Anthropic Plays the Long Game. Big Law Plays Chicken.
What Big Law can learn from an AI company about standing up to Trump.
WHO WOULD HAVE THUNK I’d be singing the praises of an AI enterprise? But let’s hear it for Anthropic!
It’s doing something extraordinary: standing up to the supreme bully – in sharp contrast to the actions of corporate America and Big Law.
The backstory is this: Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, pissed off the Trump administration when he insisted on setting limits on how the Pentagon uses the company’s technology. Specifically, he said Anthropic’s AI model Claude should not be used for mass domestic surveillance or to power fully autonomous weapons – kill decisions made by machines, without human oversight. Reasonable positions, one might think.
The Pentagon disagreed. Almost overnight, Anthropic was transformed from essential Defense Department partner to enemy of the state. President Trump banned all American federal agencies from using Anthropic, while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated it a “supply-chain risk.” As The Bulwark noted, the Pentagon now officially trusts Anthropic less than it does Chinese AI firms like DeepSeek.
Trump and Hegseth wasted no time in bashing Anthropic. Trump called it a collection of “radical left,” “out-of-control” operators. And Hegseth slammed Anthropic’s “defective altruism” and “corporate virtue-signaling,” while lambasting the company for not being “more patriotic.”
It was all wholly predictable. But, hey, give Trump credit for not calling Amodei “low-IQ” or “moron” — his default invectives.
Anthropic’s response to this barrage of attacks? It sued.
Filing two lawsuits – one in U.S. District Court in California, one in the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. – Anthropic alleged that the government’s moves amounted to an “unlawful campaign of retaliation” and that its “reputation and core First Amendment freedoms are under attack.”
For Anthropic, there’s a lot at stake. Besides losing its $200 million contract with the Pentagon and access to firms in the defense supply chain, Anthropic risks losing its competitive edge at a critical juncture for the AI industry.
Picking a public fight with the United States of America – especially this administration – entails a high tolerance for risk. And guts. But guess what? It’s also savvy business strategy.
Instead of trying to appease a hostile, increasingly overreaching government, Anthropic is drawing lines in the sand. Instead of doing what’s quick and easy, it’s weighing the price of surrender.
As I watch Amodei publicly take on Trump, Hegseth, and the U.S. government, I couldn’t help but think about the Capitulating Nine1 – those eminent law firms that caved to Trump, greatly compromising the integrity of the legal profession.
Anthropic clearly made a different calculation. What it got right is what Big Law got wrong: the long game.
“I think Anthropic is making a very smart bet on being more ethical than other AI firms, which will likely pay off over the long term,” Alison Taylor, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, tells me.
For starters, Anthropic is emerging as the AI company with a conscience – no small feat for a sector known for its amorality and greed. It’s distinguishing itself from its top competitors – notably Sam Altman’s OpenAI, which signed a new agreement with the Defense Department hours after Anthropic’s negotiations collapsed. (After making the deal, Altman tweeted obsequiously: “In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome.”)
In the public opinion wars, Anthropic is the clear winner. That said, let’s not go overboard in lauding Anthropic’s moral superiority – after all, it’s not averse to working for the Pentagon. Yet, its willingness to stand up to the Trump regime clearly feeds a greater societal hunger.
The public rallied to Anthropic. The day after the Pentagon announced it was terminating its contract with Anthropic, the Claude app surpassed OpenAI’s ChatGPT in the iPhone App Store for the first time. More than a million people are reportedly signing up for Claude every day.
Principled defiance, it turns out, is not bad for business.
Even those supposedly amoral souls of high tech seem moved to take action. More than 30 employees from OpenAI and Google DeepMind, including Google’s chief scientist Jeff Dean, filed an amicus brief in support of Anthropic, warning that the Pentagon’s blacklist threatens to damage the entire American AI industry.
And just a few days ago, Microsoft filed a separate friend-of-the-court brief in support of Anthropic. It’s a “remarkable act,” reports the New York Times, because Microsoft, which holds billions of dollars worth of federal contracts, “has more to lose from White House retaliation than almost any company in Silicon Valley.”
“There is broad appetite for collective action to drive more responsible AI in defense,” writes Taylor in her ”Higher Ground” Substack. “Meanwhile, most big tech CEOs are unable to see beyond their own self-interest, which should ultimately play to Anthropic’s advantage.”
Which takes us back to Big Law and its inability to see beyond the moment. Like Anthropic, the firms that capitulated to this administration must have known deep down that they would eventually prevail in a court of law against Trump’s retaliatory actions. Indeed, the four firms that stood up to Trump – Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey – have proven as much by consistently winning in court. (Fittingly, WilmerHale, one of the four, is now representing Anthropic in its lawsuit against the government.)
But the Capitulating Nine couldn’t wait for justice to run its course. The idea of any interruption to their profit flow was simply unacceptable to their business model.
But you have to appreciate the irony. Law firms exist to defend the rule of law – it’s their raison d’être. Yet when confronted with political intimidation, some of the most celebrated firms in our nation surrendered with barely a whisper of resistance. Meanwhile, an AI company – a feral child in a feral industry – is the one willing to litigate for principle.
Ironic, too, that the brilliant partners who run the country’s largest firms pride themselves on their strategic acumen. Yet when confronted with a moment that required long-term thinking and moral clarity, they’re largely failing. They’re too busy with more pedestrian concerns – their profits per partner and their rankings – than with any higher obligation to the profession or the republic. That kind of thinking may protect this year’s profits. But it’s not the stuff of enduring institutions.
So permit me to offer this advice to the august leaders of Big Law: next time you face a crisis, consider consulting AI. I’ve heard that Claude is excellent at long term strategy.
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It's not completely accurate to say that Anthropic has a conscience when you consider its $1.5 billion copyright settlement for the unauthorized use of books to train its AI models. Piracy is not fair -- https://authorsguild.org/advocacy/artificial-intelligence/what-authors-need-to-know-about-the-anthropic-settlement/