Emil Michael, nominee for Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, during a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing in Washington, March 27, 2025. Michael had been negotiating the $200 million AI contract with Anthropic for weeks. (Eric Lee/The New York Times) By SHEERA FRENKEL, CADE METZ and JULIAN E. BARNES Minutes before a 5:01 p.m. deadline Friday, Emil Michael, the Defense Department’s chief technology officer, was fuming. For weeks, Michael, a former top executive at…
