The Department of Defense awarded a contract worth up to $200 million to an artificial intelligence company whose CEO said that President Donald Trump was a “legitimate threat to the rule of law” and likened him to a “feudal warlord.”
Anthropic, a San Francisco-based company with extensive links to Democrats, was awarded a contract earlier this month to develop national security AI capabilities for the Pentagon. This contract comes after CEO Dario Amodei lambasted Trump as a “clown” who appointed “idiots” to government positions.
Beginning with a $2 million award, Anthropic will work with the Defense Department to “anticipate and mitigate potential adversarial uses of AI” and the exchange of “technical insights, performance data, and operational feedback to accelerate responsible AI adoption across the defense enterprise.”
By the end of the project, the company, which created AI chatbot Claude, could be awarded 200 million in taxpayer dollars.
According to the Department of Defense, the project will mainly take place in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and will focus on developing “prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in across warfighting and enterprise domains.”
Before the company was awarded the lucrative contract, Amodei had a history of decrying Trump and urging voters to back Democrats.
“But the stakes are too high for me not to say where I stand. Harris will be the steadier hand and the more trustworthy leader in an age of rapid and disruptive technological change,” he said in a Facebook post before the 2024 election.
Amodei did admit in the post that he was not speaking for Anthropic and that he would “try to find areas of agreement and opportunities for good policy making” regardless of who was elected.
Over the years, Amodei has donated extensively to Democrats, including $37,800 to President Joe Biden, $20,700 to Hillary Clinton, and $47,750 to the DNC, according to Federal Election Commission records.
In another Facebook post from 2018, wrote that Trump “represents a serious and legitimate threat to the rule of law,” said that Trump “appoints idiots to important government positions,” and urged Americans to “vote against this clown.”
He said that a “feudal warlord lens” explained a lot about how Trump operates.
“He sees the Attorney General as someone whose job is to protect him personally, rather than someone whose job is to enforce the laws, he sees the White House Counsel as responsible for abetting his illegal actions, rather than advising him on what is or isn’t legal,” he wrote.
The CEO also opined on gerrymandering, urging the adoption of measures that “would effectively abolish the Electoral College.” He claimed that voting for Democrats was the only way to address gerrymandering in the country.
Last week, Dario attended an event with Trump last week at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania as Anthropic committed $2 million to the university for AI and technology research.
Anthropic also has other close ties to Democratic donors and former Biden administration officials.
During its early stages, the company received backing from Dustin Moskovitz, a billionaire entrepreneur who donated around $37 million to a PAC backing Harris. Netflix founder Reed Hastings, another prominent Democrat donor, sits on the board of Anthropic. Former Biden advisers who now work with Anthropic include Elizabeth Kelly, Tarun Chhabra, Benjamin Merkel, and Ben Buchanan.
Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment.
On Wednesday, Trump laid out details of his AI action plan, which included plans to require companies that get federal contracts to have ideologically free chatbots. The Daily Wire has previously reported on how OpenAi’s ChatGPT will help kids get access to abortion pills and attack crisis pregnancy centers.
Anthropic said that there was “alignment” between its goals and Trump’s action plan.
“We look forward to working with the Administration to implement these initiatives while ensuring appropriate attention to catastrophic risks and maintaining strong export controls,” Anthropic said Wednesday. “Together, we can ensure that powerful AI systems are developed safely in America, by American companies, reflecting American values and interests.”