Sam Altman just admitted he was "sloppy" and "opportunistic" securing a $200M Pentagon AI contract. The language is being amended. What the contract already permits is not. Those permissions are being stress tested in live combat over Iran right now.
I've built bridges and managed nine-figure infrastructure contracts for government agencies across the NYC metro area. The first thing every experienced contractor learns is that silence in a contract is not neutrality. Agencies don't leave ambiguity in specs by accident. They leave it on purpose.
OpenAI signed a national security contract with language Altman now admits was careless. Government agencies have entire legal teams dedicated to contract language. A CEO focused on closing a $110 billion funding round the same week was not reading the fine print.
The U.S. military is now running AI targeting systems processing strike decisions faster than human commanders can review them. Anthropic refused to remove human oversight conditions from their contract. OpenAI removed them to close the deal.
The conditions Anthropic refused to remove are now central to how AI is being used in live combat. The military used Anthropic for strike planning in Iran even after the contract dispute. The question of who sets the boundaries on autonomous targeting - the vendor or the Pentagon - remains unanswered.
