\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\tTension has been building between the Trump administration and the tech firm Anthropic amid a heated debate over how and when the government should use their AI in war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThe company and the government are at an impasse: the Department of Defense wants carte blanche on how they can use Claude, Anthropic\u2019s large language model, at home and on the battlefield; Anthropic says it doesn\u2019t think Claude is ready to be used for mass surveillance of Americans or to develop fully autonomous weapons. When Anthropic refused to give in on these usages, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth responded by restricting their usage within federal agencies, ultimately labeling Anthropic a supply chain risk to national security. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThe move was extreme, to say the least: The designation bans Anthropic from working on government contracts, marking the first time an American-owned company has been publicly marked as a supply chain risk, a designation intended to address concerns that adversaries to the United States may be maliciously introducing vulnerabilities into U.S. military systems. In the past, this has been reserved for Chinese and Russian companies suspected of espionage or sabotage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tOn Monday, Anthropic filed<\/a> two lawsuits against several federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and the Executive Office of the President, claiming that the government\u2019s actions are \u201cunprecedented and unlawful,\u201d arguing that the designation was a retaliation following the breakdown of negotiations. \u201cThe Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech,\u201d Anthropic’s attorneys argue in the lawsuit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tExperts were similarly surprised by the government\u2019s actions. \u201cThe way that the statute defines supply chain risk is that it must be an adversary <\/em>that can end up compromising or introducing a malicious function in defense and national security systems,\u201d says Amos Toh, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center\u2019s Liberty and National Security program who is not connected to the Anthropic case. \u201cIn this case, there is no evidence that by including Claude in your defense and military systems, adversaries will seek to compromise it. If anything, the opposite argument could be made: The fact Anthropic is drawing these red lines and not letting DoD use this technology when it\u2019s not ready for prime time, increases the safety of the system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tAnd the problem goes far beyond one company\u2019s relationship with the government. \u201cThere’s an extraordinarily deep and important issue lurking somewhere here, which is, what should the relationship be between the government and the AI industry?\u201d says University of Minnesota Law School professor Alan Rozenshtein, who is also not involved with the lawsuit. \u201cShould the military ever enter into contracts where the private company purports to limit what the military can do beyond just obeying the laws?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\u2018The use of models like Claude supercharges the potential for abuse\u2019<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\tIn July 2025, the Trump administration released its AI Action Plan<\/a>, announcing the government\u2019s intent in increasing the way it uses AI technology. That same month, Anthropic signed a deal with the Pentagon to incorporate Claude into military operations. The government has reportedly used Claude in the raid and capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, and in its current attacks on Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tAt the end of February, after months of negotiations, conversations to update the contract between Anthropic and the Dept. of Defense stalled when Anthropic reiterated that Claude was not yet ready to be used for lethal autonomous warfare or the mass surveillance of Americans. The Pentagon argued they wanted full control over how it was used, so long as the uses were \u201clawful.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tToh explains that the word lawful is important. \u201cWhat the Defense Department is essentially doing is exploiting legal gray areas around its ability to conduct surveillance on Americans and to develop and field fully autonomous weapons,\u201d says Toh. \u201cTo push for uses of AI models in ways that are either constitutionally suspect or kind of dubious under its obligations under the laws of war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tMeaning, the Supreme Court has not directly grappled with what constitutional protections Americans have when the government uses AI. Because AI regulations and laws have not been able to keep up with advances in technology, something that is technically lawful today could still exist in a moral and ethical gray area. Experts argue these are complicated challenges that require deeper consideration, and would benefit from an informed Congress weighing in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tFor mass surveillance, Toh explains, we have seen scenarios where law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and the military are used for joint missions, like in immigration enforcement. One of the red lines Anthropic drew was not allowing Claude to be used to analyze bulk commercial data sets that contain information about Americans. Toh says that while this is technically legal, an AI model like Claude can put together seemingly unrelated data points that would provide extremely sensitive insights into people\u2019s lives, habits, and movements that could be used to surveil or target them. \u201cYou can see scenarios where the military may be tasked to perform certain types of surveillance in immigration enforcement activities and that\u2019s a situation in which the use of models like Claude supercharges the potential for abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tWhen it comes to weapons, Toh adds, Anthropic is not saying they are opposed to autonomous weapons, they are saying they are opposed to the use of their current model in developing fully autonomous weapons because the model is not there yet in terms of the technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\u201cWe do not believe, and have never believed, that it is the role of Anthropic or any private company to be involved in operational decision-making \u2014 that is the role of the military,\u201d Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a statement on March 5. \u201cOur only concerns have been our exceptions on fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance, which relate to high-level usage areas, and not operational decision-making.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\u2018Supply Chain Risk\u2019 <\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\tIn response to Anthropic\u2019s refusal to back down on these two specific red lines, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth threatened two seemingly contradictory actions against Anthropic: Hegseth first said he may invoke a law called the Defense Production Act, which would require Anthropic to sell Claude to the Dept. of Defense without the restrictions that Anthropic wanted. Then, he said he\u2019d deem Anthropic a \u201csupply chain risk,\u201d which was followed by a Truth Social post by President Donald Trump expanding the threat, saying he was directing every federal agency to \u201cimmediately cease all use of Anthropic\u2019s technology.\u201d The president added that there would be a six month phase out period for agencies like the Department of Defense who are using Anthropic\u2019s products. For example, the government is currently using Anthropic\u2019s Claude in the military operation against Iran. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tOn Feb. 27, Sam Altman announced<\/a> his company, OpenAI, a competitor to Anthropic, had reached an agreement with the Pentagon to deploy their AI models in the classified military network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThe following week, on March 4, Anthropic was officially labeled as a supply chain risk, in a more narrow reading than Trump\u2019s Truth Social post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tRozenshtein explains how Hegseth\u2019s initial threat could have decimated Anthropic. \u201cThe DOD supply chain designation only applies to DOD contracts, but Hegseth was also saying no one who does business with the DOD can do any business with Anthropic at all, which would have ended Anthropic as a company,\u201d he says. The latter is not currently on the table, and if Trump follows through on his threat to stop Anthropic from selling to anyone in the government, Rozenshtein says that this is still only a fraction of Anthropic\u2019s overall business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\u201cBut the vibes are bad,\u201d says Rozenshtein. \u201cIt\u2019s bad to walk around being designated a supply chain risk by the U.S. government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tAnthropic filed lawsuits in California and Washington D.C. making multiple arguments against both the Department of Defense\u2019s actions and Trump\u2019s threats. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\u201cThe first argument they\u2019re making is that this supply chain issue makes no sense, this is not what the law was for,\u201d says Rozenshtein. \u201cThe law was for foreign companies who are trying to smuggle in threats, not a U.S. company that has a contract dispute.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t“You can\u2019t simultaneously say, \u2018We\u2019re going to force you to sell to us and we\u2019re going to use you to bomb Iran and you\u2019re really scary,\u201d he adds. \u201cThis seems very obvious to me and I think they will just win on these grounds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tAnthropic\u2019s suit is also alleging that the government is retaliating against them and infringing on their First Amendment rights, and that they\u2019re not getting due process. The last part of their lawsuit specifically refers to Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\u201cThey\u2019re saying Trump can\u2019t just do this, you can\u2019t ban an entire company for no reason from the entire federal government,\u201d adds Rozenshtein. \u201cCongress wrote a whole, very elaborate procurement system and there are rules for this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tHe sums the lawsuit up: \u201cIf the government can\u2019t come to some agreement with a company, do they shake hands and walk away like gentlemen? Or do they burn the company to the ground?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\u2018A Pressure Tactic\u2019 <\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\tAs Anthropic and the Pentagon continue their back and forth, the reality is that the government is still actively using Claude, and Anthropic is still in dialogue with them about the terms of their contract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\u201cSeeking judicial review does not change our longstanding commitment to harnessing AI to protect our national security, but this is a necessary step to protect our business, our customers, and our partners,\u201d Anthropic said in a statement to Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cWe will continue to pursue every path toward resolution, including dialogue with the government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThis discourse has reinvigorated calls for stronger AI regulations and congressional laws to weigh in, rather than leaving massive ethical decisions and red lines to be drawn by private companies whom the public has little influence on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\u201cThese are consequential policymaking decisions that have life and death implications,\u201d says Toh. \u201cYou can\u2019t just leave it up to the military to decide which kinds of weapons satisfy the U.S.\u2019s obligations under the law of war, that is something Congress should investigate and set restrictions on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tAnd, Toh adds, the First Amendment implications in this entire debate are extremely serious, whether we are talking about weapons, mass surveillance, or what text is outputted from an AI model. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\u201cIf even the threat of canceling government contracts could be used to force companies to align their technology in ways that prioritize certain facts over others, or characterize things in a certain way, or suppress content, that has a serious impact on our access to information,\u201d says Toh. \u201cWhat we are seeing with the DOD and Anthropic is that kind of pressure tactic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tRozenshtein says that while the feud between Anthropic and the government might be interesting to look at, he hopes people don\u2019t lose sight of the bigger, underlying issues surrounding our relationship with technology, who is making these decisions, and how it impacts all of our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\u201cThese are going to be the main issues that we’re gonna be debating for the next several years,\u201d he says. \u201cThey are really complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Silicon Valley company told the Department of Defense that their LLM wasn’t ready to be used in fully autonomous weapons\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and the government wasn’t pleased 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