Inside Anthropic’s killer-robot dispute with the Pentagon
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My source, whom I am granting anonymity because they are not authorized to talk about the negotiations, also shed further light on the disagreement between Anthropic and the Pentagon over autonomous weapons, machines that can select and engage targets without a human making the final call.
The U.S. military has been developing these systems for years and has budgeted $13.4 billion for them in fiscal year 2026 alone. They run the gamut from individual drones to whole swarms that can be used in the air and at sea.
Anthropic had not argued that such weapons should not exist. To the contrary, the company had offered to work directly with the Pentagon to improve their reliability. Just as self-driving cars are now in some cases safer than those driven by humans, killer drones may some day be more accurate than a human operator, and less likely to kill bystanders during an attack.
But for now, Anthropic’s leaders believe that their AI hasn’t yet reached that threshold. They worry that the models could lead the machines to fire indiscriminately or inaccurately, or otherwise endanger civilians or even American troops themselves.
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