The US Department of War announced a deal with seven technology companies on Friday to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) tools on classified military network. Pentagon has listed SpaceX, OpenAi, Google, Nividia, Reflection, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services as participants. The deal will allow the companies to run AI systems on IL6 and IL7 networks used for classified intelligence and national security operations.
“Together, the War Department and these strategic partners share the conviction that American leadership in AI is indispensable to national security,” said the Pentagon.
Anthropic, which had been involved in a public legal battle with the Trump administration over the use of AI in milary operations, has been left out of the deal.
According to reports, the company had sought contractual guarantees to prevent its technology from being used in fully autonomous weapons systems or domestic surveillance. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth rejected the conditions, asserting Pentagon’s authority for any use considered to be lawful.
Trump attempted to block federal agencies from using Anthropic’s Claude chatbot and the Pentagon considered labeling the company a “supply chain risk”. This led to Anthropic filing a lawsuit against the administration in March 2026.
OpenAi confirmed that the deal formalised an agreement first revealed in March, replacing Anthropic’s role in classified AI environments.
The company released a statement, “As we said when we first announced our agreement several months ago, we believe the people defending the United States should have the best tools in the world.”
The announcement has drawn mixed response, with increasing public scrutiny over Pentagon’s growing use of AI and autonomous weapons, disregarding ethics and privacy.
Andreas Kirsch, a research scientist at Google DeepMind, came forward on X, criticising the company’s decision, “I’m speechless at Google signing a deal to use our AI models for classified tasks. Frankly, it is shameful. I personally feel incredibly ashamed right now to be Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind and I wonder how I’m supposed to do my work today.”
600 Google employees had previously signed a letter appealing to CEO Sundar Pichai to avoid such contracts.
