OpenAIs Sam Altman fends off painful backlash to Pentagon AI deal including chalk-wielding activists

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is scrambling to head off a backlash over the tech giant’s deal with the Pentagon — defending it in front of workers at a tense all-hands meeting on Tuesday after protesters outside its San Francisco headquarters urged employees to quit, The Post has learned.The AI company announced its deal on Friday — just hours after President Trump blasted Anthropic as “leftwing nut jobs” and ordered all federal agencies to stop working with them.The deal happened so fast – and with only vague details about its structure initially revealed – that Altman himself has admitted it was rushed.Outside the company’s San Francisco offices on Monday, a group of activists wrote messages in chalk on the sidewalk ripping the Pentagon deal.

The scrawled messages included phrases like “Is it time to quit?” and “Orwell warned us.”Other messages directed at OpenAI employees said, “Will you spy on your neighbors?” and, “Can America trust you?” according to pictures that circulated on X.A source close to the situation questioned whether the protest was funded by a rival.“Turns out, it was artists who had messages on their phones about what to write,” the source told The Post.“It wasn’t even real activists.”At an all-hands meeting on Tuesday, Altman insisted that OpenAI had made the right call by agreeing to work with the Pentagon, although he admitted that rushing the initial announcement was a mistake, a second source familiar with the matter said.“To try so hard to do the right thing and get so absolutely like, personally crushed for it — and I know this is happening to all of you too, so I feel terrible for subjecting you all to this — is really painful,” Altman said at the meeting, according to sources.At one point during the meeting, an employee quipped that they were glad OpenAI secured the contract and not Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot, drawing laughter from the crowd, a source said.Altman added that the Department o...