Source: The Guardian

The Pentagon reached agreements with seven artificial intelligence companies — SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, Reflection, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services — to integrate their technology into classified military environments, according to a federal statement. The companies agreed to allow the US military to deploy their technology for “any lawful use,” and the department said the pacts will help transform the US military into an “AI‑first” fighting force and strengthen warfighters’ decision superiority across domains of warfare.

The deals will place vendors into the Pentagon’s “Impact Levels 6 and 7” network environments to streamline data synthesis, elevate situational understanding and augment decision‑making, but the announcement did not specify how each company’s technologies would be deployed. The Department of Defense is budgeting tens of billions of dollars for related programs and has requested $54bn for development of autonomous weapons. One partner, Reflection AI, has no public model, aims to build open‑source models against Chinese firms, and has sought a $25bn valuation with funding from Nvidia and 1789 Capital. Anthropic refused the lawful‑use clause and has been in dispute with the Pentagon over possible domestic surveillance and fully autonomous lethal weapons; the Pentagon then labeled Anthropic a supply‑chain risk and barred its use by the department and contractors, and Anthropic sued in response. Defense officials, cited by the New York Times, said bringing Anthropic’s rivals into contracts could pressure the startup back to the negotiating table, while Anthropic’s Mythos model has raised government concern over its ability to find software vulnerabilities.