Trump and Anthropic CEO Dine as Pentagon Dispute Continues

President Donald Trump had dinner Sunday night with Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei, their first one-on-one meeting, as a federal appeals court ruling left in place the Pentagon’s designation of Anthropic as a supply-chain risk. The meeting’s outcome and any effect on government policy were not reported. Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews that he would have dinner with Amodei after returning from Chicago. The private meeting followed months of disagreement between the administration and Anthropic over the company’s objections to certain military uses of its artificial intelligence models. The appeals court ruling upheld the Pentagon’s designation, allowing the Defense Department to continue excluding Anthropic’s models from its systems. The decision came two days before the dinner, according to the reports. Anthropic had challenged the designation in court. The dispute stems from Anthropic’s opposition to using its models for fully autonomous weapons and domestic mass surveillance. The Trump administration has emphasized rapid AI development and the need for the United States to compete with China.