Pentagon Says It Has Stopped Using Anthropic’s AI Tools Months After Blacklisting

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 (TodayViralUSA) — The Pentagon has stopped using artificial intelligence tools made by Anthropic, a department official said on Monday, more than seven months after Secretary of War Pete Hegseth designated the San Francisco company a national security supply-chain risk.

The Pentagon “has ceased the use of Anthropic products,” the official said in a statement provided to the BBC in response to questions about the department’s continued reliance on the company’s Claude models. Anthropic declined to comment on the statement.

Hegseth labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk in February and set a six-month deadline, issued on Feb. 27, for the department to phase out its products by late August. The Pentagon did not explain why the removal took longer.

Embedded in Maven

Several people familiar with the matter, including former U.S. defense officials and contractors who have worked with the Pentagon on AI, told the BBC that Claude was still being used as recently as last week for research, analysis and intelligence work, as well as in military operations against Iran.

According to those sources, Claude was built into the Maven Smart System, the Pentagon’s main platform for organizing intelligence and other data, which is operated by Palantir. Analysts use Maven to sort material such as satellite imagery and drone footage, which was then fed into Claude and other large language models for tasks that included identifying potential military targets, the BBC reported.

Lauren Kahn, a senior research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology and a former U.S. defense official, told the BBC that the length of time needed to remove Claude showed that such systems are “not just plug and play,” adding that once integrated they can be painful to remove.

Dispute over guardrails

Anthropic’s tools had been used by the U.S. government and military since 2024, and it was the first advanced AI developer whose products were deployed in agencies doing classified work. Earlier this year, the Pentagon pressed the company to remove safety guardrails from Claude and give the military unrestricted access. Anthropic refused, citing concerns about mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.

Hegseth then applied the supply-chain-risk designation, a tool typically reserved for companies tied to countries considered hostile to the United States. Anthropic called the move “unprecedented and unlawful” and has sued the administration to overturn it.

While the legal fight has continued, the Pentagon has signed agreements with other major AI developers, including Google, xAI and OpenAI. Two people familiar with the department’s AI use told the BBC that OpenAI tools have been more widely adopted in some parts of the military in recent months.

Signs of a thaw

The Pentagon’s statement comes as relations between Anthropic and the White House appear to be improving. President Donald Trump met Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei twice at the White House last week. After one meeting, Amodei told reporters that he still had concerns about the risks of AI and that how to address them was still under discussion, but that “if we work with the president, we can win safely.” Trump praised Amodei as “great” and “fantastic,” according to the BBC.