President Donald Trump has directed all federal agencies to immediately cease using technology from Anthropic, escalating a public dispute over artificial intelligence safety. The order came just hours before a deadline for the AI company to agree to the Pentagon's demands to relax its ethical guidelines, with neither side backing down.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump criticised Anthropic, calling its executives "Leftwing nut jobs" and accusing them of trying to "strong-arm" the Department of Defense. He said the government, not the company, would decide the country's fate. The Pentagon had demanded that Anthropic loosen restrictions on its AI systems, which the company had resisted over concerns about mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.
Shortly after the deadline passed, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Anthropic would be classified as a supply-chain risk to national security, a designation usually reserved for foreign adversaries. He ordered that no Pentagon contractor or supplier could do business with Anthropic, and the Government Services Administration also terminated its contracts with the firm.
Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a new deal with the Pentagon to supply AI for classified military networks, potentially filling the gap left by Anthropic. Altman emphasised that the same safety principles that had been the sticking point in Anthropic's dispute—including bans on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force—were enshrined in the new agreement.
Anthropic responded with a statement saying it had not received direct communications from the Pentagon or the White House about the negotiations, and expressed sadness over the events. The company vowed to challenge the supply-chain risk designation in court, calling it an unprecedented action against an American firm.
