The DoD and an AI giant face off. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Stephanie Hughes.

It's Friday, time for Marketplace Tech Fights, where we look at a few of the big stories in the tech industry.

This week, OpenAI turns to consultants to get more companies to integrate AI co-workers.

Plus, Apple will be making its Mac Mini in Texas.

But first, this week, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Heggseth met with Anthropic CEO, Dario Amade, reportedly asking

for unfettered access to the company's AI model. If it doesn't get that, it's threatened to cancel a

$200 million contract it has for the company. This comes after Anthropics' AI model, Claude,

was reportedly used as part of the operation to capture former Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro.

Anthropicus said it doesn't want its technology used to develop weapons or for mass surveillance of Americans.

Axios tech policy reporter Maria Curie has been reporting on this.

It's a really tough position for the company to be in.

It was the first to provide its model Claude to the Pentagon for classified use. Right now, it's the only company that is actually being used for classified purposes at the Pentagon. And it's deeply entrenched throughout the department. It's also very difficult for the Pentagon, though, if they were to lose access to

Claude. It's not easy to offboard that technology from all of the Pentagon's operations right now.

As you mentioned, it was used in the Malutor raid. And so both sides have a lot to lose.

Yeah, you were the first to report on this ultimatum. You heard from one defense official who said,

quote, the only reason we're still talking to these people is we need them and we need them now. How does the Pentagon already rely on Anthropics Tech? You know, right now, for unclassified purposes, it would be in a lot of the ways that you would suspect, research and development, searching through documents,

creating new documents. But for classified purposes, of course, we don't know the details of that,

but we can surmise that it was used in the Maludo raid without violating anthropics usage policies.

You know, so we can conclude that no mass surveillance or no autonomous weapons were

necessary for that classified operation if Anthropics policies were not violated. And those are

the two red lines that the company is bringing to the table in these negotiations. That's what

has the Pentagon so furious with the company. Because the Pentagon doesn't think that it should

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