In its fight with the Pentagon, Anthropic confronts one of the biggest crises of its five-year existence

AI company Anthropic is facing perhaps the biggest crisis in its five-year existence as it stares down a Friday deadline to remove restrictions on how the U.S. Department of War can use its technology or face the possibility that the Pentagon will take action that could cripple its business.

Pete Hegseth, the U.S. secretary of war, has demanded that Anthropic remove restrictions it currently stipulates in its contracts that prohibit its AI models being used for mass surveillance or from...