When the Pentagon attempted to strong-arm Anthropic over the company’s refusal to allow its model to be used for domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons deployment, there were apparent standoffs behind the scenes with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, but the public push to punish Anthropic came from Emil Michael, the Trump administration’s Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and the Pentagon’s Chief Technology Officer. According to a report from The Lever, he may have had some ulterior motives for how hard he pushed to ban the AI firm from government dealings.
A financial disclosure filed by Michael when he took office and spotted by The Lever revealed that he holds “vested and unvested stock” in Perplexity, an Anthropic rival, and also served on the company’s board. Per the filing, he owns $2-$10 million in Perplexity stock. While Perplexity doesn’t have a contract directly with the Department of Defense, it did enter an agreement last year to deploy its AI search engine to all federal agencies and is one of three companies to be considered for approval to host government-provided AI systems on their own servers.
Michael also had holdings in and served as an advisor to the Sam Altman-run Tools for Humanity, makers of the eye-scanning orb for human verification. It’s probably worth noting that Altman’s other company, OpenAI, is the one that is taking over the Pentagon contract that Anthropic was forced to forfeit.
Michael having his hand in an emerging tech industry isn’t really a surprise given his history. He was previously the senior vice president of business and chief business officer at Uber, serving as founder Travis Kalanick’s right-hand man until both were pushed out by investors. Michael recently said he’ll “never forget…nor forgive” the shareholders for ousting them. The fact that Michael is someone who holds a grudge probably doesn’t offer much assurance for Anthropic in its quest to get its contract back.
That might lead to some complicated conversations down the line. On Tuesday, a judge overseeing one of the lawsuits filed by Anthropic against the Department of Defense for allegedly retaliating against the company seemed inclined to side with the AI firm. US district judge Rita Lin described the Pentagon’s decision to designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk as “an attempt to cripple Anthropic.”
It’s not like the Pentagon has weaned itself off of Anthropic’s tech, either, despite all its bluster and accusations of being a security threat. The Department of Defense reportedly used Anthropic’s Claude in the earliest days of its attack on Iran, and does not seem to have weaned itself off the AI despite its own warnings about the technology.
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