The Department of Defense is putting an artificial intelligence company’s multimillion-dollar government contract on the chopping block because it doesn’t agree with how the company might wield its power.
According to multiple reports, Anthropic has some qualms with the Pentagon using its Claude AI program in a massive surveillance program on U.S. citizens. They also take issue with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth potentially using AI to develop weapons that fire with no human involvement.
Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, shown in 2025.
Basically, Hegseth has said that the company is asking for too much, and after months of fighting behind closed doors, the White House wants to bring this fight to the public, according to a source that spoke to Axios.
"The Department of War's relationship with Anthropic is being reviewed,” a Pentagon spokesperson told Axios Monday, using President Donald Trump’s rebranded name for the Defense Department. “Our nation requires that our partners be willing to help our warfighters win in any fight. Ultimately, this is about our troops and the safety of the American people."
Hegseth, a former Fox News host, is reportedly threatening to pull the plug and, in an extreme move typically reserved for U.S. enemies, label Anthropic a “supply chain risk.”
In other words, any other company that wants a military contract would have to end its business with the AI giant, if it has any. If it sounds petty, it might be because it is petty.
“It will be an enormous pain in the ass to disentangle, and we are going to make sure they pay a price for forcing our hand like this,” an unnamed Pentagon official told Axios.
The use of Anthropic’s AI in the Pentagon goes so deep that its programs were reportedly used to carry out the military operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.
Legally murky military missions aside, Trump has denounced working with “woke” AI companies, and has recently welcomed Grok—Elon Musk’s AI program that once referred to itself as “MechaHitler”—into the Department of Health and Human Services.
So when Anthropic began seeking to restrict the government’s use of Claude, and after one of the company’s co-founders spoke out against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the relationship between the White House and the tech company undoubtedly got tense.
However, this administration seems to be taking a page from a familiar playbook. Instead of negotiating, Hegseth wants to threaten Anthropic into cooperating with military commands—much like how Trump handles his extreme tariff policy.
According to the tech company in a statement to Axios: "We are having productive conversations, in good faith, with DoW on how to continue that work and get these new and complex issues right."
