Pentagon Demands Full Anthropic AI Tech for Mass Surveillance

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Hegseth gives ultimatum to Anthropic till Friday to give unrestricted access for “mass surveillance”

By TRH World Desk

New Delhi, February 25, 2026 — A day after triggering a Wall Street meltdown, Anthropic is now facing a test of autonomy from Trump administration. Reports said that US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has given a Friday ultimatum to Anthropic — Give unrestricted access or lose all contracts.

The Associated Press stated in a report that Hegseth has given the ultimatum to the AI startup to fall in line by Friday. Anthropic had yesterday accused AI peers, including DeepSeek of China, of stealing “distillation.”

Reports said that Pentagon wants unrestricted access to Anthropic technology for “mass surveillance.” Hegseth is a key member of the Trump administration.

Krystal Ball, a US-based commentator, wrote on X: “Anthropic’s red lines are no mass surveillance and no autonomous killer robots. It should terrify everyone that the pentagon finds these safeguards to be outrageous.”

Security analysts have been warning that AI platforms carry risk of mass surveillance as they process data of the people at an unprecedented scale with few checks on them.

“At high stakes Pentagon meeting Hegseth gave Anthropic head Dario Amodei ultimatum to allow the Pentagon to use Anthropic’s AI model for mass domestic surveillance and kinetic autonomous operations without human oversight,” Jeniffer Griffin on Fox News wrote on X. He stated that Hegseth warned the AI startup CEO that failure to comply will be followed by “censure and the label of supply chain threat.”

“Anthropic has never objected to the use of its models for legitimate military operations. It also told the Hegseth it never complained to the Pentagon or Palantir about the use of its models in the Maduro raid,” added Griffin.