Signal President Meredith Whittaker has asserted that the tug-of-war between the US Government and AI companies like Anthropic was far from over. Speaking at the India Today Conclave 2026, Whittaker said the ultimate showdown of who holds greater power, governments or private companies in the age of AI remains undecided hinting that it is a subject that, given its far-fetching implications on privacy, should be discussed more seriously and, perhaps, on an urgent basis.
Whittaker stated that the deployment of a company’s AI models on a government’s systems created a dependency and that governments are aware of this fact. However, the US government is not legally allowed to create its own AI systems because as per the US law, the federal government does not have the right to collect the vast amount of data that a private company can potentially collect from users to train their AI models. She explained, “These are not technologies that the state could create. It doesn’t matter how much money they have It is not legal for the US government to collect the kind of data that the private industry can collect.”
However, Meredith reckoned that the Pentagon’s fallout with Anthropic may not be over just yet. She said, “I don’t actually think that showdown is decided yet.”
Signal does not collect your data
Whittaker explained that the growing access to AI tools was bringing more data to a handful of AI companies. However, Signal does not collect user data.
When asked if a user can have their Signal data exposed via spyware such as Pegasus, Meredith stated that Signal Foundation was working closely with organisations to try and negate such a potential threat. The Signal President added, “We work closely with Citizen Lab and others who are pushing back against targeted spyware because that undermines the protection that we can provide to our users.”
WhatsApp better than Telegram
When asked about the privacy of WhatsApp, a platform used widely by millions of people in India, Meredith replied, “WhatsApp is better than Telegram. But it is owned by Meta.” She added, “Everyone who is serious [about privacy] uses Signal.”
During the session, Meredith Whittaker discussed that AI agents could become a nightmare for cybersecurity experts as agents need to access user data across various applications, such as calendars and email. This could particularly pose a threat to privacy as data lands in the hands of a few companies.
