Trump orders federal agencies to stop using Anthropic as dispute escalates

United States President Donald Trump said he is directing every federal agency to immediately cease work with artificial intelligence lab Anthropic, adding there would be a six-month phaseout for the Department of Defense and other agencies that use the company’s products.

“I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Friday.

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Trump’s directive came during a weeks-long feud between the Pentagon and the San Francisco-based startup over concerns about how the military could use AI at war.

Spokespeople for Anthropic, which has a $200m contract with the Pentagon, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s decision stopped short of threats issued by the Pentagon, including that it could invoke the Defense Production Act to require Anthropic’s compliance.

The Pentagon had also said it considered making Anthropic a supply-chain risk, a designation that previously targeted businesses tied to foreign adversaries.

Trump’s comments came just over an hour before the Pentagon’s deadline for Anthropic to allow unrestricted military use of its AI technology or face consequences – and nearly 24 hours after CEO Dario Amodei said his company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Defense Department’s demands.

Calling the company “left-wing nut jobs”, the president said Anthropic made a mistake trying to strong-arm the Pentagon. Trump 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.

“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” Trump wrote.

At issue in the defence contract was a clash over AI’s role in national security. Anthropic had said it sought narrow assurances from the Pentagon that Claude won’t be used for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons. But after months of private talks exploded into public debate, it said in a Thursday statement that new contract language “framed as compromise was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will”.

Trump threatened further action if Anthropic did not cooperate with the phaseout. Trump warned he would use “the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow” if Anthropic did not help in the phaseout period.

‘Threatening’ move

The setback comes as AI leader Anthropic raced to win a fierce competition selling novel technology to businesses and government, particularly for national security, ahead of its widely expected initial public offering. The company has said it has not finalised an IPO decision.

Anthropic was the first frontier AI lab to put its models on classified networks via cloud provider Amazon.com and the first to build customised models for national security customers, the startup has said.

Its product, Claude, is in use across the intelligence community and armed services.

US Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat and vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, criticised the action taken by Trump, a Republican.

“The president’s directive to halt the use of a leading American AI company across the federal government, combined with inflammatory rhetoric attacking that company, raises serious concerns about whether national security decisions are being driven by careful analysis or political considerations.”

The conflict is the latest eruption in a saga that dates back at least to 2018. That year, employees at Alphabet’s Google protested the Pentagon’s use of the company’s AI to analyse drone footage, straining relations between Silicon Valley and Washington. A rapprochement ensued, with companies including Amazon and Microsoft jostling for defence business, and still more CEOs pledging cooperation last year with the Trump administration.

The dispute stunned AI developers in Silicon Valley, where a growing number of workers from Anthropic’s top rivals, OpenAI and Google, voiced support for Amodei’s stand in open letters and other forums.

“The Pentagon is negotiating with Google and OpenAI to try to get them to agree to what Anthropic has refused,” says the open letter from some OpenAI and Google employees. “They’re trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in.”

And in a surprise move from one of Amodei’s fiercest rivals, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Friday sided with Anthropic and, in a CNBC interview, questioned the Pentagon’s “threatening” move, suggesting that OpenAI and most of the AI field share the same red lines. Amodei once worked for OpenAI before he and other OpenAI leaders quit to form Anthropic in 2021.

“For all the differences I have with Anthropic, I mostly trust them as a company, and I think they really do care about safety,” Altman told CNBC.