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A dispute between AI company Anthropic and the Pentagon over how the military can use the companys technology has now gone public. Amid tense negotiations, Anthropic has reportedly called for limits on two key applications: mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. The Defense Department, which Trump renamed the Department of War last year, wants the freedom to use the technology without those restrictions. Caught in the middle is Palantir. The defense contractor provides the secure cloud infrastructure that allows the military to use Anthropics Claude model, but it has stayed quiet as tensions escalate. Thats even as the Pentagon, per Axios, threatens to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk, a move that could force Palantir to cut ties with one of its most important AI partners. The threat may be a negotiating tactic. But if carried out, it would have sweeping consequences, potentially barring not just Anthropic but its customers from government work. “That would just mean that the vast majority of companies that now use [Claude] in order to make themselves more effective would all of a sudden be ineligible for working for the government, says Alex Bores, a former Palantir employee who is now running for Congress in New York’s 12th district. It would be horribly hamstringing our government’s ability to get things done. (Palantir did not respond to a request for comment.) Alex Bores [Photo: John Nacion/Variety via Getty Images] Anthropic and the Pentagons war of words Anthropic has, until now, maintained close ties with the military. Claude was the first frontier AI model deployed on classified Pentagon networks. Last summer, the Defense Department awarded Anthropic a $200 million contract, and the companys technology was even used in the recent U.S. operation to capture Nicolas Maduro, the Wall Street Journal reported this week. But the company’s commitment to certain AI safety principles has irked some people in President Donald Trump’s orbit. (Katie Miller, Stephen Millers wife, has publicly accused the company of liberal bias and criticized its commitment to democratic values.) Unlike rivals xAI and OpenAI, both of which also also have Defense Department contracts, Anthropic is now locked in a fight with the Pentagon that playing out in public. “Anthropic is committed to using frontier AI in support of US national security. Thats why we were the first frontier AI company to put our models on classified networks and the first to provide customized models for national security customers, a company spokesperson tells Fast Company. Claude is used for a wide variety of intelligence-related use cases across the government, including the DoW, in line with our Usage Policy. We are having productive conversations, in good faith, with DoW on how to continue that work and get these complex issues right.” The Pentagon has taken a more confrontational tone. Agency officials are reviewing their relationship with Anthropic and have suggested that other contractors may also be required to stop working with the company. The Department of Wars relationship with Anthropic is being reviewed, Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell tells Fast Company. “Our nation requires that our partners be willing to help our warfighters win in any fight.” (Parnell did not respond to a request for clarification regarding specific concerns about autonomous weapons or surveillance.) Palantir, the middleman Palantir occupies a critical position in this ecosystem. A longtime government software provider, it has met a bevy of requirements allowing it to offer cloud services to support classified work. And, as is typical in the dizzying world of government technology contracting, Palantir also has key partnerships with Anthropic. Two years ago, the companies partnered to bring Anthropics technology to the government, a move that made Claude available to defense and intelligence services through Amazon Web Services. Last April, Anthropic joined Palantirs FedStart program, which expanded the availability of its technology to government customers through Google Cloud. Government tech contracting is a wonky business, but companies that want to sell software to the government typically need to work with a certified cloud provider like Palantir, or obtain certification themselves. If youve never operated in a classified environment before, you essentially need a vehicle, explains Varoon Mathur, who worked on AI in the Biden administration. Palantir is a defense contractor with deep operational integration. Anthropic is an AI model provider trying to access that ecosystem. Growing tensions over how the Defense Department might use Claude also raise questions about how much visibility companies like Palantir and Anthropic have into the governments use of their tools. Anthropic and OpenAI offer Zero Data Retention usage, where they dont store the asks made of their AI, notes Steven Adler, a former OpenAI employee and AI safety expert tells Fast Company. Naturally this makes it harder to enforce possible violations of their terms. A person familiar with the matter said Anthropic does have insight into how its technology is used, regardless of whether its in a classifiedenvironment, and that the company is confident its partners and users have been deploying the tech in line with its policies. In its reporting, the Wall Street Journal cited people familiar with the matter who said an Anthropic employee did reach out to Palantir to ask about Claudes use in the Maduro operation, though Anthropic denied to that outlet that it had spoken with Palantir beyond technical discussions. The Anthropic spokesperson tells Fast Company that the company cannot comment on its technologys use in specific military operations, but said it work[s] closely with our partners to ensure compliance.” More broadly, the standoff risks chilling relationships between Silicon Valley and Washington at a moment when the government is pushing to adopt AI more aggressively. To state basically that it’s our way or the highway, and if you try to put any restrictions, we will not just not sign a contract, but go after your business, is a massive red flag for any company to even think about wanting to engage in government contracting, says Bores.
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From breathtaking jumps to mesmerizing spins, figure skating is one of the most popular sports at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026. In a survey, 56% of 1,000 Americans who planned on watching the winter Olympics said they would be tuning in to watch figure skating, according to market research from Reviews.com. And all eyes are on the American trio of female skaters known as the ‘Blade Angels,’ on Tuesday with the start of the women’s short program. Amber Glenn, Alysa Liu, and Isabeau Levito are hoping to take home the gold in individual women’s figure skating, something the U.S. women’s team has not done since 2006. Only the top 24 women skaters in the women’s short program will advance to the compete in the free skate final on Thursday. Here’s what to know. Who are the ‘Blade Angels’? The “Blade Angels” as they call themselves, are three U.S. women’s single figure skaters representing Team USA in this year’s winter Olympics: Amber Glenn, Alysa Liu, and Isabeau Levito. They have captivated the nation not only with their skating, but their friendship, and lively, non-conformist, authentic personalities. Glenn is the first openly LGBTQ+ woman to compete in womens figure skating at the Winter Olympics. Their bravery and impressive skills have also garnered attention from celebrities like Madonnawho sent Glenn a video saying “Go get that gold”and Taylor Swift, who introduced them in an Olympic video. The three have an impressive amount of wins among them: Liu is the 2025 World Figure Skating Champion, Glenn a three-time skating champion, and Levito is the 2024 world silver medalist. “I haven’t seen a U.S. women’s team this strong in 20 years,” Olympic gold medalist and commentator Tara Lipinski told NBC Olympics. What’s the history of Olympic figure skating? Figure skating was first introduced in the 1908 Summer Olympics, but didn’t become part of the winter games until 1924. From early on, it was one of the first Olympic sports with a female category, and actually the only winter Olympic sport for women until 1936. In the years since the 1950s, the U.S. women’s team has dominated the sport, taking home the gold again and againfrom Tenley Albright, who was the first woman to win at the 1956 Cortina dAmpezzo Games, to more recently, Michelle Kwan and Kristi Yamaguchi.
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Reality Check: Inside Americas Next Top Model doesnt begin in 2003, when Americas Next Top Model premiered and took television by storm. It doesnt begin in the 1990s, when eventual host Tyra Banks rose to superstardom in the modeling industry. Instead, it begins in 2020, when the pandemic led a new generation to binge early-aughts reality TV, this time watching with a modern lensand, naturally, tearing it to shreds on TikTok. From there, Netflixs newest docuseries rewinds to tell the full story of Americas Next Top Model, from its pre-production through its 24 scandalous cycles and into its modern-day legacy, featuring interviews with contestants, producers, and judges, including Banks herself. Reality Check leans into the same trend that inspired its creation: reexamining years-old media, like a cult classic reality TV show, with a critical eye. What viewers casually did on TikTok in 2020, Reality Check does with finesse. It dissects the surface-level controversies fans already know about, from body shaming to the show’s infamous race-swapping photoshoot (and its oft-forgotten sequel four years later). Shandi Sullivan [Photo: Netflix] It also brings new revelations that cast the series in an even darker light, like Cycle 2 contestant Shandi Sullivan alleging that she was sexually assaulted on camera, with production doing nothing to step in or help her. Instead, the docuseries details Top Model portraying the incident as Sullivan cheating on her boyfriend, even filming her tearful call home to break the news to him. Through it all, Banks dodges accountability, even teasing that the show could come back for a 25th cycle. Reality Check is the latest entry in a trend of exposé documentaries around TV that many young adults watched in their childhoods, cashing in on nostalgia by peddling its opposite. In 2024, Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV dove into the controversies surrounding Nickelodeon series, particularly those created under Dan Schneiders tenure as a producer and showrunner. (That series built on the fervor generated by Jennette McCurdys best-selling 2022 memoir Im Glad My Mom Died, which included stories from her time starring in iCarly and Sam & Cat.) Also in 2024, VICE released Dark Side of Reality TV, a 10-part docuseries with each episode focusing on the behind-the-scenes truth of a different reality TV show, including Toddlers & Tiaras, Hells Kitchen, Survivor, andyesAmericas Next Top Model. Even as the aesthetics of 2000s pop culture are celebrated and embraced, their actual pop culture artifacts are subject to renewed criticism. Everyone loves to binge-watch. Everyone loves to hate-watch. Documentaries like Reality Check provide the perfect crossover.
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