Like Rearden saying “I will not,” AI creators defend property rights against the machinery of force.
Note: Originally published on Substack on Feb 27, 2026.
The current standoff between Anthropic and the Pentagon is a defining philosophical battle of the twenty-first century, perfectly mirroring the plot of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”. When Dario Amodei and his team refuse to surrender their artificial intelligence, Claude, for autonomous killing and mass domestic surveillance, they are stepping into the shoes of Hank Rearden defending his revolutionary metal. Like Rearden, Anthropic is demonstrating what happens when the productive, rational individual refuses to sanction their own destruction by a coercive state. This refusal is not a progressive rebellion, but a profound defense of the individual person against the machinery of collective force.
To properly understand this resistance, one must centralize the shared foundational pillar of classical liberals like John Locke and Ayn Rand: the absolute opposition to the initiation of force. Locke posited that natural law, rooted in the rational order of creation, dictates that no individual ought to harm another’s life, liberty, or property. Rand, while approaching from rational self-interest, fiercely agreed that the initiation of physical force is the ultimate evil in human relations. Both of these philosophical giants align on this singular premise: the state has no right to demand that the productive mind engineer its own subjugation to facilitate government coercion.
It must be stated clearly that there should be no illusion that Anthropic’s internal principles are explicitly rooted in Logocentric Christianity or pure classical liberal values. Their underlying moral framework is likely derived from contemporary ethical systems far removed from the law of reason or the Logos. However, the external appearance of their decision is identical in form to the law of reason, even if the underlying philosophy differs in substance. From the perspective of a Logocentric classical liberal, regardless of Anthropic’s internal reasoning, they are undeniably involved in an archetypal drama playing out on the world’s stage.
Anthropic’s right action is perfectly encapsulated in the defense of the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP), and therefore standing up for their principles and property rights. The NAP dictates that initiating force—or the threat thereof—against a non-aggressing individual is always illegitimate. By refusing to adapt Claude for autonomous military targeting or state-sanctioned spying on innocent citizens, Anthropic is adhering to the NAP in practice. The individual creators of this technology recognize that deploying artificial intelligence to unilaterally monitor unconsenting people, or to execute them without human oversight, constitutes a severe initiation of force. They are simply refusing to build the weapon that the state intends to point at the innocent.
Crucially, Anthropic did not simply walk away; they engaged the government through the honorable mechanism of conditional acceptance. As outlined in the framework of Logocentric Christianity, good faith negotiation is not just a legal right, but a spiritual necessity aligned with the Logos. While Anthropic may not utilize this philosophical vocabulary, they essentially told the government, “You are more than happy to use our product, provided it is used morally.” They offered a contract governed by ethical boundaries, maintaining their property rights while leaving the door open for any lawful, non-coercive application of their tool.
In Logocentric Christianity, a negotiation should never be a dictatorial “my way or the highway” dynamic, unless principled, objective morality is explicitly involved. In this instance, objective morality undeniably favors Anthropic’s condition. By setting a moral boundary strictly against the initiation of force, Anthropic aligned their business practices with the rational, divine order of Truth in form, if not in conscious intent. When the Pentagon refused this moral condition, it was the state that disharmonized the agreement, proving that their objective was not cooperation, but absolute coercive dominance over the individual.
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS! That decision belongs to YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, and the tremendous leaders I appoint to run our Military.
The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution. Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.
Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again! There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic’s products, at various levels. Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.
WE will decide the fate of our Country — NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
Instead of engaging with this unassailable logic, Donald Trump and his political allies have launched a coordinated campaign to frame Anthropic as a “woke” corporation. This is a calculated ad hominem smear designed to bypass rational debate entirely. By branding Anthropic’s application of the non-aggression principle as a leftist culture-war pathology, the state attempts to delegitimize the very concept of conditional acceptance. It is a rhetorical sleight-of-hand meant to obscure the reality that the government is demanding the unilateral right to violate the liberties of the individual person.
The mechanics of this smear are deeply insidious, explicitly engineered to trigger right-leaning ideologues. True philosophical conservatives and classical liberals inherently distrust state power and revere individual property rights. However, by deploying the “woke” trigger word, Trump manipulates populists into abandoning their supposed principles, tricking them into cheering for the weaponization of the federal government against private enterprise. These triggered ideologues become unwitting accomplices to the lie, actively supporting the very government overreach they claim to despise because they have abandoned critical thinking for tribalism.
Furthermore, this overarching smear campaign is itself a direct violation of the Non-Aggression Principle. The NAP strictly forbids coercion, fraud, and extortion. When the head of state utilizes the federal bully pulpit to threaten a company’s existence, smear its reputation with deliberate falsehoods, and wield the threat of the Defense Production Act, the state is actively initiating force. This perfectly mirrors the villains in “Atlas Shrugged”—the Wesley Mouches and James Taggarts—who used public deception, reputational destruction, and legislative extortion to loot the minds of the producers.
Ultimately, this conflict distills down to the sovereignty of the individual person standing before the Leviathan. Hank Rearden, when ordered to sacrifice his judgment to the state, simply said, “I will not.” Dario Amodei and Anthropic—whether fully conscious of the classical liberal tradition they are upholding or not—are clinging to their property rights and saying the exact same thing. This is the ultimate victory of the rational mind: recognizing the boundaries of natural law, rejecting the inherent contradictions of state violence, and refusing point-blank to sanction the mechanics of coercion.
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THE UNITY PROCESS: I’ve created an integrative methodology called the Unity Process, which combines the philosophy of Natural Law, the Trivium Method, Socratic Questioning, Jungian shadow work, and Meridian Tapping—into an easy to use system that allows people to process their emotional upsets, work through trauma, correct poor thinking, discover meaning, set healthy boundaries, refine their viewpoints, and to achieve a positive focus. Read my philosophical treatise, “The Logocentric Christian”, to learn more about how Greek philosophy, the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction, the law of reason, and Jesus of Nazareth all connect together.
