A group of Catholic moral theologians and ethicists on Friday filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in federal court in support of Anthropic, an American artificial intelligence (AI) company that is suing the Department of Defense over the Pentagon’s insistence that it should be free to use Anthropic’s AI products without restriction, including for mass surveillance and autonomous weaponry.
Anthropic, creator of the widely adopted AI assistant Claude, ran afoul of the Pentagon’s leadership late last month when its CEO, Dario Amodei, told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the company refused “in good conscience” to allow Claude to be used specifically for those purposes.
In addition to Anthropic subsequently losing a $200 million contract with the Defense Department, Hegseth announced Anthropic would be designated a “supply chain risk” — a first for an American company. President Donald Trump has directed all government agencies to halt the use of Anthropic’s products within six months. Fearing financial annihilation, Anthropic on March 9 filed two lawsuits against the Department of Defense, challenging the “supply chain risk” designation as an inappropriate retaliation.
The falling out between Anthropic and the Pentagon sparked a major debate on the ethics and morality of AI,
