Donald Trump boasted about severing ties between the US military and Anthropic on Thursday, the same day multiple reports said negotiations between the Department of Defense and the AI startup had resumed.
They are among the latest developments in the twisted rift between the US government and the artificial intelligence company.
“Well, I fired Anthropic. Anthropic is in trouble because I fired them like dogs, because they shouldn’t have done that,” Trump told Politico on Thursday.
Hours later, the Pentagon officially designated Anthropic as a “supply chain risk,” a move that prevents all government contractors from using the company’s technology. The label has never before been used against an American company.
“The DoW officially informed Anthropic leadership that the company and its products are considered a supply chain risk, effective immediately,” a Pentagon official told Bloomberg.
But at the same time there were reports of a thaw. Negotiations had restarted between the Pentagon and Anthropic over the military use of the company’s AI and the contract between the two, according to the Financial Times and Bloomberg. Anthropic’s products, including the popular Claude chatbot and coding assistant, are integrated into Palantir’s Maven system, a vital new military intelligence tool that was used in recent attacks against Iran, according to the Washington Post.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has been discussing the Pentagon contract with Emil Michael, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering and former Uber executive, according to Bloomberg. The two greatly dislike each other, the New York Times reported.
Last week, Trump ordered the entire federal government to stop using Anthropic’s technology after the company rejected a deal with the government over fears its model could be used for domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.
Both the State and Treasury departments have already begun to sever ties, according to their respective heads. Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, verbally designated Anthropic as a “supply chain risk” last week, and Amodei has said his company will sue over the label.
On Thursday, Amodei sent a blistering message to his employees disparaging the Trump administration and rival OpenAI, which late last week stepped into the void left by the government and the breakup of Anthropic, and announced its own deal with the military. Amodei called Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, a “liar,” and said Altman’s claims that the Pentagon would respect safeguards amounted to nothing more than “security theater.” For his part, Altman told employees in an internal message this week that the company would have no control over how the military would use OpenAI technology.
Inclusion on the company’s compensation blacklist could cause significant financial damage. Anthropic’s most recent funding round, about $60 billion, is in jeopardy due to the dispute with the Pentagon, according to Axios. Silicon Valley, including OpenAI, has backed Anthropic in the fight for designation as a supply chain risk.
As the Secretary of Defense promised punitive measures against Anthropic, his agency also announced an agreement with OpenAI to use its technology for military operations on its classified network. The timing, as well as questions about ethics, sparked a backlash that propelled Claude’s app to the top of download charts in the U.S. In the following days, Altman said he would modify his agreement with the department and admitted that his company’s conduct seemed “opportunistic and careless.”
