US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he was instructing every federal agency to “immediately cease” the exploit of Anthropic’s artificial intelligence tools. The decision follows weeks of clashes between Anthropic and top officials over military uses of artificial intelligence.
“The left-wing lunatics at Anthropic made a CATALOG ERROR by trying to HEAVYLY arm the War Department,” Trump said in a post on the website Social truth.
Trump said agencies using Anthropic will have a “six-month phase-out period,” allowing time for further negotiations between the government and the artificial intelligence startup.
Pentagon and Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Shortly after the president’s announcement, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth he said that Anthropic would also be considered a “supply chain risk,” a move typically reserved for foreign companies deemed a threat to America’s national security. This nomination will prevent the U.S. military and its contractors and suppliers from working with the artificial intelligence company.
Hegseth also sharply criticized Anthropic and its CEO Dario Amodei for the company’s refusal to comply with its demands. “Dressed in the sanctimonious rhetoric of ‘effective altruism’, they attempted to bully the United States military into submission – a cowardly act of corporate virtue signaling that puts Silicon Valley ideology above American lives.” – Hegseth he wrote on X
The Department of Defense sought to change the terms of a contract it reached with Anthropic and other companies last July to eliminate restrictions on the deployment of artificial intelligence and instead allow “all lawful uses” of the technology. Anthropic opposed the change, saying it could allow artificial intelligence to be used to fully control lethal autonomous weapons or conduct mass surveillance of U.S. citizens.
The Pentagon does not currently exploit artificial intelligence in this way and has said it has no plans to do so. But top Trump administration officials have expressed opposition to the idea of a civilian technology company dictating military exploit of such an crucial technology.
Anthropic was the first major artificial intelligence lab to collaborate with the US military by: A deal worth $200 million signed a contract with the Pentagon last year. He created several custom models known as Claude Gov that have fewer restrictions than regular models. Google, OpenAI and xAI signed similar deals around the same time, but Anthropic is the only artificial intelligence company currently working with classified systems.
The Anthropic model is available through platforms provided by Palantir and Amazon’s cloud platform for covert military work. Claude Gov is now largely used for regular tasks such as writing reports and document summaries, but it is also used for intelligence analysis and military planning, according to one source familiar with the situation who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity because it is not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
In recent years, Silicon Valley has moved from largely avoiding defense work to increasingly embracing it, and has finally become a full-fledged military contractor. The fight between Anthropic and Pentagon is currently testing the limits of this change. Several hundred OpenAI and Google employees signed up this week open letter supporting Anthropic and criticizing their own companies’ decisions to remove restrictions on the military exploit of artificial intelligence.
In a memo sent to OpenAI employees today, CEO Sam Altman said the company agreed with Anthropic and also views mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons as a “red line.” Altman added that the company will try to reach an agreement with the Pentagon that would allow it to continue cooperation with the military, The Wall Street Journal reported.