Sam Altman Responds to U.S. War Department's Choice of OpenAI Over Anthropic: Possibly Due to Divergence in Operational Control Demands

Odaily News OpenAI founder Sam Altman initiated an AMA on platform X to address the recent collaboration with the U.S. War Department. He disclosed that Anthropic and the U.S. War Department were once "very close to reaching an agreement," and for most of the negotiation period, both sides had a strong desire to cooperate. However, in a highly tense negotiation environment, the situation can deteriorate rapidly, which may have been one of the key reasons the deal ultimately did not materialize. Regarding safety philosophy, OpenAI adopts a "layered approach" to safety, including building a safety technology stack, deploying Frontier Deployment Engineers (FDE), involving safety researchers in projects, delivering via cloud deployment, and working directly with the U.S. War Department. Compared to setting specific prohibitive clauses in contracts, Anthropic seems to place more emphasis on explicit contractual restrictions, while OpenAI prefers to rely on the applicable legal framework and uses technical safety measures as the core safeguard. However, other companies may hold different positions on this. Anthropic might desire more operational-level control in the partnership, which could also be one of the reasons for the divergence in their approaches.