Pentagon contracts with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI turn out to be much closer than the companies said
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Publication time restored from the build log. . Updated: .
Leading SI labs are already built into the US military machine, and powerful models are becoming part of defense just as computers and the internet once did.
The Intercept obtained more than 400 pages of documents on the July 2025 contracts, worth up to $200 million each, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The companies committed to providing access to their best models, receiving classified briefings on Department of Defense missions, taking part in staff exercises, training military personnel and forecasting risks of their own products. In two documents the Pentagon asked OpenAI for a version of the model that refuses military users as rarely as possible; OpenAI and the Department of Defense said these were drafts and that the final contract contains no such provision. Anthropic declined to be placed on classified networks without a ban on domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons.
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