Why is Anthropic at war with the Pentagon? Will Pete Hegseth blacklist the AI firm?

‘You have until Friday to decide…’ This ultimatum may sound like a dialogue from a movie. However, it’s not. The US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, has threatened to terminate Anthropic’s contract with the Pentagon by Friday (February 27) unless the AI startup agrees to the Trump administration’s terms of use. The threat is, perhaps, Anthropic’s biggest crisis in its five-year existence — if it doesn’t relent to Hegseth’s demands, the AI startup not only loses its Pentagon contract but could also be labelled a “supply chain risk,” meaning that no company doing business with the Department of War would…