By Hadas Gold, CNN

(CNN) — American AI company Anthropic has until 5:01 pm ET to give in to the Pentagon’s demands or face being labeled a “supply chain risk,” a type of designation usually reserved for companies thought to be extensions of foreign adversaries.

The Pentagon, which uses Anthropic’s Claude AI system on its classified networks, wants to be able to use it for “all lawful purposes.” But Anthropic has two redlines for the Pentagon: that Claude will not be used in autonomous weapons, and that it will not be used in the mass surveillance of US citizens.

Anthropic on Thursday announced it has no intention of acquiescing.

“Threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request,” the company’s CEO said in a statement.

The Pentagon claims that it has no interest in using AI for either purpose and that it needs the freedom to use the technology it is licensing.

“This is a simple, common-sense request that will prevent Anthropic from jeopardizing critical military operations and potentially putting our warfighters at risk,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote on X. “We will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions.”

It all came to a head on Tuesday at a high stakes meeting at the Pentagon between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

While a source familiar with the situation said the meeting was cordial, Pentagon officials did not just threaten to cancel Anthropic’s $200 million contract with them, but also a designation that could threaten their bottom line.

What work did Anthropic do with the Pentagon?

Anthropic’s Claude was the first AI model to work on the military’s classified networks. The company struck a contract worth up to $200 million with the Pentagon last summer. Other major AI companies like OpenAI have only struck deals with the Pentagon on their unclassified networks.

Within Anthropic’s “acceptable use policy” in the contract are prohibitions against the use of Claude in mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.

“This dispute comes at an awkward time because on the one hand, the user base within the Department of Defense loves Anthropic, loves Claude, and says that their restrictions on usage, at least from the conversations that I have been having, have never been triggered,” Gregory Allen, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on Bloomberg Radio.

But the Pentagon doesn’t want to be constrained by a company’s policies. A Pentagon official told CNN: “You can’t lead tactical (operations) by exception,” and “legality is the Pentagon’s responsibility as the end user.”

In the Pentagon’s view, it doesn’t want to be in the middle of a national security situation, needing to ask a company for permission and guardrails to be dropped.

Cutting ties with Anthropic could be a headache for the Pentagon as well, considering they would need to replace any internal systems that use Claude. Though a Pentagon official said Elon Musk’s Grok AI system is “on board with being used in a classified setting,” Grok is not viewed as being as advanced as Claude.

How does this affect Anthropic’s business?

Losing a $200 million contract would not pose an existential threat for Anthropic, which was recently valued at around $380 billion. The bigger risk is that it gets labeled a supply chain risk, which means any company works with the US military would have to prove that they don’t touch anything related to Anthropic in their work with the Pentagon. Much of Anthropic’s success stems from its enterprise contracts with big companies – many of which may have contracts with the Pentagon.

“It means that An

By David Goldman, CNN

(CNN) — Less than a year ago, David Ellison was the head of a small production company. Now, he’s on the verge of becoming the king of Hollywood.

The Paramount Skydance CEO emerged victorious Thursday night in a bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery. It was a prize Paramount desperately needed to survive, and winning was not assured. It still isn’t.

The battle pitted Ellison against Netflix, the industry’s biggest and most important player. President Donald Trump injected himself into the sweepstakes. So did the Saudis. And at one point, the bidding war involved a hostile takeover threat.

But Ellison won. And if the deal is completed – pending shareholder approval and a potentially difficult regulatory review – he will run one of the media industry’s largest movie studios, streaming platforms and television networks.

How we got here

Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, has been a Hollywood producer for two decades, forming Skydance with his billionaire father in 2006 and financing some major franchises, including Star Trek, Mission Impossible and Top Gun. When Paramount – a company in disarray and deep financial distress – started courting potential buyers in 2024, Ellison emerged as the white knight. Skydance completed its Paramount purchase in August 2025.

But the company needs more help than Ellison alone can provide. Paramount+ is an also-ran streaming platform with a few fan-favorite franchises, NFL broadcast rights and a bunch of question marks. The movie studio didn’t land a single film in the top 10 grossing box office releases of 2025. Its cable networks barely make any original content anymore, beyond Comedy Central’s South Park and the Daily Show. CBS’ ratings tumbled 12% in 2025, according to Nielsen.

To battle against legacy media companies like Disney and Netflix – and social media companies like TikTok and YouTube – Paramount needed scale. So Ellison almost immediately started courting Warner Bros. Discovery.

Two months after Skydance bought Paramount, WBD put itself up for sale. But Netflix emerged with WBD’s favored bid.

Netflix appeared to have the upper hand for months: It had plenty of cash to complete the transaction, and Netflix planned to offload CNN and the rest of WBD’s cable assets in a tax-free spinoff before it acquired HBO Max and Warner Bros. WBD continued to insist that Paramount’s offer – even though it was for the entire WBD company – undervalued the assets.

WBD also questioned whether Paramount was truly good for the money, raising questions about the Saudi financing backing part of the deal and whether Larry Ellison would really guarantee that he’d bankroll the acquisition. Even after Paramount alleviated those concerns by letting WBD peer into Ellison’s books and making the Saudis nonvoting, non-board members, WBD still favorited Netflix.

So Paramount threatened a hostile takeover bid, pledging to take the deal directly to shareholders. The tide turned last week, when Paramount said it would revise its offer. Raising its bid by $1 – to $31 a share – Paramount won over WBD’s skeptical board Thursday. Hours later, after Netflix’s CEO left a meeting at the White House, Netflix said – shockingly – it was dropping out of the bidding.

It’s not clear why Netflix dropped out so quickly. It knew Paramount was going to up its bid.

Trump was and remains a major X factor in

CNN

By Hadas Gold, CNN

(CNN) — Anthropic is rejecting the Pentagon’s latest offer to change their contract, saying the changes do not satisfy the company’s concerns that AI could be used for mass surveillance or in fully autonomous weapons.

The Pentagon and Anthropic are at odds over restrictions the company places on the use of Claude, the first AI system to be used in the military’s classified network.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Tuesday that if Anthropic does not allow its AI model to be used “for all lawful purposes,” the Pentagon would cancel Anthropic’s $200 million contract. In addition to the contract cancellation, Anthropic would be deemed a “supply chain risk,” a classification normally reserved for companies connected to foreign adversaries, Pentagon officials said.

Anthropic said in a statement that the Pentagon’s new language was framed as a compromise but “was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will.”

In a lengthy blog post on Thursday, Amodei wrote: “I believe deeply in the existential importance of using AI to defend the United States and other democracies, and to defeat our autocratic adversaries.”

Amodei said Anthropic understands that the Pentagon, “not private companies, makes military decisions.” But “in a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.” He also said use cases like mass surveillance and autonomous weapons are “outside the bounds of what today’s technology can safely and reliably do.”

Anthropic’s two exceptions have not slowed “adoption and use of our models within our armed forces to date,” Amodei added.

Amodei said the Pentagon’s “threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.”

In response, Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s Undersecretary for Research and Engineering who had been part of the negotiations, wrote on X: “It’s a shame that @DarioAmodei is a liar and has a God-complex. He wants nothing more than to try to personally control the US Military and is ok putting our nation’s safety at risk. The @DeptofWar will ALWAYS adhere to the law but not bend to whims of any one for-profit tech company.”

After Amodei’s post published, Anthropic staffers began publicly expressing support for their employer.

“Time and time again over my three year tenure at Anthropic I’ve seen us stand to our values in ways that are often invisible from the outside. This is a clear instance where it is visible,” Trenton Bricken, a member of Anthropic’s technical team for alignment, wrote on X.

“[H]istory is unfolding in front of us it’s now obvious and evident to everyone with eyes to see why anthropic founding was a crucial fork in the timeline, and how catastrophic the counterfactual would’ve been otherwise,” wrote Gian Segato, a data science manager at Anthropic.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc.,

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. (KEYT) - USC-bound senior Charlotte Raisin scored a game-high 6 goals to lead San Marcos past #1 seed Oaks Christian 11-10 in a CIF Division 1 SoCal Regional semifinal.

The #5 seed Royals will play #2 Mater Dei for the SoCal Girls Water Polo Division 1 Championship on Saturday at Long Beach City College at 2 p.m. The Monarchs edged Newport Harbor 9-7 in the other semifinal.

San Marcos built up a 7-3 lead over the home Lions at halftime behind four first half goals from Raisin.

Oaks Christian scored 4 unanswered goals in the third quarter to tie it at 7 before the Royals closed the quarter with 2 more goals from Raisin to lead 9-7.

Lions star and Stanford-bound Mia Fabros scored from outside to cut the deficit to 9-8 with 5:14 remaining.

Next possession the Royals went back up by two goals as junior Lily Bordofsky had a beautiful outside shot that snuck in the near post and it was 10-8 Royals with 4:49 to play. Bordofsky had 2 goals in the game.

Maryam Maamoun scored with 3:11 left and Lyra Gavazzi tied it at 10 with 2:35 remaining.

The Royals came down the pool and grabbed the lead right back. Michigan-bound senior Sophie Yonker took a pass from Shea Estabrook and Yonker delivered what proved to be the game-winning goal with 2:02 left on the clock. Yonker finished with 2 goals.

The Lions had a chance to tie in the closing seconds but could not convert a 6-on-5 advantage as their shot sailed wide over the goal. Royals goalkeeper Bethany King, a Harvard-commit, had 9 blocks in the game.

Oaks Christian ends their season at 22-7 and back-to-back CIF-Southern Section Open Division champions.

The Royals improve to 28-7 and win or lose on Saturday, the game marks the final one for Chuckie Roth as head coach of the girls program.

The post San Marcos edges Oaks Christian to advance to CIF Division 1 Regional Final appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

The post Two Suspects Arrested in Scam Targeting Elderly Santa Barbara Resident appeared first on edhat.