Sam Altman aims to 'help de-escalate' tensions with Pentagon as OpenAI employees voice support for Anthropic
Summary
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sent an internal memo to staff expressing support for rival company Anthropic in a dispute with the Pentagon over AI model usage, stating that both companies oppose using AI for mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. About 70 OpenAI employees signed an open letter supporting Anthropic, which has a deadline to decide whether to allow the Department of Defense unrestricted access to its AI models. Altman indicated OpenAI is negotiating with the Pentagon to deploy its own models in classified environments while maintaining ethical boundaries around domestic surveillance and autonomous offensive weapons.
Solution / Mitigation
Altman proposed that OpenAI would ask for a contract with the Pentagon that covers "any use except those which are unlawful or unsuited to cloud deployments, such as domestic surveillance and autonomous offensive weapons." He also stated the company would "build technical safeguards and deploy personnel to ensure things are working correctly" in classified environments.
Classification
Affected Vendors
Related Issues
Original source: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/27/openai-sam-altman-de-escalate-tensions-pentagon-anthropic.html
First tracked: February 27, 2026 at 03:00 PM
Classified by LLM (prompt v3) · confidence: 85%