Pentagon moves to designate Anthropic as a supply-chain risk
In a post on Truth Social, President Trump directed federal agencies to cease use of all Anthropic products after the company’s public dispute with the Department of Defense. The president allowed for a six-month phase-out period for departments using the products, but emphasized that Anthropic was no longer welcome as a federal contractor.
“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again,” the president wrote in the post.
Notably, the president’s post did not mention any plans to designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk, as had been previously mentioned as a consequence. However, a subsequent tweet from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made good on the threat.
“In conjunction with the President’s directive for the Federal Government to cease all use of Anthropic’s technology, I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security,” Secretary Hegseth wrote. “Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.”
The Pentagon dispute centered on Anthropic’s refusal to allow its AI models to be used to power either mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, which Secretary Hegseth found unduly restrictive.
CEO Dario Amodei reiterated his stance in a public post on Thursday, refusing to compromise on the two points.
“Our strong preference is to continue to serve the Department and our warfighters — with our two requested safeguards in place,” Amodei wrote at the time. “Should the Department choose to offboard Anthropic, we will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider, avoiding any disruption to ongoing military planning, operations, or other critical missions.”
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OpenAI has come out in support of Anthropic’s decision. Per the BBC, CEO Sam Altman sent a memo to staff on Thursday saying he shared the same “red lines” and that any OpenAI-related defense contracts would also reject uses that were “unlawful or unsuited to cloud deployments, such as domestic surveillance and autonomous offensive weapons.”
OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, who very publicly fell out with Altman in November 2023 and has since co-founded his own AI company, also waded into the conversation on Friday, writing on X: “It’s extremely good that Anthropic has not backed down, and it’s significant that OpenAI has taken a similar stance.
In the future, there will be much more challenging situations of this nature, and it will be critical for the relevant leaders to rise up to the occasion, for fierce competitors to put their differences aside. Good to see that happen today.”
Anthropic, OpenAI and Google each received contract awards from the U.S. Defense Department last July. While some Google employees have come out in support of Anthropic, Google and its parent company have yet to comment.
