalypse."

• Feb. 3: Cowork legal plugins wipe out $285 billion in market value. Thomson Reuters plunges nearly 16% — its worst single day on record. LegalZoom craters 20%. FactSet drops more than 10%.
• Feb. 6: Claude Opus 4.6 launches and financial data stocks bleed again. The Nasdaq posts its worst two-day tumble since April.
• Feb. 20: Claude Code Security hits cybersecurity. CrowdStrike down 8%. Cloudflare down 8%. JFrog down 25%.
• Feb. 23: A Claude blog post about automating legacy bank code sends IBM to its worst single day since October 2000 — $31 billion gone by the closing bell.
• Feb. 24: Anthropic launches job-specific tools. First-wave victims — FactSet, DocuSign and Thomson Reuters — all rally after revealing new partnerships with Claude.

3. In Silicon Valley, Claude Code has become an obsession among venture capitalists and engineers who see it as the foundation of a new era of AI-native and agentic startups.

• Engineers describe Claude Code as the first tool that genuinely compresses development timelines from weeks to hours, allowing small teams to ship what once required entire departments.

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FBI Director Kash Patel says the FBI under President Biden subpoenaed his phone records and those of Susie Wiles, who ran President Trump's campaign and is now White House chief of staff, when they were private citizens.

• Trump officials familiar with the investigation tell Axios' Marc Caputo that the revelations might be "the tip of the iceberg," and that the FBI may have probed more Trumpworld figures.
• Wiles told associates: "I am in shock."

Patel said in a statement to Axios: "It is outrageous and deeply alarming that the previous FBI leadership secretly subpoenaed my own phone records — along with those of now-White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight."

• Patel told Reuters, which broke the story, that investigators obtained "toll records" — the timing and recipients of calls. The FBI sought records of calls Patel and Wiles made in 2022 and 2023, amid the federal probe of whether Trump improperly stored classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Patel said.
• "In 2023," Reuters reports, "the FBI recorded a phone call between Wiles and her attorney, according to two FBI officials. Wiles' attorney was aware that the call was being recorded, and consented to it, but Susie Wiles was not."

About 10 FBI employees, including veteran agents, were ousted this week for their work on the Mar-a-Lago case, the N.Y. Times reports (gift link).

• The Times adds this context: "It has been known for years that Mr. Patel was closely scrutinized by investigators under the special counsel Jack Smith and was compelled to testify in front of a grand jury. The fact that investigators obtained some of Ms. Wiles's phone records was made public during the inquiry into Mr. Trump's mishandling of classified documents."

Anthony Coley — Justice Department director of public affairs under Biden, and now an MS NOW contributor and public affairs consultant — told Mike that Patel "is on a singular mission: to find something, anything for which to prosecute Jack Smith. That's what Donald Trump demanded, and that's what he and Attorney General Bondi are trying to deliver."

The Pentagon asked two major defense contractors yesterday to assess their reliance on Anthropic's AI model, Claude — a first step toward designating Anthropic a "supply chain risk," Axios' Dave Lawler, Maria Curi and Colin Demarest scoop.

• Why it matters: Using that penalty against a leading American tech firm, particularly one the military itself relies on, would be unprecedented.

⚠️ That punishment is usually reserved for companies from adversarial countries — e.g., Chinese tech giant Huawei.

• Keep reading.

Nvidia posted record quarterly results yesterday, as CEO Jensen Huang fueled AI bulls by declaring "the agentic AI inflection point has arrived," Axios' Nathan Bomey writes.

• Debate is swirling over the sustainability of the booming AI economy — and the chips giant is positioned squarely at the center of it.

💬 Huang dismissed bubble fears, saying that "compute equals revenues now" in what he called "this new industrial revolution."

• Keep reading ... Huang: OpenAI deal is "close."

Republican candidates snubbed by President Trump for primary endorsements have found a workaround: Act like he endorsed them anyway, Axios' Alex Isenstadt reports.

• Why it matters: Trump's approval numbers are sagging but he still dominates the GOP, using endorsements to reward allies, punish detractors and reinforce his vise-like grip on the party.

⚜️ Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy — who voted to convict Trump over his role in instigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot — is the only Republican senator Trump's team is targeting for defeat this primary season.

• Trump has endorsed Cassidy's opponent, U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow. But you wouldn't know it from watching Cassidy's campaign ads — where Trump is seen and mentioned.

🧨 A GOP operative told Axios: "It's all fun and games until Trump uses his Truth Social account and megaphone to blast the candidate who has seemingly claimed support from him without actually getting it."

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Cuba's government said the 10 people who shot at Cuban soldiers yesterday from a speedboat were Cubans living in the U.S. "trying to infiltrate the island and unleash terrorism," AP reports.

• Four were killed and six were injured in the shootout.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. is gathering its own information to determine the passengers' nationalities.

• "It is highly unusual to see shootouts in open sea like that ... It's something, frankly, that hasn't happened with Cuba in a very long time," Rubio said.
• He said the U.S. will "respond accordingly."

Get the latest ... Rubio transcript.

Fewer pregnant Americans are getting prenatal care in the first weeks of pregnancy — or at all — reversing years of progress, Axios' Carly Mallenbaum writes from new CDC data.

• Skipping first-trimester care raises the risk of preventable complications for moms and babies.

The report doesn't identify causes. But growing maternity care deserts and insurance coverage gaps are a concern for patients and providers.

• Keep reading.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame unveiled the nominees for its class of 2026 — and it's one of the most diverse ballots in recent memory, Axios Cleveland's Troy Smith writes.

🎤 The intrigue: The Black Crowes, Mariah Carey, Billy Idol, Iron Maiden, Joy Division/New Order, Oasis and Sade have all been nominated before.

• The rest are long-overdue snubs (Luther Vandross, INXS, Phil Collins, Melissa Etheridge) and several artists who seem plucked out of thin air (Wu-Tang Clan, P!NK, Shakira).

The class will be announced in mid-April.

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