Hey everyone, it's Lizzie.

Heads up that this episode is about a fast-moving news story.

Okay, here's the show.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned the CEO of the AI company Anthropic,

Dario Amade, to the Pentagon for a meeting.

This meeting was really a last-ditch effort by the Department of Defense and by Secretary

Hexsef and this company, Anthropic, to try and come to some sort of compromise, some sort

of agreement about how the Pentagon can continue to use Anthropics AI software.

I asked Jira Frankel from the New York Times to describe what happened.

It's interesting. Both sides said the meeting was cordial, it was polite, nobody raised their

voices. They had a very sort of like sympathetic readout of that meeting.

And yet, when it ended, Secretary Huggseth made an announcement that the company Anthropic had not just one but two ultimatums,

that if they didn't comply with what the Pentagon was asking, they could either be deemed a supply chain risk,

meaning they can no longer do business

across the U.S. government.

They're a danger to national security.

Or he could invoke the Defense Production Act, which means that you are so critical to national

security that you have to do business with the government.

They absolutely need your technology.

It's fundamental to securing the U.S., and therefore, you have no choice but to work with them.

Wait, aren't those two things, like, the opposite of one another?

They are fundamentally opposed to one another, and it's unclear which direction the Department of Defense could take.

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