Anthropic Plans to Sue Pentagon Following Government Ban

Anthropic is planning legal action after the Pentagon designated the company a security risk.

This statement from the artificial intelligence startup Friday (Feb. 27) came soon after the White House gave the company six months until it is cut off from government contracts.

“I am directing every federal agency in the United States government to immediately cease all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it and will not do business with them again!” the president said in a post on Truth Social.

Anthropic had clashed with the Department of War over its use of its Claude model for autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance. The Pentagon is now calling Anthropic a supply-chain risk.

In a post on X, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Anthropic had “delivered a masterclass in arrogance and betrayal” after a deadline to reach an agreement closed Friday. Effective immediately, no Pentagon contractors or suppliers “may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic,” Hegseth added.

(Nevertheless, Claude still played a role in the U.S. attack on Iran this weekend, according to a Wall Street Journal report.)

Anthropic said it plans to challenge the government’s decision in court.

“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 wrote on its blog, adding that Hegseth had no authority to issue the supply chain risk designation.

“Legally, a supply chain risk designation … 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,” the company said.

Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says his company had reached an agreement to use its models in the government’s networks. A report by the Financial Times, citing unnamed sources, said that Elon Musk’s xAi was nearing a deal of its own.

One day after the government announced the ban, Claude leapt to the top spot on Apple’s chart of top American free apps, per a report by CNBC. The report said this indicates Anthropic is benefiting from its expanded presence in the headlines.

In other Anthropic news, PYMNTS wrote last week new product announcements from the company that show Claude moving from chatbot to part of enterprise workflows.

For enterprise buyers, the report said, the announcements are essentially a clearer product bet: Anthropic sees Claude as a managed, governable layer that can work with the tools companies already pay for, with more “out-of-the-box” agents for things like finance and research.

“Whether that turns into a durable advantage will depend on adoption outside of technical teams — and on whether enterprises view Anthropic’s plugin-and-connector approach as the safest path to scale agentic AI without surrendering control of their data and workflows,” PYMNTS added.

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