Editor’s note: This story was updated Feb. 27, 2026
Just before a deadline set by the Pentagon asking for Anthropic to relax some of its safety guardrails, President Donald Trump announced the government would stop working with the AI model provider.
“I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology,” President Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!”
Government agencies that use Anthropic products will have a six-month phase out period, according to the post.
Yesterday, Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei said in a statement that it cannot “in good conscience accede to their request” to make its AI policy more flexible.
While he believes AI could help defend the U.S., Amodei stated that right now, “we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values,” especially for mass domestic surveillance and to power fully autonomous weapons.
The Risk When Holding the Line
As Anthropic draws a line in the sand with the Pentagon, AI vendors and enterprises are watching the situation closely, triggering a broader discussion about who has the authority to define safe use of AI and what safe AI looks like.
On Tuesday, Anthropic revamped its “Responsible Scaling Policy,” in move that would allow it to focus more on transparency and less on ensuring the models it releases are not harmful to society.
The contrast between Anthropic’s decision to scale back its RSP while refusing to bow to the government shows the pressure AI vendors are under to remain competitive while ensuring their models are not harmful to society.
Anthropic is not the only vendor feeling a rise in political tension. OpenAI and Google employees are also pushing their employers to follow Anthropic’s lead.
“Frontier AI companies are no longer neutral infrastructure providers; they are strategic actors whose models have dual-use military relevance,” said Kashyap Kompella, CEO and founder of RPA2AI Research. “Like the chip vendors, we are witnessing the normalization of AI vendors as geopolitical stakeholders. The question is not whether AI will be used in defense contexts; it already is, but who sets the terms of that use?”
For R “Ray” Wang, CEO of Constellation Research, the push-pull between Anthropic and the government raises questions about government contracts with other tech vendors.
“What is Google, xAI and OpenAI doing differently that allows them to be fine, whereas Anthropic is not OK,” Wang said, given the AI vendor’s concerns around human surveillance and autonomous weapons. “The other companies were fine with it, but Anthropic wasn’t?”
But he also believes Anthropic’s decision could affect its bottom line with customers being turned off by a vendor forcing them to use systems in a certain way. The Pentagon, in particular, needs flexibility, Wang said.
“They need systems that are unencumbered,” he said. “When you buy software from someone, you don’t want them to push their ethics on you.”
Other enterprises might not want to get in between Anthropic and the government, Wang continued.
“AI is going to be different for every government and every individual,” he said. “The software should be set and designed so you can apply your values to the software, not be dictated by the software vendor what values are going to be given to you.”
AI Vendors and Complex Relationships
Anthropic’s tangle with the government signals how quickly the relationship between AI vendors and the government is evolving — as well as the complexity of these dynamics.
On the surface, Anthropic will lose its $200 million contract with the Pentagon and some opportunities if the Pentagon classifies it as a supply chain risk, but underneath, what’s at stake is much more nuanced, Kompella said.
“What lies beneath is a negotiation over sovereignty and control,” he said. “Governments assume authority over lawful military application. AI vendors are attempting to retain some degree of normative governance over their systems post-sale.”
Michael Bennett, associate vice chancellor for data science and AI strategy at the University of Illinois Chicago, pointed out that the Trump administration aims to ensure the U.S. will win the AI race, which means Anthropic could be standing in the way of those goals. On the other hand, if the administration backs down against Anthropic, a startup, it might affect how other vendors respond to government pressure.
Vendors, too, run the risk of following through on government demands and potentially triggering an exodus of employees who disagree with the decision.
“[Anthropic understands] that its most valuable asset is not the weights of Claude but the programmers who are working with it, who are training it,” Bennett said. “It’s probably a big part of the reason the CEO is standing firm because he knows that the employees who work for Anthropic expect that.”
Nevertheless, the latest decision by President Trump will trouble the U.S. intelligence community, Bennett said.
“Claude is widely considered to be more useful than most alternatives,” he said. “Removing it from defense intelligence and other federal government workflows would almost certainly be disruptive.”
