The Pentagon partners up with OpenAI, Google, and SpaceX to build AI weapons

The US Department of War has announced an alliance with eight tech companies to deploy their AI technologies on the Department’s classified networks for lawful operational use.

SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, Reflection, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Oracle have been selected to provide their AI capabilities to the Department of War. Some of these companies already have contracts with the Pentagon to work on the US military’s classified networks.

The announcement of the agreements with the eight tech companies is intended to integrate AI capabilities into the Department of War’s IT environments with security classifications of Impact Level 6 and 7. The former applies to classified matters, and the latter to top-secret matters.

The Pentagon refers to a transformation of the armed forces into an “AI-first fighting force.”

“These agreements accelerate the transformation toward establishing the United States military as an AI-first fighting force and will strengthen our warfighters’ ability to maintain decision superiority across all domains of warfare,” the Pentagon says.

By signing deals with eight different tech companies, the Trump Administration wants to prevent AI vendor lock-in. At the same time, it provides more flexibility for the US military.

“Access to a diverse suite of AI capabilities from across the resilient American technology stack will give warfighters the tools they need to act with confidence and safeguard the nation against any threat,” the Department of War’s statement continues.

Anthropic is excluded from the Pentagon’s partnership. Most likely, this is because both parties had a falling out recently.

Allegedly, several government institutions are eager to try out Mythos, an AI model that focuses on finding and fixing software vulnerabilities. It’s being promoted as the “most capable frontier model to date.”

However, Anthropic refused to remove safety guardrails from its AI models, including Claude, that prohibit them from being used for deploying AI-controlled autonomous weapon systems or mass surveillance. Subsequently, Anthropic was designated as a “supply chain risk” by the Pentagon and blacklisted from working with government agencies.

European policymakers have invited Anthropic to move overseas to Europe, where the founders of the company may feel better at home than in the US.