Emil Michael on the DoD's legal battle with Anthropic

The Department of Defense has escalated its legal conflict with Anthropic, filing a 40-page brief in U.S. District Court last week. The government’s filing, which follows Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deeming Anthropic a “supply-chain risk” in late February, argues that giving Anthropic access to the DoD’s war-fighting infrastructure would introduce “unacceptable risk” into supply chains. On Friday, Anthropic submitted sworn declarations and a brief in response, ahead of a hearing scheduled for Tuesday in San Francisco. Thiyagu Ramasamy, Anthropic’s head of public sector, stated in a declaration that Anthropic interfering with military operations by disabling or altering technology is not technically possible.

Emil Michael, who serves as a senior technology official at the Department of Defense, has warned that Chinese technology companies have been reverse-engineering Anthropic’s models. According to Michael, these companies use a technique called distillation—a technique to reverse-engineer model behavior—to replicate the technology. Under China’s civil-military fusion laws, a Chinese legal framework, this practice could give the Chinese military access to unrestricted capabilities. Michael argues that the DoD cannot allow private companies to impose policy preferences that might leave the military at a disadvantage against adversaries.

This dispute coincides with Michael’s public reflections on his June of 2017 departure from Uber, where he resigned eight days before Travis Kalanick. The ouster involved investors, including Benchmark. Michael, a senior technology official at the Department of Defense, remains critical of the investors who pushed them out. “I’ll never forget that, nor forgive,” Michael said in an interview, referring to the ouster. He argues that the investors wanted to preserve near-term returns rather than build a trillion-dollar company. To support this, he pointed to Uber’s decision to sell its self-driving unit in 2020, three years after both men left. While Waymo robotaxis now operate in 10 U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Uber sold its autonomous unit. Kalanick, who left Uber eight years ago, has also expressed regret over the state of the autonomous program.

Why it matters

The conflict highlights the growing friction between private AI companies and government defense agencies, specifically regarding control over technology and national security concerns.