By Jessica Dorsey
Publication Date: 2026-02-26 07:51:00
(Jessica Dorsey is Assistant Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Utrecht University; Elke Schwarz is Professor of Political Theory at Queen Mary University London; Ingvild Bode is Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern Denmark; Zena Assaad is an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering, Australian National University; And Neil Renic is a lecturer in ethics at the University of New South Wales. The authors are all members of the Independent advisory board for legal opinions of the Responsible by Design Institute.)
Just this week, a contract dispute between the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the AI company Anthropic escalated into a public showdown over whether and which legal, security and ethical guardrails should restrict the military use of artificial intelligence.
At the center of the controversy is Claude, Anthropic’s flagship model. Anthropic and the Department of Defense have reportedly been negotiating the terms of…