The Pentagon calls Anthropic the most "ideological" AI company it works with. This week showed us what that looks like in practice — from every direction at once.
**In this episode:**
- Claude was used during the military operation to capture Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro, and the Pentagon is now threatening to terminate Anthropic's $200M contract after the company asked questions about how its model was deployed
- Anthropic's head of Safeguards Research resigned, warning "the world is in peril" and that he'd "repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let our values govern our actions"
- Former Microsoft CFO and Trump-era official Chris Liddell joins Anthropic's board the same week, amid a $30B funding round at a $380B valuation
- What the pattern tells us about where Anthropic is heading — and what it means for Claude users
**Links:**
- Axios — Pentagon threatens to cut off Anthropic: https://www.axios.com/2026/02/15/claude-pentagon-anthropic-contract-maduro
- Axios — Pentagon used Claude during Maduro raid: https://www.axios.com/2026/02/13/anthropic-claude-maduro-raid-pentagon
- Mrinank Sharma resignation letter: https://x.com/MrinankSharma (Feb 9, 2026)
- CNBC — Anthropic taps Liddell for board: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/13/anthropic-ai-chris-liddell-microsoft-trump-board.html
- Dario Amodei — "The Adolescence of Technology": https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/the-adolescence-of-technology
**Referenced in this episode:**
- EP018: The Sabotage Risk Report — the evaluations produced by Sharma's team
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