Anthropic, the AI company valued at almost $1 trillion（約160兆円）, believes that building the most powerful AI models and maintaining industry leadership is essential to ensuring AI safety—a philosophy that led it to partner with Palantir to supply AI to U.S. defense and intelligence agencies. The Pentagon has reportedly used Anthropic's Claude model to identify strike targets, and the company's CEO acknowledged he did not know whether the technology was used in a specific attack that killed more than 120 people, though he said such uses would be approved so long as humans make the final decision. Former employees and outside researchers suggest this strategy raises questions about whether internal dissent is truly shaping company decisions.
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Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, has become one of the top AI developers and was recently valued at almost $1 trillion（約160兆円）. The company partnered with Palantir in fall 2024 to provide AI services to US intelligence and defense agencies, and the Pentagon has since reportedly used Claude (Anthropic's AI model) for tasks including identifying strike targets. When asked whether Anthropic's models were used in an attack on an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 120 people, CEO Dario Amodei said he did not know, but that it would have been an approved use if a human made the final call.
Why it matters
Anthropic operates on the belief that staying at the frontier of AI development—accumulating capital, compute, talent, and political influence—is necessary to ensure AI is developed safely. The company sees itself as the "good guys" steward of AI technology and argues that being a serious industry leader gives it the "gravitational pull" to shape how cutting-edge systems should work and what safeguards they need. However, some researchers studying AI governance note that organizations like Anthropic, rooted in homogeneous communities and ideological movements, may struggle to challenge their own assumptions about whether they are the right actors to hold this much power.
What to watch
Internal debates at Anthropic about the Palantir deal did not result in policy changes, and questions about military use appear to have remained largely confined to private discussions rather than direct challenges to leadership. The company declined to comment on this story, so future statements or policy shifts on military partnerships will signal whether the internal conversation evolves.
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