Deadline Day for Autonomous AI Weapons and Mass Surveillance

Would you want your government to have fully autonomous AI weapons in drone or humanoid form, such that, for example, AI agents could make lethal decisions without a human in the loop? What if you thought that that was the only way for your country to maintain the ability to project power around the world? And would you want your government to be able to conduct mass intelligence surveillance, which could reduce both crime and privacy.

If you wouldn't, by the way, but think it's inevitable anyway that all of that's coming, would you at least want those who make such tools to try to stop those end states coming about? Today is Friday the 27th of February, 2026, and that's the deadline day for Anthropic, makers of the Claude series of AI models, to acquiesce the US Department of War demands for almost unfettered use of those clawed models.

I say almost unfettered because the use of those models by the Pentagon would still have to be quote lawful but as we'll see that allows for autonomous kill bots and mass domestic surveillance on Americans.

And there are other strands of the story that are developing as you watch this, as I'm recording even, because a petition by OpenAI and Google employees has Doubled in size since just this morning, declaring their support for Anthropic's stance.

You can see that it's got about 340 signatories from those two companies, and I bet if I refresh, it will be higher.

Yes, I just refreshed, and in the last few minutes, that has gone up.

The statement that these employees are signing up to is asking that their leaders, Sundar Pichai and Sam Altman, will put aside their differences and stand together to continue to refuse the Department of War's current demands for permission to use our models, Gemini, Chachapiti.

for domestic mass surveillance, and autonomously killing people without human oversight.

Reporting from Politico indicates that those two companies are only close to agreeing the terms, so they are not yet fully on board either, while XAI is complying with the Pentagon.

Here, by the way, is what one Pentagon spokesman said.

Undersecretary of War Emil Michael said that it's a shame that Daria Amadei, the CEO of Anthropic, is a liar, and has a god complex.

He wants nothing more than to try to personally control the US military.

He's okay with putting our nation's safety at risk, and then goes on to confirm that the Department of War will always adhere to the law.

What exactly the law is, we will come to in a moment.

But this story actually has five more twists than even the ones you've seen so far.

The first twist is that Anthropic actually already has a deal with the US government.

which involved the Pentagon agreeing to the responsible use of AI, e.g. no autonomous weapons controlled by AI or domestic surveillance on Americans with AI.

Claude models are currently used extensively by the Pentagon, defense contractors, and that opaque defense-related company, Palantir, because according to those companies, it's perceived to have the strongest series of AI models.

In making that deal with Anthropic, the Pentagon, it seems, has already agreed to the responsible use of AI.

So The Verge reports that the big question is whether the company can be compelled out of a policy.

that the government itself has committed to in principle.

On screen, by the way, is the second additional twist in the story, which is that autonomous killer weapons, controlled by AI, would already be against Pentagon policy.

The DoD Directive 3000.09 requires that all autonomous weapon systems be designed so that commanders and operators are able to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.

Yet another directive, and the Responsible AI Implementation Pathway prohibits intelligence companies from collecting information on U.S. persons, this is regarding surveillance now, except under specific legal authorities.