Anthropic refused the Pentagon's request; Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic products.

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The compliance dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon has escalated abruptly.

On Friday, February 27th, Trump announced an order for all U.S. federal agencies to stop using the AI company Anthropic’s products, granting a six-month transition period.

Trump used strong language on social media, posting:

The leftist lunatics at Anthropic made a catastrophic mistake—they tried to force the War Department to comply with their terms of service instead of our Constitution. Therefore, I direct all U.S. federal agencies to immediately cease use of all Anthropic technologies.

Previously, U.S. Secretary of Defense Hegseth threatened to cancel a $200 million contract if agreement was not reached by 5 p.m. on Friday, while xAI had already agreed to the clause.

WallstreetCN noted that the Pentagon required Anthropic to authorize Claude for “all lawful uses.” Anthropic refused to compromise, citing concerns over “mass surveillance” and “fully autonomous weapons.”

CEO Dario Amodei stated that the company could not accept what the Defense Department called its “final offer.” Amodei said frankly in a blog post:

We simply cannot, in good conscience, agree to their demands.

A tremendous impact on Anthropic

The core of the dispute is the Pentagon’s proposed standard: In classified environments, AI models should be usable for “all lawful purposes,” without “policy constraints” limiting military applications.

Reports stated that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth emphasized in a January 9 memo the need for “models unaffected by policy constraints, which do not restrict legitimate military applications.”

Anthropic insists on two red lines: not to be used for “mass surveillance of Americans,” and not to be used for “fully autonomous weapons.” In its statement, the company directly criticized the latest Defense Department wording, saying that the seemingly compromising new phrasing “cooperates with legal terminology,” which would allow these guardrails “to be ignored at any time.”

This move immediately triggered fierce criticism on social media from the Pentagon’s Deputy Secretary for Research and Engineering, Emil Michael, who called Amodei “a fraud with a God complex,” and accused him of intending to “personally control the U.S. military.”

Anthropic is currently valued at $380 billion and has signed a contract with the military worth about $200 million.

More critically, until recently, Anthropic remained the only AI system capable of operating in the Pentagon’s classified cloud environment; its Claude Gov tool was highly favored by defense personnel for its usability.

Pressure mounts across Silicon Valley; OpenAI also in negotiations

Despite escalating tensions, the U.S. Department of Defense briefly softened its stance on Friday morning. Emil Michael said in a Bloomberg TV interview:

So long as negotiations are in good faith, the Department of Defense is always willing to continue dialogue. I’m willing to communicate further until the deadline, and I have made that clear to them.

However, this window may have closed due to Trump’s direct intervention. The White House's hard-line position has completely dominated the situation, sharply narrowing any potential space for compromise.

This case is not isolated. According to The Wall Street Journal, employees at tech giants such as Amazon and Microsoft have previously urged their employers to refuse Pentagon demands for unrestricted use of AI products.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also stated in an internal memo that the company is negotiating with the Pentagon over similar restrictions: “We hope to try to de-escalate the situation.”

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