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Hegseth gives Anthropic until Friday to back down on AI safeguards, Axios reports

By Thomson Reuters Feb 24, 2026 | 12:37 PM

Feb 24 (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has given artificial ​intelligence company Anthropic ‌until Friday to back down on safeguards for its products used by the military, ‌Axios ​reported on ⁠Tuesday.

Reuters reported exclusively ⁠this month that the Pentagon was pushing big AI companies including ​OpenAI and Anthropic to make their AI ⁠tools available ⁠on classified networks without ​many of the standard ​restrictions that the companies apply ‌to users.

Also this month, Axios reported that the Pentagon had been ⁠considering cutting ties with Anthropic over the latter’s insistence on ⁠retaining ‌restrictions on how ⁠the U.S. military ​uses ‌its models, which ​includes Claude ⁠AI.

(Reporting by Costas Pitas, Writing by Christian Martinez; Editing by Daphne Psaledakis and Editing by Franklin ​Paul)