P ETE HEGSETH, America’s secretary of war, is taking a my-way-or-the-highway approach to the use of artificial intelligence on the battlefield. On February 24th he gave an ultimatum to Anthropic, maker of the Claude family of models: if it did not agree to terms set by the Pentagon on usage of its AI for defence purposes, it would face severe penalties. It is not the first time the Trump administration has publicly picked fights with companies that fail to follow its orders. In this case, though, Anthropic has leverage.
