President Donald Trump instructed all federal agencies to completely discontinue the use of AI startup Anthropic’s technologies within six months.
“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and we won’t do business with them anymore!” declared the head of state.
In July 2025, the US Department of Defense signed contracts worth up to $200 million with Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI to develop AI solutions in the security sector. The department’s Chief Digital and AI Office planned to use their technologies to create agent systems.
By January 2026, WSJ reported on the risk of breaking the agreement with Anthropic. Disagreements arose due to the startup’s strict ethical policy. The rules prohibit using the Claude model for mass surveillance and autonomous lethal operations.
Officials’ dissatisfaction grew amid the integration of the Grok chatbot into the Pentagon’s network. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, commenting on the partnership with xAI, emphasized that the department “will not use models that do not allow for waging wars.”
In February 2026, the US Army employed Claude in an operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, after which the conflict intensified.
The Pentagon considered severing ties with Anthropic, and department head Pete Hegseth called the company a “supply chain risk.”
CEO of the startup, Dario Amodei, stated that Anthropic would prefer not to cooperate with the Pentagon rather than agree to the use of its technologies in ways that could “undermine rather than protect democratic values.” He confirmed that the issue lies in the potential use of tools like Claude for two purposes: “domestic mass surveillance” and “fully autonomous weapons.”
“The leftists at Anthropic made a catastrophic mistake by trying to strong-arm the Department of Defense into complying with their terms instead of our Constitution. Their selfishness endangers American lives, our troops, and national security,” Trump wrote.
He described the startup as an “out-of-control” company run by people who “have no idea what the real world is.”
In addition to Anthropic’s chatbot, the Pentagon uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok for non-classified tasks. All three developers agreed to relax restrictions in place for regular users.
As reported, Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX, which recently acquired xAI, will participate in creating voice-controlled autonomous drones for the military department.