OpenAI’s Altman: Our rushed deal with the Pentagon “looked opportunistic and sloppy”

The fallout from Anthropic’s messy breakup with the US government, and OpenAI’s hasty deal to take its place, is still settling across the AI industry.

Last night, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared an internal post on X in which he expressed some regrets about how the deal came to be as well as some new additions to the agreement.

The new conditions centered around the mass surveillance of Americans, one of the key issues that blew up Anthropic’s deal with the Pentagon.

Altman said they added language to clarify that, in accordance with the Fourth Amendment and laws already on the books, “the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals.” The rub is that the scale and reach of data collection today, in pretty much every corner of our life, lets anyone — including the government — buy massive amounts of sensitive data that can be used for surveillance without getting a warrant.

Altman acknowledges this gaping loophole in personal privacy protections, and also included this language:

“For the avoidance of doubt, the Department understands this limitation to prohibit deliberate tracking, surveillance, or monitoring of U.S. persons or nationals, including through the procurement or use of commercially acquired personal or identifiable information.”

This exact issue is one that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei flagged in a post last week as he outlined the company’s red lines surrounding the government’s use of its AI tools.

Altman also acknowledged the bad optics surrounding the last-minute deal as the Trump administration attacked Anthropic. Altman said they shouldn’t have rushed to do the deal, saying, “It just looked opportunistic and sloppy.”

But where does this leave things? It seems that Altman was able to get the same deal that Anthropic was fighting for. Meanwhile, Anthropic faces a potential catastrophic blacklisting that could cripple countless partnerships and investments.

In the post, Altman said he told the Pentagon that Anthropic should not be designated as a “supply chain risk,” and hoped that it would be offered the same deal that OpenAI ended up with.