Trump blacklists AI giant Anthropic, threatens criminal action over ‘killer robot' ban

U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered all federal agencies to cease all sorts of utilisation of the artificial intelligence (AI) firm Anthropic.

The President also threatened the AI giant to face “major civil and criminal consequences” for refusing to lift its ban on autonomous weapons.

The statement was written on Truth Social, Friday, February 27, referring to Anthropic a “supply chain risk.”

This label historically has been reserved for foreign adversaries, effectively backlisting the San Francisco-based AI lab from government business.

The Pentagon has been given six months to phase out the firm’s flagship Claude AI bot, which had previously been approved for classified work and was used in the recent raid to apprehend Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The core reason of the dispute is refusal of Anthropic to remove contractual prohibitions barring its technology from being used for fully autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance.

CEO Dario Amodei has made his stance clear over AI safety and maintained regulations as “red lines” considering them non-negotiable.

Following the refusal, the company faced strong backlash from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who accused the company of being run by “Left-wing nut jobs” claiming their “selfishness is putting American lives at risk.”

He also labelled Anthropic’s corporate stance as “cowardly act of corporate virtue-signalling that places Silicon Valley ideology above American lives.”

Trump also wrote on Truth Social: “We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again! Anthropic better get their act together.”

“I will use the full power of the presidency to make them comply,” he added.

Responding to criticism, the firm said: “no amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position.”

What is the killer robot ban?

Killer Robot Ban is a global initiative led by a coalition of NGOs to formalise an international treaty to prohibit weapons systems that can select and target people without any manual intervention. 

The systems referred to as Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) have serious implications as they require no “meaningful human control.”