The Trump administration is quietly advancing a sweeping new contracting clause that would empower federal officials to force artificial intelligence companies to scrap safety protocols, eliminate privacy protections, and follow other Trump directives as a condition of doing business with the government, according to draft text reviewed by the Lever.
The new proposal comes just as the Trump administration faces off in court against the major AI company and military contractor Anthropic, which has objected to government directives mandating the use of its algorithms for mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.
The proposed government-wide change to procurement policy would require all artificial intelligence vendors to make their technology available to federal agencies “for any lawful government purpose” — even those that the companies object to or that their systems are engineered to prevent. This would enshrine the same demand that the Pentagon is contesting in court in its ongoing battle against Anthropic.
Under the new guidance, this “key portion” of the Anthropic contract under dispute would become “a required standard clause for all government contracts and solicitations for any AI systems,” said Quinn Anex-Ries, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group that has intervened in the Anthropic case.
The language is so broad that even a former Trump official who wrote the administration’s policy proposal for artificial intelligence, known as the AI Action Plan, called the provision legally “unworkable” in a public comment.
The clause was initially given only a two-week comment period — a “very short window,” according to one law firm tracking the proposal, due to the use of a nontraditional rulemaking process. Officials extended the comment period this week at the AI industry’s request.
Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment.
On March 6, the General…
Auteur: Luke Goldstein
