President Donald Trump ordered all U.S. federal agencies to immediately cease using Anthropic’s AI technology after the company refused Pentagon demands to remove safeguards preventing its Claude AI model from being used for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designating Anthropic a “supply-chain risk to national security”—a designation typically reserved for foreign adversaries.
President Donald Trump ordered every U.S. government agency to “immediately cease” using technology from artificial intelligence company Anthropic, with a six-month phase-out period for agencies like the Defense Department that are using Anthropic’s products at various levels. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced he was ordering the Pentagon to “designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security” after the AI startup refused to comply with demands about the use of its technology.
The dispute centers on two redlines Anthropic has for the Pentagon: that Claude will not be used in autonomous weapons, and that it will not be used in the mass surveillance of US citizens. The Pentagon has insisted Anthropic agree to give the military unrestricted access to its AI model, and Hegseth had set a deadline of 5:01 p.m. Friday for it to agree to drop its guardrails.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company would not budge in the face of the Pentagon’s threats, stating “we cannot in good conscience accede to their request”. Anthropic’s Claude was the first AI model to work on the military’s classified networks through a contract worth up to $200 million with the Pentagon last summer.
Trump wrote on Truth Social: “The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution. Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY”
The supply chain risk designation means any company that works with the US military would have to prove they don’t touch anything related to Anthropic in their work with the Pentagon, potentially causing much of Anthropic’s enterprise customer base to evaporate. Anthropic said it would “challenge any supply chain risk designation in court,” calling such a designation “an unprecedented action—one historically reserved for US adversaries, never before publicly applied to an American company”.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he shares Anthropic’s “red lines” restricting military use of AI, while hundreds of employees from Google and OpenAI have signed a petition calling on their companies to mirror Anthropic’s position. However, Elon Musk, whose xAI competes with Anthropic, sided with the Trump administration, saying on X that “Anthropic hates Western Civilization”.