US President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday he would be open to better relations with Anthropic to end a dispute between the government and the tech startup over its refusal to grant the military unconditional use of its AI models.
“I think we’ll get along with them just fine,” Trump said when asked about the row in an interview with CNBC.
The dispute between the US government and the California-based group centers on its refusal to allow its AI models to be used for mass surveillance of civilians or in fully autonomous lethal military operations.
In February, Trump instructed the US government to “immediately cease” using Anthropic’s technology after Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic, creator of the Claude AI model, as a national security supply chain risk — a label typically reserved for organizations from unfriendly foreign countries.
The company is now fighting these measures in court.
“They started telling our military how to operate, and we didn’t want that,” Trump said in the interview. “And they tend to be on the left, radical left.”
Tensions eased after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei visited the White House on Friday.
“We had some very good talks with them and I think they’re shaping up,” the president said. “They’re very smart, and I think they can be of great use. I like smart people.”
A White House spokesperson described the meeting between Amodei with Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as “productive and constructive.”
Anthropic’s AI model, Claude, is currently the only one authorized for use in classified operations within the US military.
Following the Anthropic crisis, rival OpenAI reached an agreement with the government to integrate its AI interfaces into this framework, but the process has not yet been completed.
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