President Trump on Friday blasted Anthropic as “woke” and “leftwing” for refusing to remove safeguards on its AI for use in surveillance and autonomous weapons.
“WE will decide the fate of our Country—NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The president argued that San Francisco-based Anthropic is run by “Leftwing nut jobs” who allegedly tried to strong-arm the Pentagon into obeying its terms of service, rather than the US Constitution. “Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY,” Trump wrote.
In a tweet, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth piled on, claiming, “Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal” after being awarded a contract worth up to $200 million to prototype AI capabilities for national security.
Aside from the name-calling, the White House is preparing to essentially blacklist Anthropic. “I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security,” Hesgeth added, which he previously pledged to do if the company refused to comply with the Pentagon’s demands by Friday at 5:01 p.m. EST.
“Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic,” he added.
The Defense Department plans on phasing out Anthropic’s AI technology over the next six months. In his own post, Trump also directed every other federal agency to immediately cease using the company’s technology. “We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” he wrote.
In addition, the president is threatening to crack down even harder on Anthropic, though he didn’t get specific. “Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow,” Trump said.
It could potentially have severe financial consequences. As noted by Dean W. Ball, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, “Nvidia, Amazon, Google will have to divest from Anthropic if Hegseth gets his way. This is simply attempted corporate murder. I could not possibly recommend investing in American AI to any investor; I could not possibly recommend starting an AI company in the United States.”
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Anthropic is also pushing back. In a statement, the company said the supply-chain risk designation “would both be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government.”
“No amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court,” the company added. “Legally, a supply chain risk designation under 10 USC 3252 can only extend to the use of Claude as part of Department of War contracts—it cannot affect how contractors use Claude to serve other customers.”
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In the meantime, the White House’s attempt to cast Anthropic as a digital pariah appears to be bolstering the company’s reputation in some corners. “It’s extremely good that Anthropic has not backed down, and it’s significant that OpenAI has taken a similar stance,” OpenAI’s former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, tweeted. On the same day, OpenAI reportedly confirmed it had the same restrictions as Anthropic and does not permit its AI to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons.
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Sutskever added: “In the future, there will be much more challenging situations of this nature, and it will be critical for the relevant leaders to rise up to the occasion, for fierce competitors to put their differences aside. Good to see that happen today.”
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also asked: “Is the Trump administration punishing Anthropic because it’s refusing to help mass surveil American communities or build killer robots? The American people deserve to know what Trump officials are planning at the Pentagon.”
Meanwhile, almost 500 Google employees and another 80 OpenAI staffers have signed an open letter in support of Anthropic. The letter notes: “The Pentagon is negotiating with Google and OpenAI to try to get them to agree to what Anthropic has refused. They’re trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in. That strategy only works if none of us know where the others stand.” (Googlers have some experience pushing back on the company’s involvement with Pentagon projects.)
Even before today’s deadline, Anthropic said it would refuse the Defense Department’s demands. In a Thursday blog post, it noted: “They have threatened to remove us from their systems if we maintain these safeguards; they have also threatened to designate us a ‘supply chain risk’—a label reserved for US adversaries, never before applied to an American company—and to invoke the Defense Production Act to force the safeguards’ removal.”
As Jan Leike, an Alignment team lead at Anthropic, tweeted: “US government just announced they are looking for a new supplier for their *checks notes* mass domestic surveillance.”
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I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
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