Recently, US President Donald Trump gave a statement saying he would direct every federal agency to immediately stop using technology from AI developer Anthropic.
How Did This Happen?
This Friday, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, “We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!”
It appears that Anthropic is mired in a row with the White House as the AI company refused the demands that it agree to give the US military unfettered access to its AI tools.
Due to this refusal, the US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said he deemed Anthropic a “supply chain risk”.
With this label, Anthropic would be the first US company ever to publicly receive such treatment. In response to this, Anthropic said that it “will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court”.
This directive by Trump came after days of back and forth, in public and private, between the company’s CEO Dario Amodei and Hegseth.
Concern Over US Government Using AI Tools For Mass Surveillance
This is not the first time, in recent months the AI company has grown concerned about the government potentially using its AI tools such as Claude, in what it described as “mass surveillance” and “fully autonomous weapons”.
It appears that Hegseth and the Pentagon were insisting that Anthropic agree to “any lawful use” of its tools and technology.
Following this, both Trump and Hegseth announced their decisions against Anthropic on social media.
Anthropic would be “immediately” designated a supply chain risk, prohibiting any business working with the military from “any commercial activity with Anthropic” , said the defence secretary on X.
The company is yet to hear anything directly from the White House or the military “on the status of our negotiations”, Anthropic said on Friday evening.
Whatever be the case, being designated a supply chain risk “would both be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government”, Anthropic said.
Further adding, “No amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.”
Here mentioned, Department of War is a secondary name Trump has given to the defence department.
Moving ahead, Trump said that Anthropic’s tools will be phased out of all government work over the next six months.
An Issue For Whole AI Industry
When it comes to Anthropic’s other customers, the only impact will be on companies that also contract with the military, according to the company.
Basically, these companies may have to stop using Anthropic for work being done on behalf of the department.
Earlier Anthropic had said that, if the US Department of Defense chose to stop using the company’s tools, the company would “work to enable a smooth transition to another provider” before Trump’s pronouncement.
Still, Trump has gone ahead and berated the company on his Truth Social platform, saying Anthropic “better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.”
Coming to Anthropic the company has been in use by the US government and military since 2024.
It was the first advanced AI company to have its tools deployed in government agencies doing classified work.
Anthropic received support in its stance against the government prior to Trump’s declaration on Friday.
It seems that its peer, OpenAI boss Sam Altman, offered support to rival AI executive Amodei as he sent a note to staff stating that he had the same “red lines” when it came to the application of the firms’ products.
Any OpenAI contracts for the military would also reject uses that were “unlawful or unsuited to cloud deployments, such as domestic surveillance and autonomous offensive weapons” Altman said in the note.
Interestingly, later on he confirmed on X that OpenAI had reached a deal with the Department of War to use its AI models on classified cloud networks.
Now coming to Amodei, he is a long-time figure in tech, rising to prominence as an early employee of OpenAI.
Earlier, Amodei and a handful of other OpenAI employees left the company to found Anthropic after disagreements with Altman.
It appears that these two startups compete directly for users and corporate customers with an evolving offer of AI chatbots, agents and other tools.
Altman wrote, “I do not fully understand how things got here; I do not know why Anthropic did their deal with the Pentagon and Palantir in the way they originally did it,” in his company memo.
Adding, “But regardless of how we got here, this is no longer just an issue between Anthropic and the (Department of War) DoW; this is an issue for the whole industry and it is important to clarify our stance.”
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