US agencies told to drop Anthropic AI chatbot
WASHINGTON—The Trump administration on Friday ordered all US agencies to stop using Anthropic’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology and imposed other major penalties, culminating an unusually public clash between the government and the company over AI safety.
President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials took to social media to chastise Anthropic for failing to allow the military unrestricted use of its AI technology by a Friday deadline, accusing it of endangering national security after CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down over concerns the company’s products could be used in ways that would violate its safeguards.
“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” Trump said on social media.
Hegseth also deemed the company a “supply chain risk,” a designation typically stamped on foreign adversaries that could derail the company’s critical partnerships with other businesses.
Challenge from firm
In a statement issued Friday evening, Anthropic said it would challenge what it called an unprecedented and legally unsound action “never before publicly applied to an American company.”
Anthropic had said it sought narrow assurances from the Pentagon that its AI chatbot Claude would not be used for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon said it was not interested in such uses and would only deploy the technology in legal ways, but it also insisted on access without any limitations.
“No amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons,” the company said. “We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.”
The government’s effort to assert dominance over the internal decision-making of the company comes amid a wider clash over AI’s role in national security and concerns about how increasingly capable machines could be used in high-stakes situations involving lethal force, sensitive information or government surveillance.
Trump said Anthropic made a mistake trying to strong-arm the Pentagon. He wrote on Truth Social that most agencies must immediately stop using Anthropic’s AI but gave the Pentagon a six-month period to phase out the technology that is already embedded in military platforms.
“The United States of America will never allow a radical left, woke company to dictate how our great military fights and wins wars!” he wrote in all caps.
