Trump directs all federal agencies to stop using AI company Anthropic's technology
CBC
The Trump administration on Friday ordered all U.S. agencies to stop using Anthropic's artificial intelligence technology and imposed other major penalties, culminating in an unusually public clash between the government and the company over AI safety.
U.S. President Donald Trump, U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials took to social media to chastise Anthropic for failing to allow the military unrestricted use of its AI technology by a Friday deadline, accusing it of endangering national security after CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down over concerns the company's products could be used in ways that would violate its safeguards.
"We don't need it, we don't want it, and will not do business with them again!" Trump said on social media.
Hegseth also deemed the company a "supply chain risk," a designation typically stamped on foreign adversaries that could derail the company's critical partnerships with other businesses.
The company said that "designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk would be an unprecedented action — one historically reserved for US adversaries, never before publicly applied to an American company."
Anthropic said the "designation would both be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government."
Anthropic had said it sought narrow assurances from the Pentagon that its AI chatbot Claude would not be used for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon said it was not interested in such uses and would only deploy the technology in legal ways, but it also insisted on access without any limitations.
The government's effort to assert dominance over the internal decision-making of the company comes amid a wider clash over AI's role in national security and concerns about how increasingly capable machines could be used in high-stakes situations involving lethal force, sensitive information or government surveillance.
Trump said Anthropic made a mistake trying to strong-arm the Pentagon. He wrote on Truth Social that most agencies must immediately stop using Anthropic's AI but gave the Pentagon a six-month period to phase out the technology that is already embedded in military platforms.
"The United States of America will never allow a radical left, woke company to dictate how our great military fights and wins wars!" he wrote in all caps.
After months of private talks exploded into public debate this week, Anthropic said Thursday that the government's new contract language would allow "safeguards to be disregarded at will." Amodei said his company "cannot in good conscience accede" to the demands.
Anthropic can afford to lose the contract. But the government's actions posed broader risks at the peak of the company's meteoric rise from a little-known computer science research lab in San Francisco to one of the world's most valuable startups.
The president's decision was preceded by hours of top Trump appointees from the Pentagon and the State Department taking to social media to criticize Anthropic, but their complaints posed contradictions.
Sean Parnell, the Pentagon's top spokesman, said on social media Thursday that Anthropic's unwillingness to go along with the military's demands was "jeopardizing critical military operations and potentially putting our warfighters at risk."
