From Sen. Mark Warner:
WARNER CONDEMNS PENTAGON PRESSURE CAMPAIGN AND RAISES CONCERNS ABOUT POLITICIZED DIRECTIVE TARGETING ANTHROPIC
~ Vice Chairman warns sweeping directive and rhetoric risk undermining defense readiness, private-sector partnerships, and safeguards around AI use in national security ~
WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, issued the following statement regarding recent actions and statements by the administration targeting a leading AI company:
“As one of Congress’ most vocal proponents for the modernization of IC and DoD missions with transformative technology, I have been actively working for years to ensure that the U.S has the compute, models, and talent to seize opportunities provided by AI. At the same time, the intelligence committees have consistently sought – on a bipartisan basis, and across administrations – to ensure that AI usage in the national security context meets rigorous, consistent, and transparent standards for AI governance, particularly in contexts in which AI usage has a significant potential impact on Americans’ core rights or results in the loss of human life.
“The president’s directive to halt the use of a leading American AI company across the federal government, combined with inflammatory rhetoric attacking that company, raises serious concerns about whether national security decisions are being driven by careful analysis or political considerations. President Trump and Secretary Hegseth’s efforts to intimidate and disparage a leading American company – potentially as the pretext to steer contracts to a preferred vendor whose model a number of federal agencies have already identified as a reliability, safety, and security threat – pose an enormous risk to U.S. defense readiness and the willingness of the U.S. private sector and academia to work with the IC and DoD, consistent with their own values and legal ethics. Indeed, Secretary Hegseth’s loud insistence on the sufficiency of an ‘all lawful purposes’ standard provides cold comfort against the backdrop of Pentagon leadership that has routinely sidelined career military attorneys and challenged longstanding norms and rules regarding lethal force.”
