New Delhi, April 27 -- Pete Hegseth, America's secretary of war, is taking a my-way-or-the-highway approach to the use of artificial intelligence on the battlefield. On February 24th he gave an ultimatum to Anthropic, maker of the Claude family of models: if it did not agree to terms set by the Pentagon on usage of its AI for military purposes, it would face severe penalties. It is not the first time this administration has picked a fight with a company that fails to follow its orders. But Anthropic has leverage.

The showdown took place during a meeting at the Pentagon between Mr Hegseth and Dario Amodei, Anthropic's boss. Among AI labs, Anthropic was the first to do classified work for the Department of War (DoW), via a partnership with...