PATRICK DUGAN: The Government Can’t Have Terminator Robots

If we don’t get Congress to pass a law banning autonomous lethal robots, we will regret it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a deadline: hand over unrestricted access to their “Claude” AI or be designated a national security supply chain risk — which bars Anthropic from using Amazon and Google for hosting and training. That is game over for Anthropic as an American AI company.

The legal question is whether this designation is appropriate for an onshore company that’s been an eager partner of America’s military, from the Maduro raid to the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. Anthropic vowed to challenge it in court.

The military wants Claude because frontier AI can plan operations, process intelligence, and — with guardrails removed — autonomously target. OpenAI, Google, and Elon Musk’s xAI already agreed to provide AI for “any lawful military purpose,” handing over full access without conditions. They rolled over. Anthropic didn’t. The deadline was no coincidence. It came hours before the U.S. struck Iran — using Claude.

The Innovation Killer

Dean Ball, co-author of the White House AI Action Plan, called this “attempted corporate murder” — and he’s a genuine old-school conservative. His argument isn’t just moral: The Department of War had far less destructive options, like canceling the contract and noting guidance to future contractors. Instead they reached for a weapon normally reserved for foreign adversaries like Huawei — against an American company whose AI they used in combat operations the same weekend.

Even Sam Altman called it an extremely scary precedent. Ball’s conclusion: the people making these decisions lack strategic clarity and respect for basic Republican principles.

America leads the world in tech because you can build something extraordinary and know it belongs to you. We don’t win by being a better command-and-control state; we win by being a better version of America.

You Can’t Nationalize A Conscience