Trump orders government to stop using Anthropic in battle over AI use

US President Donald Trump said Friday he would direct every federal agency to immediately stop using technology from AI developer Anthropic.

"We don't need it, we don't want it, and will not do business with them again!" Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

Anthropic is mired in a row with the Trump administration over who decides how its AI tools can be used in the battlefield and in domestic security.

Trump made the latest comments just before a deadline the Pentagon had given Anthropic to grant it unfettered access to the firm's AI tools.

Anthropic boss, Dario Amodei, said earlier this week he would not bend to such demands over concern that Anthropic would be used in mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.

Anthropic's tools will now be phased out of all government work over the next six months, Trump said.

As the Pentagon's deadline approached Trump released the barrage of messages on the Truth Social platform, saying Anthropic "better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow."

Prior to Trump's pronouncement, Anthropic had said that if the US Department of Defense chose to stop using the company's tools the company would "work to enable a smooth transition to another provider".

The President also called Anthropic "woke" and accused it of being an "out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about".

Anthropic has been in use by the US government and military since 2024.

The company did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment.

Prior to Trump's Friday decision, Anthropic received support in its stance against the government.

Notably OpenAI boss Sam Altman made it very clear he supported his rival AI executive Amodei. He sent a note to staff stating that he had the same "red lines" when it came to the application of the firms' products.

In the note seen by the BBC, Altman said any OpenAI contracts for defence would also reject uses that were "unlawful or unsuited to cloud deployments, such as domestic surveillance and autonomous offensive weapons".

Amodei is a long-time figure in tech, rising to prominence as an early employee of OpenAI. He and a handful of other OpenAI employees left the company to found Anthropic after disagreements with Altman.

The two startups now compete directly for users and corporate customers with an evolving offer of AI chatbots, agents and other tools.

"I do not fully understand how things got here; I do not know why Anthropic did their deal with the Pentagon and Palantir in the way they originally did it," Altman wrote in his company memo.

"But regardless of how we got here, this is no longer just an issue between Anthropic and the [Department of War] DoW; this is an issue for the whole industry and it is important to clarify our stance."

The Department of War is a secondary name Trump has given to the Defence Department.

On Friday morning, groups representing roughly 700,000 tech workers within Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, all companies that have their own contracts with the Defence Department, signed an open letter urging the companies they worked for to also "refuse to comply" with the Pentagon's demands.

"Tech workers are united in our stance that our employers should not be in the business of war," the elected Executive Board of the Alphabet Workers Union said in a separate statement.

Earlier in the week US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called Amodei to Washington DC for a meeting, which culminated in two contradictory ultimatums, if Anthropic refused to grant the department free rein for "any lawful use" of its tools.

Hegseth said he would invoke the Defense Production Act, allowing the government to use Anthropic's products as it saw fit.

He also said he would deem Anthropic a "supply chain risk," meaning the company would be labelled not secure enough for government use.

Amodei said on Thursday he would rather stop working with the Pentagon than acquiesce to such threats.

While Trump on Friday made no mention of either, Hegseth took to X and said Anthropic would be "immediately" designated a supply chain risk, prohibiting any business working with the military from "any commercial activity with Anthropic".

A former official with the DoD, who asked not to be named, told the BBC that Anthropic appeared to have the upper hand in the fight.

"This is great PR for them and they simply do not need the money," the former official said.

Anthropic's work with the Pentagon is part of a contract worth $200m. The company's most recent valuation came earlier this month and put the company's worth at $380 billion, based on its current revenue and future expected earnings.

The former official added that the DoD's basis for threatening Anthropic with invoking either the Defense Production Act and being labeled a supply chain risk was "extremely flimsy".

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