New Delhi, Feb. 25 -- US defence secretary Pete Hegseth has issued a stark ultimatum to Anthropic, warning the AI company it faces exclusion from the Pentagon's supply chain unless it agrees by Friday to permit its technology to be used in "all lawful military applications."

According to the Financial Times, Hegseth summoned Anthropic chief Dario Amodei to the Pentagon on Tuesday to press the issue, threatening to cut the company out of the defence supply chain or invoke the Defence Production Act to compel cooperation.

The standoff stems from a disagreement over conditional access to Anthropic's Claude AI models. FT reports that Anthropic has resisted full Pentagon demands for unrestricted use - including for domains like mass domestic...