OpenAI says Americans shouldn’t worry about the ethics of its new Pentagon contract. You’ll have to take their word for it (and Pete Hegseth’s).

OpenAI claims it has accomplished what Anthropic couldn’t: securing a Pentagon contract that won’t cross professed red lines against dragnet domestic spying and the use of artificial intelligence to order lethal military strikes. Just don’t expect any proof.

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, announced the company’s big win with the Defense Department in a post on X on February 27.

“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,” he wrote. The Pentagon “agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.”

But if the government booted Anthropic for refusing mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, how could OpenAI take over the contract without having the same problem?

The company and the government, however, are not releasing the only proof that matters: the contract itself.