OpenAI strikes deal with Pentagon, hours after rival Anthropic was blacklisted by Trump
Summary
OpenAI reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense to deploy its AI models on classified military networks, while the Trump administration simultaneously blacklisted rival Anthropic as a 'Supply-Chain Risk to National Security' and banned federal agencies from using Anthropic's technology. The key difference was that OpenAI agreed to the DoD's terms including safety restrictions on domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, whereas Anthropic had refused to accept unrestricted military use cases and was seeking guarantees that its models wouldn't be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance.
Solution / Mitigation
According to Altman, OpenAI committed to building 'technical safeguards to ensure its models behave as they should' and will deploy personnel to 'help with our models and to ensure their safety.' Additionally, OpenAI asked the DoD to offer these same safety terms to all AI companies.
Classification
Affected Vendors
Related Issues
Original source: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/27/openai-strikes-deal-with-pentagon-hours-after-rival-anthropic-was-blacklisted-by-trump.html
First tracked: February 28, 2026 at 03:00 AM
Classified by LLM (prompt v3) · confidence: 92%