Trump Bans Anthropic After AI Ethics Standoff with Pentagon

President Donald Trump ordered all U.S. federal agencies to cease using technology from Anthropic PBC on February 27, 2026, following a breakdown in negotiations with the Department of War. The conflict centered on Anthropic's refusal to remove safety guardrails prohibiting the use of its Claude AI for mass domestic surveillance of Americans and the development of fully autonomous lethal weapons. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth subsequently designated Anthropic a supply chain risk to national security, a label typically reserved for foreign adversaries, which terminated a $200 million contract and barred military contractors from conducting commercial activity with the firm.

Despite the ban, reports indicate the U.S. military continued using Claude for intelligence assessments and target identification during joint strikes against Iran and a January operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei characterized the government's actions as retaliatory and punitive, vowing to challenge the risk designation in court. He further alleged the administration targeted the company because it did not offer dictator-style praise to the president.

In the wake of the ban, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a deal to deploy OpenAI models on classified military networks. While Altman initially claimed the deal preserved similar red lines to those sought by Anthropic, he later admitted the announcement was opportunistic and sloppy, subsequently amending the contract to explicitly prohibit intentional domestic surveillance of U.S. persons. The dispute sparked a consumer backlash against OpenAI, fueling a QuitGPT movement that drove Claude to the top of the U.S. Apple App Store rankings.