The Peagon issued an unprecedeed ultimatum to Eropic, the only artificial ielligence company working on classified military systems, ordering its executives to give in to the military’s demands by the end of this week. Eropic, which insists on maiaining the safety limits of its technology, is now faced with the dilemma of accepting military requests or facing heavy sanctions from the US governme.
According to the New York Times, the Peagon has given Eropic uil 5:01 p.m. local time on Friday to accept the military’s demands. A senior Peagon official confirmed that US Secretary of War Pete Hegst had made two major threats against the company. The Trump administration plans to use the “Defense Production Act” to force the military to use the company’s models and at the same time label Eropic a “supply chain threat” and put all of its governme coracts at risk.
These two threats are basically in conflict with each other; One prohibits the governme from using the company’s products and the other forces the company to provide its products to the governme. However, these coradictory threats indicate the high level of anger among senior Peagon officials about the Ahropic Resistance. “Jessica Tillipman”, the vice dean of the George Washington University School of Law, says about this:
“The Peagon knows it is issuing an extreme threat. They use every button or lever they have. The bigger issue is that such actions lower the value of these security labels. “They are turning national security tools io leverage for commercial pressure.”
The Peagon’s ultimatum to Eropic
Eropic CEO Dario Amodi was summoned to the Peagon for a morning meeting on Tuesday. Reports indicate that the tone of the conversation was respectful, but when Ahropic did not agree to Heggst’s demands, the Secretary of War issued threats of his own.
An Ahropic spokesperson says the company is willing to support the governme, but must ensure that its models are used responsibly and reliably. Eropic’s supporters also argue that the Peagon is punishing the company because they were the first company to eer classified systems and built a special model called Claude Gov without common restrictions.
In corast, senior Peagon officials have rejected all requests for eropic safety. The War Departme was to stipulate in all AI coracts that the military has the right to use the models for any lawful purpose.
They emphasize that law enforceme is the responsibility of the military, and that coractors cannot set usage limits for the equipme they sell to the Peagon. Legal experts believe that using the Defense Production Act (which usually applies to the industrial production sector) against a software company and forcing it to provide its products for free is considered a very unusual action.
The US military has also signed an agreeme with Elon Musk’s xAI to bring the Grok model io classified systems, a senior Peagon official has confirmed. However, iegrating Grok io Palair’s confideial cloud servers and software will take time. More importaly, the US military considers Cloud to be a far superior and more accurate product than GROC. Also, the army is very close to an agreeme with Google to use the Gemina model, although this coract is not yet final.
