The Tech Industry Comes Together Against Authoritarianism - Recap of a Truly Wild Week

“This is the wildest news cycle of my life”

A few short weeks ago if someone told you that staffers within big tech and the AI labs were organizing collectively to push back against Trump’s agenda, you wouldn’t have believed them.

Yesterday, the CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei announced the company he runs wouldn’t help the Department of War with mass surveillance of U.S. citizens and autonomous lethal weapons. Last night, the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, told staff the same. He had little choice following extensive pressure from staffers. It’s almost hard to believe how far the Overton window has shifted in such a short period of time.

There’s a lot moving right now but we want to share a status update to capture all that’s happening.

In early January, in the wake of the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, a group of tech industry professionals got together under the moniker, ICEout.tech, asking their CEOs to break from the Department of Homeland Security. Staffers inside Salesforce (over 3,000) and Google (over 1,000) quickly followed with their own versions of the pledge.

With conversations internally still hot about work these companies do to enable ICE’s agenda, a storm was brewing in D.C.

TUESDAY, February 24

• Hegseth meets with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at the Pentagon in what officials describe as “not warm and fuzzy at all.” Hegseth tells Amodei the Pentagon will either cut ties and declare Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” or invoke the Defense Production Act to force the company to tailor its model to the military’s needs — and gives Anthropic until Friday evening to comply.

• Notably, Hegseth raises the claim that Anthropic interfered in the Maduro raid by raising concerns to partner Palantir. Amodei flatly denies it. The story breaks publicly by end of day, immediately generating massive coverage and industry reaction. Hegseth labels Anthropic’s safeguards “woke AI.”

WEDNESDAY, February 25

• The Pentagon takes its first concrete action: it asks at least two major defense contractors to assess their reliance on Claude — the first step toward formally blacklisting Anthropic as a supply chain risk.

• An open letter titled “We Will Not Be Divided” circulates among AI staffers expressing solidarity with Anthropic. ICEout.tech announces a live X Space conversation for Thursday. The Pentagon sends Anthropic its “last and final offer” overnight.

THURSDAY, February 26

• Anthropic reviews the Pentagon’s overnight offer and rejects it, calling the new contract language “legalese” with escape hatches designed to let safeguards be “disregarded at will.”

• ICEout.tech hosts the live X Space with hundreds of listeners including The Verge, Bulwark, tech staffers, VCs, and AI ethicists. One speaker, John O’Farrell, a former General Partner at A16Z, likened this moment to the pressure on law firms last year and strongly encouraged leaders in tech to hold the line and fight to protect the rule of law.

• Dario Amodei publishes a statement saying Anthropic “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Pentagon’s demands, while keeping the door open to continued talks. Military Times Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell fires back on X, saying the military “will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions.”

• More than 400+ staffers from Google and OpenAI sign the “We Will Not Be Divided” open letter. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis breaks with the administration, saying the Pentagon has handled the matter “unprofessionally.” Here’s the full day-by-day breakdown:

• Letter from over 100 Google DeepMind employees sent to Google’s Chief Scientist, Jeff Dean, seeking to enlist his support in getting the company to draw a firm line in the sand in response to demands from the DoD.

• OpenAI buckled and joins Anthropic: In a memo to OpenAI staff, Altman wrote that he will draw the same red lines that sparked the Anthropic-Pentagon fight: no AI for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons. Axios

FRIDAY, February 27 (deadline day — still unfolding)

• The Pentagon signals it remains open to continued talks - Bloomberg, even as Under Secretary Emil Michael calls Anthropic’s behavior “unpredictable.”

• Anthropic says it is still negotiating in good faith. The Washington Post reports on a revealing detail from the negotiations: during a December phone call, a senior Pentagon official posed a hypothetical nuclear missile scenario to pressure Amodei into dropping safeguards. Outcome pending as of this writing.

• It appears some anonymous people had a party outside Anthropic HQ last night, painting chalk on the sidewalk in an expression of gratitude to Anthropic for taking a stand.

• Earlier today: Worker Organizations And Unions Representing 700,000 Employees Demand: Amazon, Google, Microsoft Must Reject The Pentagon’s Demands:

“We are writing to urge our own companies to also refuse to comply should they or the frontier labs they invest in enter into further contracts with the Pentagon.

If any tech company caves to the Pentagon’s demands, War Secretary Pete Hegseth will have won the ability to surveil our communities — –here and abroad — –en masse, at an unprecedented level. He will have the power to build and deploy A.I.-powered drones that kill people without the approval of any human. Our employers are already complicit in providing their technologies to power mass atrocities and war crimes; capitulating to the Pentagon’s intimidation will only further implicate our labor in violence and repression.”

• Members of the American Technology Community: The American technology and startup community is sending a letter to the Department of War and Congress on the Anthropic negotiations. Join us to communicate that it is counterproductive for the government to heavily retaliate against private companies who don’t accept contract terms the government wants to add.”

The Department of War gave Anthropic an ultimatum of 5pm ET today. We’re grabbing our popcorn to see how they’ll respond once that deadline is missed. Whatever happens later this afternoon it’s abundantly clear Trump’s Silicon Valley advisors overplayed their hand on this and it’s backfiring bigly.