Summary
The Pentagon is enriching the pockets of the tech billionaire owners of AI companies. While the Department of Defense/War has broken its contract with the company Anthropic, other AI companies are signing large contracts, such as Open AI and Palantir.
Analysis
The clash between Anthropic and the Pentagon over the military’s use of the company’s technology was just a tiny blip in the huge shift in military operations toward Artificial Intelligence. Anthropic’s “Claude” AI system was key in the first 24 hours of the war with Iran, and was likely used in the US’s attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro in January. In fact, Anthropic was one of the first AI companies to contract with the Pentagon. That ended a few weeks ago when Anthropic refused to allow its AI to be used for targeting autonomous lethal weapons.
Even before Open AI stepped into Anthropic’s combat boots it too had inked contracts with the Defense Department, one worth $200 million (as is the newest one), and was vying for a $100 million Pentagon prize challenge to produce autonomous drone swarms
Peter Theil and Alex Karp’s Palantir is a leading government contractor, providing AI analysis to the military and other agencies, both in the US and abroad, which may be why its market value is up to $375 billion this month. That is much more than any traditional weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics are worth.
Palantir and many other AI companies are also supplying weapons technology to Israel, where AI is deployed to create lists of supposed Hamas targets on the basis of billions of data points. It does not appear to have been successful; reportedly a mere 17% of the people killed in Gaza were actual fighters, meaning the vast majority of the 75,000 dead were civilians, approximately 30% of them children.
Those disturbing statistics haven done nothing to slow the surge. Meta, Google and OpenAI, all which once had language in their corporate policies eschewing the use of AI in weapons, have removed such wording and are inking contracts worth billions to provide war and surveillance technology.
One massive multi-year $9 billion secure cloud computing contract with the military includes services from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle. Relative newcomer Anduril, a defense tech company, just signed a $20 billion deal for A.I.-backed software for the US military’s use.
This year, the Department of Defense/War intends to spend $13.4 billion on “autonomous systems” alone. That money will go toward remotely operated drones that are navigated by AI, including when they strike, and will give rise to numerous other operational costs.
In a report on the military’s use of AI technology, the Brennan Center for Law and Justice points out that the same companies raking in billions in government contracts routinely use their fortunes to influence policy and advocate for the unfettered deployment of their technology. Add to that the way tech CEOs are sucking up to Trump personally and “donating” to his vanity projects and you’ve got the recipe for the next phase of tech’s takeover of the world. Funded by your tax dollars.
Engagement Resources
- The Business of Military AI, Amos Toh and Emile Ayoub, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. March, 2026 https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/business-military-ai
- AI’s Safety Promises Crumble as Defense Contracts Take Priority, The Tech Buzz, Mar.6, 2026 https://www.techbuzz.ai/articles/ai-s-safety-promises-crumble-as-defense-contracts-take-priority