Just wonderful.
OpenAI Strikes Deal to Deploy AI on the Pentagon's Classified Network
February 28, 2026
Late Friday night, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on X that the company has reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of War to deploy its AI models on classified cloud networks — a significant milestone in the relationship between Silicon Valley and the American military.
"Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network. In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome."
— Sam Altman (@sama)
The Safety Red Lines
Altman laid out the guardrails OpenAI negotiated into the agreement. Two principles sit at the center of the deal:
- No domestic mass surveillance.
- Human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems.
In Altman's words:
"Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The department agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement."
Technical Controls
OpenAI also committed to building technical safeguards around the deployment. The company will deploy field engineers and operate exclusively on cloud networks — not embedded in weapons or battlefield hardware.
"We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should."
A Call to the Industry
Perhaps the most notable part of the thread was Altman's appeal to broaden the arrangement across the AI industry:
"We are asking the DoW to offer these same terms to all AI companies."
Altman expressed a desire for "things to de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements" — a pointed reference to the ongoing standoff between the Department of War and Anthropic, which has faced pressure over restrictions it places on military use of its Claude models.
Why This Matters
This deal lands at a fraught moment. The Pentagon — recently rebranded as the Department of War — has been publicly clashing with Anthropic over AI deployment terms, with reports of supply-chain pressure being used as leverage. OpenAI stepping in with a deal that claims to preserve safety red lines while giving the military access to frontier AI models sets a template that other companies will inevitably be measured against.
The core question remains: can you deploy the world's most capable AI inside classified military networks and still maintain meaningful safety boundaries? OpenAI is betting the answer is yes. The rest of the industry — and the public — will be watching closely.