Exclusive | Pentagon AI chiefEmil Michael says its totally bananas that Anthropic wont support America and slams Microsoft for appeasing progressive employees

Pentagon AI chief Emil Michael isn’t sweating Microsoft’s legal support for Anthropic.In fact, he told me the whole situation is “totally bananas.”Michael dismissed Microsoft’s amicus brief, which the company filed earlier this week in support of Anthropic and against the Department of War, as little more than a move to appease employees.“It’s sort of par for the course to prove to your employees that you have certain camaraderie [with other left-wing tech companies]”, said Michael, who serves as Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering and oversees AI contracts, on a phone call earlier this week.

“If you read their actual briefs, it says everything the Department of War wants to do is legal.”While the amicus brief claims Microsoft and Anthropic want to protect warfighters, Michael isn’t buying it.It’s the government, he told me, that’s working to keep service members safe.“[Our move designating Anthropic a supply chain risk] is to protect warfighters — because Anthropic was trying to insert themselves into the chain of command,” Michael explained.

“Supply chain risk is to remove that risk, not add another risk.”Michael said this is the latest wrinkle in a saga made more bizarre by the fact that Anthropic worked closely with the Department of War for years before the government terminated its contract in February.Following the January 2026 US raid that captured and extradited Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, an Anthropic executive asked a counterpart at Palantir — via which Anthropic’s Claude AI was integrated — whether and how its artificial intelligence was used.Anthropic had supplied a specialized version of Claude to some of the military’s most sensitive commands — including Central Command and Indo-Pacific Command — under a deal worth roughly $200 million.Palantir told Pentagon officials about Anthropic’s inquiry, and the Feds interpreted it as potential post-facto disapproval.The move raised ...