Pentagon tech chief says disruption from Anthropic removal ‘minimal’ so far; sees ‘new primes’ coming

Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael said today that as the Defense Department begins a six-month phase-out of Anthropic’s artificial intelligence technology from DOD agency capabilities, other frontier AI companies have so far been able to replace it without issue. The initial problem, Michael told attendees at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference today, was that before July 2025 — when DOD awarded Anthropic and three other frontier AI firms contracts worth up to $200 million each — the department relied…