Emil Michael, now a senior Pentagon official, says he’ll never forgive Uber investors who ousted him and Kalanick

Emil Michael, a senior technology official at the Department of Defense, is once again in the spotlight due to the government’s ongoing conflict with Anthropic. A recently released podcast interview provides an in-depth look at his perspective on this dispute and revisits his past experiences at Uber.

The interview, published on Monday and recorded last month by Joubin Mirzadegan, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, delved into various topics, including policy and personal history. The discussion took place before the Department of Defense’s conflict with Anthropic reached its peak. However, Michael’s comments about his exit from Uber and his lingering resentment about it were particularly striking.

When pressed by Mirzadegan on whether he was ousted alongside Travis Kalanick, Michael succinctly replied, “Effectively.”

Michael resigned eight days before Kalanick, following a workplace investigation into allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination at the company. Although he was not named in these allegations, the inquiry, led by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, recommended his removal. Kalanick was subsequently forced out in what the New York Times called a shareholder revolt, involving major investors such as Benchmark.

Upon being asked if he still harbors resentment, Michael candidly stated, “I’ll never forget that, nor forgive.”

The dismissal remains a sore point for both Michael and Kalanick, not just due to the personal impact on their reputations, but because they believed that autonomous driving represented the future of Uber, a vision thwarted by the investors who pushed them out.

During the interview, Michael emphasized that the decision was motivated by a focus on short-term returns rather than long-term growth.

“They wanted to preserve their embedded gains, rather than try to make this a trillion dollar company,” he said.

Kalanick has also been vocal. At the Abundance Summit in Los Angeles last year, he noted that the program was second only to Waymo when it was canceled and was closing the gap. “You could say, ‘Wish we had an autonomous ride-sharing product right now. That would be great,’” he remarked to the audience.

Uber sold its self-driving unit to Aurora in what was seen as a fire sale in 2020, three years after both men had left. The decision seemed justified at the time, given the high costs and distant prospects of autonomous driving. Now, with Waymo’s robotaxis operating in 10 U.S. cities and expanding, the question of whether Uber could have maintained its position haunts both men.

Meanwhile, Kalanick has continued to innovate. This month, he unveiled Atoms, a robotics company he had been developing in secret since leaving Uber eight years ago. He also revealed he is the largest investor in Pronto, an autonomous vehicle startup focused on industrial and mining sites, founded by his former Uber colleague Anthony Levandowski, and announced plans to acquire it outright.

Concurrently, Michael has engaged in a new conflict. The interview took place just before the collapse of the DoD’s talks with Anthropic, and his insights into this standoff are enlightening. He describes Anthropic as one of a select few approved large language model vendors for the department, facilitated by its partnerships with Palantir. According to Michael, the DoD operates under a complex web of laws, regulations, and policies that they are “almost choked” by, while Anthropic seeks to impose additional layers on top.

“What I can’t do is have any one company impose their own policy preferences on top of the laws and on top of my internal policies,” he explained, likening it to Microsoft Office not dictating content creation.

Michael further referenced a finding Anthropic had published last month. He argued that Chinese tech companies had been using a technique called distillation to reverse-engineer Anthropic’s models. Through China’s civil-military fusion laws, this could provide the People’s Liberation Army with access to an unrestricted version of Anthropic’s model, while the DoD would be restricted by Anthropic’s guidelines. “I’d be one-armed, tied behind my back against an Anthropic model that’s fully capable — by an adversary,” Michael remarked. “It’s totally Orwellian.”

He added, “If you’re an American champion — and I believe they are, they’re one of the most important companies in the country — don’t you want to help your Department of War succeed with the best tools available?”

The conflict has now escalated from negotiations to the courtroom.

In late February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth labeled Anthropic a “supply-chain risk,” and the government intensified its actions by filing a 40-page brief in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The brief argued that allowing Anthropic access to the DoD’s infrastructure could introduce “unacceptable risk” to supply chains, as the company might disable or alter its technology to serve its interests during wartime.

In response, Anthropic submitted sworn declarations on Friday, alongside a brief, contending that the government’s case was based on technical misunderstandings and claims not previously raised during negotiations. One declaration, by Anthropic’s head of public sector Thiyagu Ramasamy, directly disputed the government’s assertion that Anthropic could interfere with military operations by altering its technology — a capability Ramasamy claims is not technically feasible.

A hearing is set for Tuesday in San Francisco.