US President Donald Trump on Saturday directed all federal agencies in the country to stop using Anthropic, an AI startup the President heavily denounced in a lengthy Truth Social post. With this move and the Pentagon’s designation of Anthropic as a “supply chain risk”, the AI firm’s work prospects appear to be in danger.
“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a disastrous mistake trying to strong-arm the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” a part of Trump’s post read.
His criticism of Anthropic comes in the backdrop of the company’s refusal to allow the US military unrestricted use of its AI technology.
Trump also referred to the firm as “radical left and woke” in his latest post asserting that he won’t allow it to dictate how wars are fought and won. “We don’t need it, we don’t want it and we won’t do business with them again!”, Trump said, announcing a six-month phase-out period for federal agencies to switch over to other means.
Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has deemed the firm a “supply chain risk”, a designation expected to hurt its critical partnerships with other businesses.
Founded by former OpenAI research head Dario Amodei, Anthropic has been at odds with Trump and the Pentagon for some time now, largely over not allowing its systems to be used for fully autonomous weapons without any human intervention, and domestic mass surveillance.
The firm secured $200 million in Pentagon contracts last year. However, after Anthropic declined to permit its AI tools to be used for certain specific purposes, the Pentagon maintained that once tools are lawfully acquired, it is not up to the company to dictate how the military uses them.
After Trump’s order to federal agencies to drop Anthropic use, the AI startup released a statement, clarifying that no amount of “intimidation or punishment” from the Department of War would change its position on fully autonomous weapons and domestic mass surveillance.
Anthropic also said that it would challenge in court the Pentagon’s decision to declare the AI firm a supply-chain risk.
