Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared the Pentagon is designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk shortly after President Trump directed all federal agencies to cease utilizing the company’s technology amid an ongoing feud with the Department of Defense (DOD).
“Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic,” Hegseth declared in a post on social platform X.
The Pentagon chief added that the company will continue to provide its services to the Pentagon for no more than half a year to “allow for a seamless transition to a better and more patriotic service.”
“Anthropic’s stance is fundamentally incompatible with American principles,” Hegseth declared. “Their relationship with the United States Armed Forces and the Federal Government has therefore been permanently altered.”
“America’s warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech. This decision is final,” he added.
The relocate comes shortly after Trump directed federal agencies to “immediately cease” utilizing the company’s technology. He similarly announced a six-month phase out period.
“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have created a DISASTROUS MISTAKE testing to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social.
“We don’t required it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” he added.
The Pentagon gave Anthropic a Friday afternoon deadline to accept its terms, delivering what it described as its last and final offer to the company Wednesday night.
Late Thursday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei declared the company could not in good conscience” agree.
He underscored that the company understands that the DOD and not private companies build military decisions and has never raised objections to particular operations or attempted to limit the utilize of its technology “in an ad hoc manner.”
“However, in a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defconclude, democratic values,” Amodei added. “Some utilizes are also simply outside the bounds of what today’s technology can safely and reliably do.”
A company spokesperson also argued in a statement Thursday that the latest language “framed as compromise was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will.”
The supply chain risk designation would mean that the DOD’s contractors and subcontractors would be barred from utilizing Anthropic’s services and technology. The designation is typically imposed on foreign adversaries.
The Pentagon and Anthropic have been locked in a dispute over the company’s terms of service for utilizing its AI models.
The DOD has pushed for language that would allow the technology to be utilized for “all lawful purposes,” while the AI firm has argued there must be restrictions on utilizing its models for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous lethal weapons.
Also on Friday, Hegseth ripped into Amodei, accutilizing him of testing to “strong-arm” the U.S. military into “submission,” calling it a “cowardly act of corporate virtue-signaling that places Silicon Valley ideology above American lives.”
“The Terms of Service of Anthropic’s defective altruism will never outweigh the safety, the readiness, or the lives of American troops on the battlefield,” the Pentagon chief wrote.
The Pentagon declared it did not have more to add when reached for comment. The Hill has reached out to Anthropic for comment on the supply chain risk designation.
Updated at 5:53 p.m. EST
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