“A battle between good and evil has begun in Silicon Valley.”

On the 3rd (local time), the U.S. daily the Wall Street Journal used this expression regarding the recent situation involving OpenAI and Anthropic, developers of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots. The two companies drew public attention by taking different stances over a contract with the U.S. Ministry of National Defense.

It began in mid-last month, when reports emerged that Anthropic’s AI model ‘Claude’ had been used in a U.S. military operation earlier this year to apprehend Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. An Anthropic representative raised the matter with Palantir, and Palantir relayed it to the Ministry of National Defense.

The Ministry of National Defense then demanded that it be allowed to use Claude without restriction for ‘all lawful purposes,’ but Anthropic refused. It said it could not accept Claude being used unconditionally for mass surveillance in the United States or for fully autonomous lethal weapons without human involvement. In response, U.S. President Donald Trump on the 27th of last month ordered all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology, and the Ministry of National Defense designated Anthropic a ‘supply chain risk company’ to national security.

OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, signed a contract with the U.S. Ministry of National Defense shortly after this ‘Anthropic ouster.’ Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive officer (CEO), said, “A ban on mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including autonomous weapon systems, are our most important safety principles,” adding, “The Ministry of National Defense also agreed to these principles and technical safeguards,” but he faced a wave of criticism.

Afterward, consumer-market reactions to the two companies moved in opposite directions. Market-research firm Sensor Tower reported that ChatGPT’s app deletion rate increased by 295% within a day of the news. Some users were said to have engaged in ‘review-bombing,’ leaving the lowest ‘1-star’ ratings for ChatGPT.

Claude, by contrast, topped the U.S. App Store’s free app rankings on the 28th of last month, overtaking ChatGPT, and has held the spot through today. The WSJ reported that downloads the same day reached 102,000, a 48% surge from the prior week. Bloomberg News, citing sources, reported that Anthropic’s annualized revenue rose from $9 billion at the end of last year to $14 billion a few weeks ago, and recently surpassed $19 billion (about 27.4 trillion won).

The WSJ said that amid the ‘AI ethics’ debate, everyone from policymakers and defense contractors to AI startups and ordinary chatbot users is splitting into pro-Anthropic and pro-OpenAI camps. In Anthropic’s case, it lost a deep-pocketed customer in the U.S. federal government but gained fans, the WSJ noted. About 100 OpenAI employees, together with more than 800 Google employees, also signed an open online letter in solidarity with Anthropic.

Political activist and investor Amy Siskind said on X that “Anthropic is one of the few good companies in Silicon Valley,” and urged support for Anthropic and the deletion of ChatGPT and Elon Musk’s xAI chatbot ‘Grok,’ the WSJ reported.

At an all-hands meeting the same day, Altman acknowledged that the contract with the U.S. Ministry of National Defense had “brought difficult short-term brand (image) consequences and very negative publicity.” CEO Altman apologized to employees, saying, “We were trying to do the right thing, but it felt like we were completely trampled,” and “I feel terrible to have put you in this situation, knowing the same is happening to you.”

Meanwhile, Altman said at the meeting that the company is reviewing a contract to deploy its AI models to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s network, the WSJ reported.