Anthropic vows court fight in Pentagon row

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei has said the company has "no choice" but to challenge in court the Pentagon's formal designation of the artificial intelligence firm as a risk to US national security.

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei has said the company has "no choice" but to challenge in court the Pentagon's formal designation of the artificial intelligence firm as a risk to US national security.

The CEO, writing in a blog post on Thursday, insisted however that the ruling's practical scope is narrower than initially suggested, signaling that the designation would not have a catastrophic effect on the company.

Amodei said the Department of War, the name preferred by the Trump administration for the Department of Defense, confirmed in a letter that Anthropic and its products, including its widely-used Claude AI model, have been deemed a supply chain risk.

It is the first time a US company has ever been publicly given such a designation, a label typically reserved for organisations from foreign adversary countries, like Chinese tech company Huawei.

Amodei, in his blog post, said the company disputes the legal basis of the action but sought to reassure customers.

"It plainly applies only to the use of Claude by customers as a direct part of contracts with the Department of War, not all use of Claude by customers who have such contracts," he wrote.