Emil Michael, who is now the head of the Pentagon, says he will never forgive the Uber investors who fired him and Kalanick.

Emil Michael, who works as a chief technical officer at the Department of Defense, has returned to focus on the government’s war against Anthropic, and a new podcast interview provides a detailed look at his thoughts on the controversy — and the unflinching tenacity of the decades of his Uber days.

The interviews, which were released Monday and were conducted last month by Joubin Mirzadegan, a Kleiner Perkins partner who leads the company’s entrepreneurship group, covered a wide range of topics including policy and personal history — and were written before the DoD’s dispute with Anthropic began. But it’s Michael’s comments about his departure from Uber — and his not-so-disguised anger about it — that caught our attention in the first place.

When Mirzadegan asked him bluntly if he was shown the door alongside Travis Kalanick, Michael replied with one word: “Effectively.”

Michael he resigned eight days before Kalanick did, as part of the fallout from a workplace investigation into sexual harassment and discrimination at the company. He was not named in the allegations, but the investigation – led by former US Attorney General Eric Holder – concluded that he should be dismissed. Kalanick followed suit, pushing out what the New York Times described as a rebellion by shareholders involved in many of the company’s investments, including Benchmark.

When Mirzadegan asked if he was still “salt” on the matter, Michael did not answer. “I will never forget that, nor forgive,” he said.

The ouster brings out both Michael and Kalanick not because of the damage to their reputations but because they believed – and still believe – that self-driving cars were the future of Uber, and that the investors who pushed them killed it.

During the interview, Michael argued that the decision was driven by a desire to protect long-term returns rather than building something lasting.

“They wanted to keep what they got, instead of trying to build this trillion-dollar company,” he said.

Kalanick has been pointing the same way. At the Abundance conference in Los Angeles last year, he said the app was second only to Waymo at the time it was pulled and closing the gap. “You can say, ‘I wish we had an independent property right now. That would be good,’” he told the audience.

Uber has sold its self-driving equipment in Aurora in what many consider a fire sale in 2020, three years after both men left. The decision seemed safe at the time; Self-driving was a waste of money, and the technology felt too far away. Now Waymo’s robotaxis is working inside 10 US cities and expanding into new markets. Whether Uber ever had the power to get there is an open question, but it’s one that still haunts both men.

For his part, Kalanick hasn’t really stopped building. This month he he removed the blankets Atoms, the robotics company he’s been building underground since he left Uber eight years ago. He also revealed that he is the largest investor in Pronto, and autonomous vehicles he focused on the industrial and mining complex founded by former Uber partner Anthony Levandowski, and said he was close to acquiring it.

Meanwhile, Michael has found a new battle. The interview was recorded before the DoD’s negotiations with Anthropic became public, and his account of it is worth listening to. He describes Anthropic as one of the few approved language vendors for the department, approved in part by its partnership with Palantir. As Michael suggests, the DoD is not a free-for-all. It operates under so many rules, regulations, and internal procedures that “we’re almost suffocating them,” Mirzadegan says. Anthropic, he argues, wants to increase his share on top of all this.

“What I can’t do is have just one company that wants to put their interests above the law and above my internal policies,” he said, using an analogy to make his point. “When you buy a Microsoft Office Suite, they don’t tell you what to write in a Word document, or what email to send.”

Michael then continued, ordering to find the Anthropic where it was printed last month before meeting with Mirzadegan. Chinese tech companies, he argued, have been tapping Anthropic brands over and over again in a process called distillation — essentially changing the brand’s practices enough to match its creativity.

Through China joint military ordershe said, which would give the People’s Liberation Army access to a functional product similar to the full-scale, unlimited Anthropic model. Currently, the DoD is working with a model that is governed by Anthropic guidelines. “If only I had one weapon, strapped to my back against an Anthropic species that could fully — and the enemy,” Michael said. “It’s completely Orwellian.”

Michael added a little more to the questioning, before moving on to the next topic: “If you’re an American hero – and I believe you are, it’s one of the most important companies in the country – don’t you want to help your Department of Defense succeed with the best equipment available?

As industry executives are well aware, the dispute has moved from the negotiating table to the courts.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth deemed Anthropic a “supportive threat” in late February, as did the government. it got bigger last weekand filed a 40-page brief in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The brief said that giving Anthropic access to the DoD’s combat equipment would create an “unacceptable threat” to its supply chain because the company could withhold or modify its technology to suit its own needs on behalf of the nation during times of war.

Anthropic he was fired again on Fridayfiling affidavits, along with a brief, arguing that the government’s case rests on technical disagreements and allegations that were not made in previous months of negotiations. One of these announcements, made by Anthropic CEO Thiyagu Ramasamy, directly contradicted the government’s claims that Anthropic could interfere with military operations by blocking or altering the nature of its technology – something Ramasamy says is technically impossible.

A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday in San Francisco.