Anthropic and OpenAI Draw a Red Line for the Pentagon - DTNS 5215

0:05Jason Howell: This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, February 27th, 2026. We tell you what you need to know, give you the important context and help each other understand.

0:14Jenn Cutter: Today, Anthropic and the Pentagon are in a showdown over using AI for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.

0:21Jason Howell: This is a meaty story. I'm Jason Howell.

0:24Jenn Cutter: I'm Jenn Cutter.

0:25Jason Howell: Let's start with what you need to know with a big story.

0:31Jason Howell: There is a showdown a-brewin' right now happening between Anthropic and the U.S. Department of War over whether AI firms must give the Pentagon blanket access for all lawful purposes to their systems or to draw hard lines on mass domestic surveillance, fully autonomous weapons, all that stuff. CEO Dario Amade laid out two contractual lines in the sand. The first of those, no AI-driven dragnet surveillance of Americans. The second, no use of its technology for autonomous lethal weapons. Now, the Pentagon officials have threatened to cancel its$200 million contract with Anthropic. There's a deadline that they've set for an agreement, 5.01 p.m.

1:23Jason Howell: today. I'm not sure if that's Eastern or Pacific, but it doesn't matter. Sometime later today, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has also responded in a memo to staff saying that he shares Anthropics' redline stance, but he proposes a different, more technical method of enforcement. That would require cloud-only deployments that continually keep humans in the loop, in other words, as opposed to locally run systems that could be implemented inside of weapons autonomously, of course. OpenAI also wants to preserve the company's ability to learn from deployments and have researchers with security clearances who can advise on risks.

2:08Jason Howell: And this goes beyond just these two companies throughout the industry. More than 200 workers at Google, yes, within OpenAI and others have signed letters urging executives not to undercut Anthropic and to resist pressure from the Department of Defense or the Department of War and to adopt similar red lines. And so really this just seems like – the last couple of years, this has been kind of the big bubbling question is like, OK, these AI models, they're smart. They're developing. But what about kind of autonomous weaponry? And that's been a line drawn in the sand before. But now this feels like a renewed kind of values fight over how AI should or should not be used in situations like this.

2:59Jason Howell: It's a very interesting moment.

3:02Jenn Cutter: I have covered a ton of tech law stories over my career for some very serious subjects. And this is the first one where I feel like, wow, this is over my pay grade. This is so serious and so far reaching. And I actually did not think that Anthropic was going to hold their position on this. I had expected to wake up this morning being like, yeah, OK, here you go. So I am proud, I guess, of Anthropic and the other AI companies saying like, yeah, you know, let's kind of stick together on this a little bit, at least just a little bit.

3:39Jason Howell: Yeah, well, it's also hard to know with these things how much is, I hate to say it, this is maybe a pessimistic tech perspective, but how much of it is lip service versus reality? You know what I mean? Anthropic for for however long last couple of years, they've loved leaning into this idea that we are the A.I. company that cares about safety and privacy. And I'm sure there's I'm not saying that there isn't truth there, but but I'm also, you know, realizing and recognizing the fact that they are a business. They do make money for shareholders and all the things. Right. And so their intentions and their ambitions might sometimes go counter to that.

4:20Jason Howell: even though that's their kind of public stated principled role in AI today. Then you've got OpenAI. They're playing, in this case, they're playing a more pragmatic, more responsible for the technology type role. And I don't know. It's just an interesting moment. I would agree. I'm really happy that Anthropic has drawn that red line in the sand. But that kind of like pessimistic technology voice inside my head is like, Like, yeah, but you know what? One of these companies, like, let's be real. One of these companies is going to be like, whatever. Okay, sure. Let's go. I have some guesses as far as what companies might be open to that.

5:02Jason Howell: And I don't think that it's anthropic and maybe it's open AI. You know, I could see XAI being like, hey, let's go. Let's rumble.

5:09Jenn Cutter: Yeah. Well, in our lifetimes, we remember when Google started with don't be evil.

5:15Jason Howell: Mm-hmm. Right. How's that going? Yeah. Well, and that's the thing, right? These things, they evolve or devolve depending on how you want to look at it, but those things change over time. That might be the ambition early on. And then eventually over time, the conditions, the environment, everything shifts, and suddenly that doesn't make a whole lot of business sense anymore. And I think also along with that, we tend to have a short – or a lot of people anyways – tend to have a short attention span for this stuff. It might matter at one point, and then at some point it's like, oh, but that's old news.

5:47Jason Howell: We've moved on. And maybe that's what some of these companies, maybe that's what the Pentagon is hoping for in this case.

5:54Jenn Cutter: Yeah. And as you said, we know what they're saying. We have no idea what's happening on the inside. And we will never know. And the people with security clearance are, unless somebody turns whistleblower, unlikely to let the rest of us know.

6:06Jason Howell: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, really, what we're looking at here is a very, for the big story, we've got a big question, which is, Are these frontier labs going to hold a common line on how their models can be used or cannot be used in warfare? Or who is going to be the first company to offer a workaround that then basically turns them into the default military AI supplier and in the process really sets those norms for everyone else? It's an interesting time. We are living through interesting times in the world of technology, Jen.

6:47Jenn Cutter: Well, one of the things we do know is that DTNS is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to Justin Zellers, Carmine Bailey, and Chris Beneteau.

6:58Jason Howell: Yeah, thank you.

7:04Jason Howell: The news keeps happening. We got lots more to talk about in the briefs. So right over to you, Jen.

7:10Jenn Cutter: Block is cutting roughly 4 ,000 roles, nearly 40 % of its staff. Jack Dorsey revealed this during the payment company's fourth quarter earnings report, showing growth in gross profit of 24 % and earnings growth of 38 % year over year. Along with that, Block announced the job cuts as the company embeds AI across its operations, saying it will enable, quote, smaller, highly talented teams to do more, better, and cheaper work. Dorsey positions this as a one-time reset and is arguing that most companies will soon find themselves in a similar position as they restructure around intelligence tools. Block anticipates between$450 million and$500 million in restructuring costs tied to these cuts.

7:57Jenn Cutter: The market responded positively in after-hours trading with a bump of more than 25%.

8:03Jason Howell: Yeah, I mean, this just seems to kind of play into this, you know, another kind of recurring theme right now, which is that tech leadership truly believes that the implementation of AI and the growth of AI inside, you know, and their systems and everything that they're building around these capabilities, these intelligence systems, allows you to do more with fewer people, allows those people to be more empowered. their time to be more impactful. And this just really seems like Dorsey kind of pushing some of the chips into the center of the table. And, you know, the unfortunate downside to this is, holy moly, that's a lot of rolls.

8:47Jason Howell: That's a lot of layoffs there. 40 % of the staff on a bet, basically. Yeah.

8:52Jenn Cutter: Dorsey's always been bullish on this stuff. So in terms of who made the announcement this big, no one's surprised by the name.

8:59Jason Howell: Yeah, no, definitely not. And, you know, It's not like Blox, the only one kind of making certain major moves like this, Amazon, Nike, a whole bunch of others. So he might be right. He might be right when he says that we're doing this thing that other companies are going to find themselves in. I think the bigger question is whether this ends up being a smart move long term. Is this a prescient move or is it just hopeful? and if it's just hopeful and that proves to not be the case, what does that mean one, two, three years down the line for Block and what they're facing at that point? They could be doing a lot of undoing of the undoing.

9:41Jenn Cutter: Hey, Salesforce walks some of that back too.

9:44Jason Howell: Yeah, I suppose it's not impossible. But yeah, I suppose we'll see what happens. Thursday, Warner Brothers determined that Paramount's increased offer to buy it was superior to the previously accepted Netflix offer. Warner gave Netflix four days to respond, but Netflix didn't need it. Netflix bowed out immediately, pretty much. Netflix's co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said in a statement, quote, this transaction was always a nice to have at the right price, but not a must-have at any price. uh paramount raised its offer from thirty dollars a share to thirty one dollars a share and agreed to pay the 2.8 billion dollars that warner owes netflix for that deal falling through paramount also added several guarantees of its own if this deal falls apart paramount will pay seven billion dollars and if the deal does not close before september 30th paramount will raise its offer by 25 cents a share for every quarter it doesn't close paramount has said it believes it can save six billion dollars in synergies after the deal mostly to overcome from all the jobs that the combined company won't need and then there's this singer paul anka who was talking to deadline in december to promote his album that was called inspirations of life and love said quote who knows?

11:10Jason Howell: Ted Sarandos is very close to Zaslav. Sometimes these guys do each other a favor. It's an old Vegas trick. You want to sell a hotel? You go to your buddy and say, give me an offer. Just pretend you're in the game. And they floated out there and it starts this bidding war. I still think it's going to be paramount that winds up with it. End quote. You were right, Paul. You were so right. Good job.

11:33Jenn Cutter: On behalf of my dad, I have to throw out his favorite Paul Anka fact, which not that Paul Anka has come up in a lot of conversations in my life, but enough that I remember this fact. He says, hey, do you know that Paul Anka is Canadian? He's from Ottawa, you know.

11:51Jason Howell: He's from Ottawa, you know. Wow, I'm just realizing right now. What is a Paul Anka song? Do you know a Paul Anka song off the top of your head?

11:59Jenn Cutter: No, I just know that he's written a lot of them. So many.

12:04Jason Howell: I can't help. put your head on my shoulder puppy love uh yeah because people kind of treated him as like like

12:11Jenn Cutter: a joke for a while uh and then realized like nah this guy has a huge body of work you gotta put

12:17Jason Howell: some respect on his name i if this isn't any indication i really have very little to say about this deal going back and forth that i want to just spend all our time talking about paul inca's songs and his uh his cat his uh catalog i celebrate his entire catalog there you go but uh

12:33Jenn Cutter: Also from the Canadian thing, the old joke is that Canada is three telecom companies in a trench coat. And it feels like from this distance that a lot of the U.S. consolidations kind of go in the same way for the media where everything is over three companies. And trust me, from being up here, that's not great.

12:52Jason Howell: That's really true.

12:57Jenn Cutter: ultra human is releasing the ring pro a 479 smart ring with a 15-day battery redesigned sensors on device compute and a new pro charger that offers up to 45 days of battery life the device includes a redesigned heart rate sensor a dual core processor and up to 250 days of stored health data on device. UltraHuman is rebooting its business in the U.S. that collapsed after an ITC patent ruling last October in Aura's favor blocked new imports and cut off around 45 % of its 700 ,000 daily active users. It has since redesigned the hardware in an attempt to sidestep those patents in the U.S. The new device has been submitted to the U.S.

13:45Jenn Cutter: customs and border protections to be cleared for import into the U.S. The company also announced Jade, a real-time biointelligence assistant that works with RingPro to bring real-time personalized recommendations to the app experience. Jade will be offered for free to all users.

14:06Jason Howell: The wearable, like the ring for like smart tracking and health tracking is a thing that I've always wanted to dive into, but I haven't quite. So I can't attest to the quality of what Ultra Human has done in the past or even Aura for that matter. Have you worn any of these rings and tested them compared to what we're used to on our wrists?

14:27Jenn Cutter: I am not big on rings. Because I use fitness tracking for sports, I would be terrified to play in a ring. If I get slashed on the wrist, it hurts, but I also wear slash guards like over my watch. But you know, sometimes you feel it in the glove and yeah, there's just, and some, some of my teammates play with like their giant rocks over their wedding rings on their hands. And I'm like, it's like, you're a goalie. That's your trapper hand. Are you out of your mind? So I assume for those people, they would not think twice about throwing a nice flat fitness ring on top of that. But it is not something I am looking at and also way outside impulse purchase range.

15:08Jason Howell: Yeah. I mean, this isn't an inexpensive smart ring at almost$500. I don't know if that's standard or some of the other ones. I want to say they're a little bit less expensive than that from what I've seen. But like I said, I haven't worn one of these in my finger. Losing a business like this, losing 45 % of its daily active users because of that patent ruling, that's a lot of motivation to figure things out and get a new device on the market over here so they can get, you know, back to where they were. Yeah. So we'll see. It's been submitted. We'll see if it gets cleared.

15:43Jenn Cutter: Yeah. No, that's, that's a big scramble, but yeah. Competing with watches that do more with your phone and have displays and stuff. We're going to, we're going to see it. It's the years of wearables just ongoing. Indeed. Do you want honest reviews from people who actually buy and live with tech? Then you need Live With It. Sarah Lane hosts a weekly look at the tech she and others have been using in their daily life. Listen to Live With It wherever fine podcasts are found or you can watch a video over at youtube.com slash daily tech news show.

16:24Jason Howell: All right, now some quick headlines that are good to know, might make you look a little smarter in the future.

16:30Jenn Cutter: OpenAI just raised a record-setting$110 billion, that's billion with a B, double its financing from last year from Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank, with Amazon also announcing a multi-year strategic partnership to co-develop custom models for Amazon's applications.

16:49Jason Howell: Yeah, I don't know if you know this or not, but OpenAI, kind of a big deal, you know, apparently. Google shipped Android 17 beta 2 for pixel devices, at least to start with new bubbles for multitasking. Some more bubble work happening, apparently. A system eyedropper API and a handoff API for improved device switching, which I'm definitely looking forward to.

17:10Jenn Cutter: Razer launched the laptop sleeve 16-inch with a magnetic flap that hides dual USB-powered wireless 15-watt and 5-watt charging pads for$130. A non-charging version costs$80.

17:25Jason Howell: Oh, that's neat. A laptop sleeve with little wireless charging pads. I like it. That's, that's, I want one of those. Researchers discovered a Wi-Fi vulnerability. They're calling it Air Snitch that lets any attacker on the same network impersonate other devices. As you can imagine, why? To covertly intercept and redirect their traffic. That's why.

17:47Jenn Cutter: Spotify is adding weekly audiobook charts in the US and UK to showcase the most popular titles by genre and also, I guess, to remind people that audiobooks are on Spotify.

17:57Jason Howell: Yeah, that's a good point. That's a really good point. Apple's iPhone and iPad running iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 are officially the first consumer devices certified out of the box for NATO-restricted classified data across all member nations. That's kind of a big deal.

18:16Jenn Cutter: Samsung has confirmed the S26 supports two-way satellite texting and data in Europe, Japan, and North America.

18:24Jason Howell: All right. There was some questions about that. South Korea granted Google conditional approval to export high precision maps out of the country for its services after 15 years of appeals. So it was a long fight, but they got there. Good job, Google.

18:42Jenn Cutter: Meta reportedly struck a multi-billion dollar deal to rent Google TPUs, its third major AI chip supplier, along with NVIDIA and AMD.

18:51Jason Howell: Yeah, interesting that Google's kind of spreading out the TPU love these days. And finally, Albania has allowed TikTok back online when a year-long ban expired earlier this month. That's after the shutdown failed to stop 1.7 million users in the country from accessing it with VPNs. All right, we end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspectives. And today, Gutter is a Tool from the DTNS Discord has a question about the Valve blind boxes conversation that you all had yesterday. Gutter is a Tool says, regarding New York going after Valve loot boxes for gambling, how are trading cards exempt from gambling allegations?

19:37Jason Howell: allegations. They've been making more exclusive sought after cards the last few years with people spending tons of money on blind boxes in hopes for the financial windfall of attaining one of those rare cards. Talk about outside my pay grade. Like I don't have any direct involvement these days with Valve loot boxes, but tell me what you know, Jen.

19:58Jenn Cutter: I completely forgot about the trading cards while we were talking about this yesterday. Trading cards used to be kind of like a low key way to make money on the Steam marketplace and some unscrupulous game journalists in the past, because when you have a press account on Steam, you have all of the games, like extremely literally all of the games. And there was an app that you could run in the background that would quote unquote play these games for you when trading cards were available just through playtime. So like the more you played a game, there was always a chance of a card drop. Like I remember for Rock of Ages, I played for like three hours when I was starting the review and I got like six cards.

20:42Jenn Cutter: I was like, wow, that was really fast drop rate. But back in the day, like you could sell those for, you know, five to 17 cents a card. Like it wasn't big money, but if you're multiplying that by a thousand games and eight to 10 cards per game, yeah, some press made bank on that. and there's a reason that they're not pressed anymore.

21:02Jason Howell: Interesting. Wow, you get access to the entire Steam library? Those are rare.

21:07Jenn Cutter: Like these days, companies will just give you a key for their game and Steam itself does not tend to get involved in who is a journalist or not. But there are some legacy press accounts out there, though some randomly get to be activated every year. And in journal back channels, those are always mourned.

21:26Jason Howell: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it is the scale thing, right? Like, you know, 17 cents might not be a lot, but 17 cents scaled over blah, blah, blah. It suddenly adds up. You know, that reminds me of, I don't know if you ever saw the movie Office Space. Did you ever see the movie Office Space? And then prior to that, there's the scene where they're talking about in Superman and Lex Luthor. You know, it's something along these same lines. Tiny amounts over thousands upon thousands. And we know where that led. So it's not good news. Don't go there.

21:55Jenn Cutter: What are you thinking about? Do you have some insight into a story or comments or any tangents, honestly, that you want to share with us? Because we love reading them. Please share it with us over at feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com.

22:08Jason Howell: Not only do we love reading tangents, we love going on tangents as well, like Office Space and Superman. Thanks to Gutter as a tool for contributing to today's show. And thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You can keep us in business by becoming a patron. All you got to do, it's really easy. Go to patreon.com slash DTNS.

22:30Jason Howell: This week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show were created by the following people. Host, producer, writer, Tom Merritt. Host, writer, Jason Howell. Co-host, Sarah Lane. Co-host, Rob Dunwood. Co-host, Jen Cutter. Producer, Anthony Lemos. Producer, Roger Chang. Editor, Hammond Chamberlain. Editor, Victor Bognat. Contributing producer, Kevin Tech, Noel Cow, and Brandon Richards. Science correspondent, Dr. Nikki Ackermans. social media producer and moderator Zoe Detterding our mods Beatmaster Wscottis1 BioCow Captain Kipper Steve Guadarrama Paul Rees Matthew J. Stevens aka Gadget Virtuoso and JD Galloway mod and video hosting by Dan Christensen music provided by Martin Bell and Dan Luters art by Len Peralta a cast ad support from Tatiana Matias Patreon support from Bobby Wagner and our guests this week Andy Beach Dan Campos And thanks to all our patrons who make this show possible.

23:36Jason Howell: The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand.

23:42Jenn Cutter: Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.