Emil Michael, the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and the Pentagon's Chief Technology Officer, has reportedly had ulterior motives in his efforts to ban Anthropic from government dealings. This came after the Pentagon attempted to impose a ban on the AI firm due to its refusal to use its AI model for domestic surveillance or weapons deployment. A financial disclosure revealed that Michael holds significant amounts of stock in Perplexity, an AI rival to Anthropic, and served on the company's board. Despite this, a judge overseeing a lawsuit filed by Anthropic against the Department of Defense seemed inclined to side with the AI company.