Department of War formally designates Anthropic a supply-chain risk

Anthropic said it had received formal written notification that the Department of War had designated it a “supply chain risk to America’s national security,” confirming the designation Defense Secretary Hegseth had announced a week earlier alongside President Trump’s order that federal agencies stop using Anthropic’s technology. The formal notice followed the collapse of contract negotiations over two conditions Anthropic said it would not drop: a ban on using its models for mass domestic surveillance, and a requirement for human decision-making in the use of fully autonomous weapons.

In its public response, Anthropic argued the designation was legally unsound and said it would challenge it in court, while emphasising that the finding applied narrowly — to Claude’s use “as a direct part of” Department of War contracts — rather than to all use of its models by Department of War contractors generally. The company said it would keep providing its models to the Department of War and the wider national-security community “at nominal cost and with continuing support from our engineers, for as long as is necessary” to manage the transition. Anthropic’s later court filings argued the supply-chain-risk mechanism, created under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act, had previously been applied only to firms tied to foreign adversaries such as Huawei, and that using it against a US company over a policy disagreement was unprecedented.

Separately, chief executive Dario Amodei apologised for an internal company post that had been leaked to the press during the dispute, saying Anthropic had not leaked it or directed anyone else to, and describing it as written on a difficult day and not reflective of his considered views. Anthropic filed suit in two federal courts five days later, on 9 March, in the Northern District of California and in the DC Circuit — the first stage of a legal fight that produced a preliminary injunction later that month, before a federal appeals court in Washington declined in April to block the designation while the underlying case proceeded.