OpenAI Admits Pentagon Deal Was Rushed as Details of Agreement Emerge
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has admitted that the company's recently announced deal with the Department of Defense was "definitely rushed" and that "the optics don't look good." The admission comes as the company faces intense scrutiny over the agreement, which was struck just days after rival Anthropic's negotiations with the Pentagon collapsed.
The deal, announced shortly after President Trump directed federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's technology, allows OpenAI's models to be deployed in classified environments. OpenAI published a detailed blog post outlining three areas where its models cannot be used: mass domestic surveillance, autonomous weapon systems, and high-stakes automated decisions such as social credit systems.
OpenAI emphasized that its approach goes beyond simple usage policies. The company retains full control over its safety stack, deploys exclusively via cloud, keeps cleared OpenAI personnel in the loop, and maintains strong contractual protections. "We don't know why Anthropic could not reach this deal, and we hope that they and more labs will consider it," the company stated.
However, critics have raised concerns about the agreement's fine print. Techdirt's Mike Masnick pointed out that the deal references Executive Order 12333 for data collection compliance, which he described as the mechanism the NSA uses to conduct domestic surveillance by tapping communications outside U.S. borders.
OpenAI's head of national security partnerships, Katrina Mulligan, pushed back on these concerns, arguing that deployment architecture matters more than contract language. By limiting deployment to cloud API access, OpenAI says it can ensure models cannot be integrated directly into weapons systems, sensors, or operational hardware.
The backlash has been significant enough that Anthropic's Claude overtook ChatGPT in Apple's App Store rankings over the weekend, suggesting public sentiment may be shifting in favor of the company that walked away from the Pentagon deal.
