Anthropic’s IPO filing on Monday set the stage for the Claude creator to pursue possibly largest initial stock offering in history. According to CNBC, investors are measuring the 5-year-old company’s potential market cap in the trillions, putting it in a category with the world’s most valuable companies, even as the stock market is showing signs of jitters on the AI trade.
Anthropic devoted 94 pages of its 400-page securities registration statement to the “risk factors” section. “If misused, replicated, weaponized, or operated with a high degree of autonomy,” Anthropic acknowledged, “it could pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.”
On September 29, President Trump convened the CEOs of the leading U.S. AI companies and announced a voluntary “Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities.” The agreement calls on frontier-AI developers to establish robust internal controls, use independent external auditors, and create board-level committees to review safety assessments. But since it is not legally enforceable, it is neither “morally binding” nor a “constitution” for AI safety.
The AI giants being asked to police AI admit that increasingly autonomous systems can behave in ways their creators did not anticipate. Yet, they are promoting the unpredictable products within the US military-industrial complex. The net effect? A historical acceleration of existential risks.
Weaponizing U.S. technological primacy
Trump has repeatedly framed AI as a competition between the United States and China, saying there will be “a winner and a loser.” He has rejected cooperation with Beijing because he believes the US is already leading.
But the administration is not just pursuing laissez-faire economics. It is constructing an AI-national-security-industrial complex.
In January, war secretary Pete Hegseth issued Pentagon’s milestone AI memorandum, which laid out a plan with a drastic focus on acceleration, not deceleration. “Speed wins,” Hegseth wrote.
In spring, according to the CNN, a U.S. Special Operations Command analyst used a large language model that almost misled the U.S. into instigating a war with China.
And yet, the June 2026 national-security memorandum directed the U.S. national-security establishment to obtain the most advanced AI systems, rapidly integrate commercial and open-source models, build high-security computing infrastructure and establish a strategic reserve of AI expertise.
The objective is a “decisive and enduring AI advantage” over adversaries.
This fosters an odd hybrid of market freedom, enormous public infrastructure, military integration and geopolitical protectionism, without legally enforceable safety regulation.
