By Matt Rowley
Publication Date: 2026-05-04 23:40:00
When Anthropic rejected the Pentagon’s demand for unrestricted military use of its AI models in February 2026 – and was promptly labeled a “supply chain risk to national security” – it seemed an unusually principled stance for a company of its size. A $380 billion business that says no to the US military and accepts the consequences.
It is actually a well-trodden path in technology. Uber launched illegally in Australia in 2012, accepting criminal charges and hostility from regulators as the cost of building a customer base large enough to force a change in the law. Facebook ignored data protection regulators in several jurisdictions for a decade, counting on the fact that a large enough user base would eventually force governments to accept the platform rather than ban it.
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