In a post on Truth Social, President Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using all Anthropic products following the company’s public spat with the Department of Defense. The president allowed a six-month phase-out period for departments using the products, but stressed that Anthropic was no longer welcome as a federal contractor.
“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and we won’t do business with them again,” the president wrote in the post.
Notably, the president’s post did not mention plans to designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk, as previously reported as a consequence. However, a follow-up tweet by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made good on the threat.
“In conjunction with the President’s directive to the Federal Government to cease all use of Anthropic’s technology, I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a National Security Supply Chain Threat,” Secretary Hegseth wrote. “Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.”
The Pentagon controversy centered on Anthropic’s refusal to allow its AI models to be used for either mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, which Secretary Hegseth saw as unduly restrictive.
CEO Dario Amodei reiterated his position in a public post on Thursdayrefusing to compromise on both points.
“Our strong preference is to continue serving the Ministry and our warriors — with our two requested safeguards,” Amodei wrote at the time. “If the Department chooses to exit Anthropic, we will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider, avoiding any disruption to ongoing military planning, operations or other critical missions.”
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OpenAI supports Anthropic’s decision. According to the BBCCEO Sam Altman sent a memo to staff Thursday saying they share the same “red lines” and that any defense contracts related to OpenAI would also reject uses that were “illegal or inappropriate for cloud deployment, such as domestic surveillance and autonomous offensive weapons.”
OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, who very publicly fell out with Altman in November 2023 and has since co-founded his own AI company, also joined the conversation on Friday. writing to X: “It’s extremely good that Anthropic didn’t back down, and it’s important that OpenAI has taken a similar stance.
In the future, there will be much more difficult situations of this kind, and it will be critical for relevant leaders to rise to the occasion, for fierce competitors to put aside their differences. I’m glad to see it happening today.”
Anthropic, OpenAI and Google each received one award of contracts by the US Department of Defense last July. While some Google employees have backed Anthropic, Google and its parent company have yet to comment.
