Behind my first TIME cover
Anthropic's race to automate research. And its fight with the Pentagon.
Last month, I spent three days inside Anthropic’s San Francisco headquarters. Claude’s maker had vaulted from enthusiast brand to Superbowl ad-running rockstar. But how was it using AI to accelerate the development of Claude’s more powerful successors? Automating AI R&D, it seemed, could give early movers a huge lead in the AI race. It is also the moment in sci-fi when things start going wrong.
Through nearly a dozen interviews with executives and researchers, I found a company grappling with a flywheel it helped create: Claude is now accelerating the research that builds the next Claude — with profound implications for jobs, safety, and who gets to set the rules.
That last question exploded into public view when the Department of War declared Anthropic a “supply chain risk” — a designation never before levelled at an American company. Anthropic was the AI company most deeply embedded in the military and reportedly used to analyze intelligence in Venezuela and Iran. But a contractual dispute between Anthropic and the Department that had been brewing for months had boiled over.
As history transpired beneath our feet, my colleague Billy Perrigo and I hit the phones, speaking with Department of Defense officials, and multiple people familiar with both sides of the negotiations.
The War for AI, my first TIME cover story, provides a look inside what happened as Anthropic’s commercial breakout collided with competition and government power — and asks what it means for the future.
Acknowledgements:
A huge thank you to Billy, whom with a co-wrote this story. Thanks to my talented editors Dayana Sarkisova and Alex Altman. To Leslie dickstein and Simmone Shah for fact-checking. To Klawe Rzeczy for the beautiful illustrations on the print edition. And thank you to Danielle Ghiglieri from Anthropic for a willingness to provide deep access and never shying away from the hard questions.
Well done Harry - Proud of you!!