Who Decides How America Uses AI in War? is a Stanford HAI News faculty roundtable published in Spring 2026, in the aftermath of the Anthropic-Pentagon standoff. It collects responses from five Stanford HAI faculty and fellows — including Curt Langlotz, Megan Pinto, and Allison Berke — to the question of who should set the rules for the use of artificial intelligence in defense.
Author: Stanford HAI faculty roundtable (Curt Langlotz, Megan Pinto, Allison Berke, plus two others) Publication: Stanford HAI News Date: Spring 2026 (post Anthropic-Pentagon standoff) URL: https://hai.stanford.edu/news/who-decides-how-america-uses-ai-in-war
Background and framing
The roundtable responds to the Anthropic-Pentagon standoff and the broader procurement controversy. According to the framing, Anthropic was reportedly excluded from government contracts over its restrictions on domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, and the Department of Defense (DoD) subsequently contracted with OpenAI for use in classified settings. The piece organizes the faculty responses around five questions: what is the appropriate use of AI in defense, what guardrails should apply, who sets the rules, and how those rules are enforced.
Summary of positions
Curt Langlotz: pluralism and better terminology
Curt Langlotz argues that "AI companies shouldn't dictate defense policy — but nor should they be punished for their values," and holds that pluralism across commercial AI value systems is healthy and that procurement should be decided on best value. He contends that the standoff turns on poorly defined terminology: "mass surveillance" and "fully autonomous" lack stable definitions even at the regulatory level, and public understanding of "mass surveillance" is broader than the federal regulatory interpretation. Drawing a medicine analogy, he asks, "Is a human meaningfully in the loop when a fighter pilot can invoke an autopilot that enables a jet to make split-second maneuvering and targeting decisions on its own?" He also calls for fairness-and-accuracy guarantees in AI systems that could falsely target individuals.
Additional faculty positions
The source contains four additional faculty positions beyond Langlotz's, which can be excerpted as specific cases arise.
Reception and positioning
The roundtable functions as an academic-pluralism perspective situated between the framing of Anthropic and Alignment (Thompson), which argues that the US should dominate Anthropic, and Anthropic's own position that it maintains its red lines. It is a companion to that essay and to The AI Grand Bargain (Buchanan/Collins).
Provenance
Published by Stanford HAI News in Spring 2026 (dated 2026-03), following the Anthropic-Pentagon standoff. Full text at https://hai.stanford.edu/news/who-decides-how-america-uses-ai-in-war.
Relationships
- depends-on: Stanford HAI
- related: Anthropic v. United States (Pentagon ban challenge)
- related: Anthropic and Alignment — Ben Thompson (Stratechery, March 2026)
- related: AI and National Security
- related: AI and Surveillance
- related: Curt Langlotz
- related: DOD — Department of Defense (AI Deployer)
- complements: The AI Grand Bargain — Ben Buchanan and Tantum Collins (Foreign Affairs, October 2025)