🇺🇸 Axios PM: Trump going long

👋🏻 Hey there, Tuesday crowd. Today's newsletter, edited by Alex Fitzpatrick, is 718 words, a 2½-min. read. Thanks to Sheryl Miller for copy editing.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is giving Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei until Friday night to offer the U.S. military unfettered access to the company's AI model, Axios' Dave Lawler and Maria Curi report exclusively.

• Hegseth told Amodei in a meeting today that the Pentagon will either cut ties with Anthropic and declare it a "supply chain risk," or invoke the Defense Production Act, forcing it to tailor its model to the military's needs.

🚀 Anthropic has said that it's willing to work with the Pentagon — but won't allow its model to be used for mass surveillance of Americans, or to develop weapons that fire without human involvement.

• Anthropic's Claude is the only AI model currently used for the military's most sensitive work.

🥶 A senior Defense official said the meeting was "not warm and fuzzy at all."

• Another source told Axios that it remained "cordial" with no voices raised on either side, and that Hegseth praised Claude.
• Hegseth told Amodei that he won't let any company dictate the terms under which the Pentagon makes operational decisions, or object to individual uses.

An Anthropic spokesperson told Axios: "We continued good-faith conversations about our usage policy to ensure Anthropic can continue to support the government's national security mission in line with what our models can reliably and responsibly do."

🤖 What we're watching: Elon Musk's xAI recently signed a contract to bring its AI model, Grok, into classified military settings.

• The Pentagon is hastening similar talks with OpenAI and Google, sources tell Axios.

Go deeper.

President Trump's State of the Union speech tonight (9 p.m. ET, all major networks) will focus on the economy and affordability — and could become his longest ever.

• Trump said during a White House event yesterday: "It's going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about."

🎙️ Trump's fourth SOTU comes amid rising tension over possible war with Iran, the Supreme Court striking down his tariff plan and the looming midterm elections.

• Trump will use the speech to "sell the public on the economy and unveil new measures meant to lower costs, as Republicans try to address voters' concerns ahead of the midterm elections later this year," The Wall Street Journal reports (gift link).
• The official theme, according to White House officials: "America at 250: Strong, Prosperous and Respected."
• Erika Kirk will be one of Trump's special guests for the address.

Trump spoke an estimated 9,906 words — 100 minutes — during his record-breaking 2025 address to Congress, Axios' Josephine Walker reports.

• The previous record holder: President Clinton, who spoke for over 89 minutes in 2000.

Go deeper ... White House SOTU channel.

The impact.

Every child deserves a home. Binti uses Claude, built by Anthropic, to save social workers up to 75% of time per home study visit, so they can spend more time with children and families.

Today, Binti supports 49% of children in care nationwide.

Manhattan's Lower East Side and the Financial District after a blizzard that brought 19.7 inches of snow to Central Park.

• Providence, R.I., got 33 inches — a record by a wide margin.

1. 🇺🇦 Today is the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said today that Russia has not "broken Ukrainians" nor triumphed in its war. Go deeper.
2. 💰 Savannah Guthrie's family is now offering up to $1 million for info leading to the recovery of her mother, Nancy, who's been missing for nearly a month since being abducted from her Arizona home. Savannah says in a new video plea: "Someone knows how to find our mom and bring her home." Get the latest.
3. 🍿 Warner Bros. Discovery received a revised bid from Paramount Skydance, but didn't specify the terms. Netflix can now match or one-up Paramount's offer. Go deeper.

"The Axios Show" will return for a second season in March, reflecting our growing ambitions on the video front, The Wrap reports.

• The new season will feature Axios journalists in one-on-one conversations with newsmakers from politics, tech, business and more.

Axios CEO Jim VandeHei told The Wrap: "It's really about getting good guests and really smart interviewers, like our reporters, to be able to take what are typically kind of boring interviews and make them much more electric."

• 📺 "Ask people the questions other people would want to ask and have an aggressive but respectful conversation, as opposed to your kind of milquetoast, typical TV interview."

Go deeper ... Subscribe on YouTube.

Life-saving care.

Fragmented data makes it hard to find critical interventions. Qualified Health used Claude, built by Anthropic, to screen over 1 million heart failure patients in the University of Texas Health System. Hospitals digitized records years ago.

Claude makes them usable.

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