Investor David Sacks has defended Pentagon official Emil Michael against allegations of a conflict of interest related to his investment in Perplexity AI. Sacks dismissed these claims as baseless, stating that Perlexity is not a direct competitor to Anthropic and that Michael's holdings were cleared by ethics regulators. He also accused Anthropic of operating beyond its image as a safety-focused AI firm. This comes after Anthropic secured a legal victory against the Pentagon, winning a preliminary injunction from a federal judge to prevent restrictions on the company's AI models.