The US Department of Defence has stopped using Anthropic’s artificial intelligence products, according to a statement from a Pentagon official released on Monday. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had previously designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk on national security grounds in February, with an initial directive requiring the Pentagon to discontinue use by late August. The timeline for full implementation remains unclear.
Multiple sources familiar with the matter indicated that Anthropic’s Claude model was still operating within Pentagon systems as recently as the previous week, supporting research, analysis, intelligence gathering, and military operations. The AI tool was considered valuable for processing substantial volumes of information. Claude had been integrated into the Pentagon’s Maven Smart System, a primary intelligence and data organization platform operated by Palantir Technologies.
The friction between the Pentagon and Anthropic arose when the military requested that the company remove safety guardrails from Claude and grant unrestricted access to its AI capabilities. Anthropic declined this request, citing concerns regarding mass surveillance and autonomous weapons development. In response, Hegseth applied the supply chain risk designation—a classification typically reserved for companies based in countries deemed threatening to US national security.
Anthropics has challenged the designation as “unprecedented and unlawful” and filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking to overturn it. During this legal proceedings, the Pentagon has established contracts with alternative technology providers including Google, xAI, and OpenAI, with the latter seeing expanded adoption in certain military departments. Security analysts noted that removing Claude from the deeply integrated Maven system presented technical challenges, explaining the delay between the initial February directive and complete discontinuation. Meanwhile, relations between Anthropic and the White House appear to be improving, with Anthropic’s chief executive meeting with President Trump at the White House recently.
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