The Pentagon-Anthropic standoff just became Congress's problem. Senator Adam Schiff is drafting legislation to lock in human oversight for AI-powered life-or-death decisions, while Senator Elissa Slotkin introduced a companion bill restricting Defense Department AI surveillance of Americans. The coordinated push comes weeks after the Trump administration blacklisted Anthropic for refusing to remove safety guardrails from its AI models, a move that sparked a constitutional lawsuit and now threatens to reshape how the military deploys artificial intelligence.
Anthropic's principled stand against unfettered military AI use is getting legislative muscle. Senator Adam Schiff is working on a bill that would write the company's ethical red lines directly into federal law, ensuring human operators maintain ultimate authority over AI systems that make life-or-death decisions. Senator Elissa Slotkin filed a separate measure this week targeting the Defense Department's AI-powered mass surveillance capabilities on U.S. soil.
The twin bills transform what started as a contract dispute into a defining battle over AI governance. Earlier this month, the Trump administration designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk after the company refused to remove safety restrictions on its Claude models for military applications, according to The Verge's reporting. The blacklisting effectively bars federal agencies from purchasing Anthropic's AI services.
Anthropic fired back with a lawsuit accusing the government of violating its First Amendment rights and due process protections. The company argues its usage policies, which prohibit autonomous weapons systems and mass surveillance applications, represent core values it shouldn't be punished for maintaining.
Schiff's forthcoming legislation would essentially make those policies the law of the land. While the bill's text hasn't been released, the California Democrat told he's focused on mandating "meaningful human control" over AI systems deployed in combat scenarios. The measure would prevent the Pentagon from fielding fully autonomous weapons that select and engage targets without human authorization.
