---
title: "The trap Anthropic built for itself"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-trap-anthropic-built-for-itself-p4mvc21j7
source_url: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/28/the-trap-anthropic-built-for-itself/
type: article
source: "TechCrunch"
published: 2026-03-01T00:10:32.208Z
updated: 2026-03-01T00:13:12.793Z
tags: ["ai", "openai", "anthropic", "ai-safety", "ai-regulation"]
reading_time: 11
upvotes: 1
comments: 0
language: en
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# The trap Anthropic built for itself

**[TechCrunch](https://daily.dev/sources/tc)** · 11 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Max Tegmark, MIT physicist and AI safety advocate, argues that Anthropic's Pentagon blacklisting is a self-inflicted wound. After the Trump administration invoked a national security law to bar Anthropic from defense contracts — because the company refused to enable mass surveillance or autonomous lethal drones — Tegmark contends that Anthropic and its peers (OpenAI, Google DeepMind, xAI) created this regulatory vacuum by lobbying against binding AI regulation for years. He argues that by insisting on self-governance rather than supporting enforceable laws, these companies left themselves with no legal protections when the government came calling. Tegmark also addresses the China race argument, AGI timelines (citing GPT-4 at 27% and GPT-5 at 57% of his AGI definition), and calls for treating AI companies like any other regulated industry requiring clinical-trial-style safety demonstrations before releasing powerful systems.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/28/the-trap-anthropic-built-for-itself/>

## Similar posts on daily.dev

- [MY TAKE: The Pentagon punished Anthropic for red lines it accepted from OpenAI hours later](https://daily.dev/posts/my-take-the-pentagon-punished-anthropic-for-red-lines-it-accepted-from-openai-hours-later-o74tphfvu) · Security Boulevard · 22 upvotes · 4 comments
- [The guardrail war: what America's AI purge means for the rest of us](https://daily.dev/posts/the-guardrail-war-what-america-s-ai-purge-means-for-the-rest-of-us-uhpoxh0c5) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments
- [Schneier on Security](https://daily.dev/posts/schneier-on-security-xesuu91xc) · Schneier on Security · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

---

Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#openai](https://daily.dev/tags/openai), [#anthropic](https://daily.dev/tags/anthropic), [#ai-safety](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-safety), [#ai-regulation](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-regulation)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-trap-anthropic-built-for-itself-p4mvc21j7)