WASHINGTON (AP) โ President Donald Trump said Friday that he was ordering all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology following the companyโs unusuallyย public dispute with the Pentagonย over artificial intelligence safety.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also said he was designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk, a move that could prevent U.S. military vendors from working with the company.
Hegsethโs remarks, delivered in a social media post, came shortly after the Pentagonโs deadline for Anthropic to allow unrestricted military use of its AI technology or face consequences โ and nearly 24 hours after CEO Dario Amodei said his companyย โcannot in good conscience accedeโย to the Defense Departmentโs demands.
Trumpโs comments came just over an hour before the Pentagonโs deadline for Anthropic to allow unrestricted military use of its AI technology or face consequences โ and nearly 24 hours after CEO Dario Amodei said his companyย โcannot in good conscience accedeโย to the Defense Department’s demands.
Calling the company โLeftwing nut jobs,โ the president said Anthropic made a mistake trying to strong-arm the Pentagon. Trump wrote on Truth Social that most agencies must immediately stop using Anthropic’s AI but gave the Pentagon a six-month period to phase out the technology that is already embedded in military platforms.
โWe donโt need it, we donโt want it, and will not do business with them again!โ Trump wrote.
At issue in the defense contract was a clash over AIโs role in national security. Anthropic had said it sought narrow assurances from the Pentagon that Claude wonโt be used for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons. But after months of private talks exploded into public debate, it said in a Thursday statement that new contract language โframed as compromise was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will.โ
Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, could afford to lose the contract. But an ultimatum this week from Hegseth posed broader risks at the peak of the companyโs meteoric rise from a little-known computer science research lab in San Francisco to one of the worldโs most valuable startups. Military officials had warned Anthropic earlier in the week they could deem it “a supply chain risk,โ a designation typically stamped on foreign adversaries that could derail the companyโs critical partnerships with other businesses.
Trump also said Anthropic could face โmajor civil and criminal consequencesโ if itโs not helpful in the phase-out period. Anthropic didnโt immediately reply to a request for comment on the new developments.
The presidentโs decision was preceded by hours of top Trump appointees from the Pentagon and the State Department taking to social media to criticize Anthropic and slam their reluctance to acquiesce to the administrationโs demands.
Sean Parnell, the Pentagonโs top spokesman, posted on social media that the Pentagon wants to โuse Anthropicโs model forย all lawful purposes,โ but he and other officials havenโt detailed how they want to use the technology. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also sided with Trumpโs administration on Friday, saying on his social media platform X that โAnthropic hates Western Civilization.โ
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the entire negotiation into question and said the move โcombined with inflammatory rhetoric attacking that company, raises serious concerns about whether national security decisions are being driven by careful analysis or political considerations.โ
The dispute stunned AI developers in Silicon Valley, where a growing number of workers from Anthropicโs top rivals, OpenAI and Google, voiced support for Amodeiโs stand in open letters and other forums.
โThe Pentagon is negotiating with Google and OpenAI to try to get them to agree to what Anthropic has refused,โ the open letter from some OpenAI and Google employees says. โTheyโre trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in.โ
And in a surprise move from one of Amodeiโs fiercest rivals, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Friday sided with Anthropic and questioned the Pentagonโs โthreateningโ move in a CNBC interview, suggesting that OpenAI and most of the AI field share the same red lines. Amodei once worked for OpenAI before he and other OpenAI leaders quit to form Anthropic in 2021.
โFor all the differences I have with Anthropic, I mostly trust them as a company, and I think they really do care about safety,โ Altman told CNBC.
Retired Air Force Gen. Jack Shanahan wrote on a social media that โpainting a bullseye on Anthropic garners spicy headlines, but everyone loses in the end.โ
Shanahan said Claude is already being widely used across the government, including in classified settings, and Anthropicโs red lines are โreasonable.โ He said the AI large language models that power chatbots like Claude are also โnot ready for prime time in national security settings,โ particularly not for fully autonomous weapons.
โTheyโre not trying to play cute here,โ he wrote Thursday on LinkedIn.
The move is likely to benefit Elon Muskโs competing chatbot, Grok, which the Pentagon plans to give access to classified military networks, and could serve as a warning to two other competitors, Google and OpenAI, that also have contracts to supply their AI tools to the military.
