OpenAI Reaches Department of Defense Agreement After Anthropic Releases Statement

The Department of Defense, also known as the Department of War, has been pushing AI companies to give them access to their models, but Anthropic has pushed back, wanting to add restrictions for certain situations like mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei released a statement about the discussions, saying Anthropic “never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner.” However, he also said Anthropic believes “AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values” in a narrow set of cases.

60 employees from OpenAI and 300 from Google signed a letter asking their companies to support Anthropic. Shortly after, OpenAI announced that it had come to an agreement with the Department of Defense.

Guardrails for OpenAI’s Agreement

Sam Altman posted on X, claiming that the new defense agreement addresses the issues that Anthropic initially had. However, some readers pointed out that government officials have contradicted that, saying that the AI models are for “all lawful purposes” in the agreement, which could include some purposes that Anthropic was opposed to.

Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network.

In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome.

AI safety and wide distribution of…

— Sam Altman (@sama) February 28, 2026

In OpenAI’s official announcement, they specified that there are three main red lines for their work with the Department of War:

• No use of OpenAI technology for mass domestic surveillance.
• No use of OpenAI technology to direct autonomous weapons systems.
• No use of OpenAI technology for high-stakes automated decisions

The agreement goes on to say that those red lines are more expansive and layered than those of other AI companies. OpenAI believes that deep collaboration between AI technology and the democratic process is crucial because the company wants to give the United States the best tools.

Altman said: “We are asking the DoW to offer these same terms to all AI companies, which in our opinion we think everyone should be willing to accept. We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements.”

What Does the Agreement Include?

OpenAI’s agreement includes three main sections:

1. Deployment Architecture: Since it’s a cloud-only deployment, OpenAI can independently verify that the red lines aren’t crossed.
2. OpenAI’s Contract: The contract states that “The Department of War may use the AI System for all lawful purposes, consistent with applicable law, operational requirements, and well-established safety and oversight protocols.”
3. AI Expert Involvement: Forward-deployed OpenAI engineers will help the government to ensure safety and alignment.

For more details on the agreement and answers to commonly asked questions, read OpenAI’s full statement.

OpenAI Users Turn to Anthropic

After OpenAI announced this agreement, ChatGPT saw a rapid decrease in users while Claude, Anthropic’s AI chatbot, experienced a sudden increase. This suggests that people weren’t happy with the agreement, causing them to switch to the competitor that turned down the Department of War’s agreement.

The number of users uninstalling ChatGPT jumped to 295% over the past weekend, according to TechCrunch. At the same time, Claude’s downloads increased to 51%, causing it to soar to the top of the Apple App Store charts.

Claude has taken advantage of this sudden growth by enabling context recall for free users and highlighting their feature that imports chat histories from other platforms like ChatGPT. These efforts may catch the attention of people on the fence about uninstalling ChatGPT.

Considering AI Options for Your Brand

OpenAI’s decision to work with the Department of Defense has stirred up lots of controversy. While some users trust the measures that the company is taking to ensure safety amid this agreement, others are skeptical or unhappy. News like this should be taken into account when deciding which AI platforms you feel comfortable using for your brand.

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