Hello and welcome to the details of Trump directs US agencies to toss Anthropic’s AI as Pentagon calls startup a supply-chain risk and now with the details
Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - US President Donald Trump said yesterday he is directing the government to stop work with Anthropic and the Pentagon said it will declare the startup a supply-chain risk, dealing a major blow to the artificial intelligence lab after a showdown about technology guardrails. — AFP pic
- Pentagon labels Anthropic a supply-chain risk, affecting defence contractors
- Trump threatens further action if Anthropic is not helpful
- President’s post orders six-month phase-out of Anthropic technology across government
WASHINGTON, Feb 28 — US President Donald Trump said yesterday he is directing the government to stop work with Anthropic and the Pentagon said it will declare the startup a supply-chain risk, dealing a major blow to the artificial intelligence lab after a showdown about technology guardrails.
Trump added there would be a six-month phase-out for the Defence Department and other agencies that use the company’s products. If Anthropic does not help with the transition, Trump said, he would use “the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.”
Spokespeople for Anthropic, which won up to US$200 million (RM778 million) from the Pentagon in a contract last year, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The planned designation as a supply-chain risk, announced by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, means that contractors could be barred from deploying Anthropic’s AI as part of work for the Pentagon. The defence industrial base includes tens of thousands of contractors, including major public companies. The designation is typically reserved for suppliers from adversary nations. Such action was taken to remove Chinese tech giant Huawei from the Pentagon’s supply chains: Starting in 2017, the US restricted Defence Department use of Huawei equipment, prohibited federal agencies from purchasing its technology, and halted federal grant and loan funds for Huawei equipment.
Anthropic could launch a court challenge to the designation, which poses an existential threat to its business with the government and may harm its private-sector relationships, according to Franklin Turner, an attorney who specialises in government contracts.
“Blacklisting Anthropic is the contractual equivalent of nuclear war,” he said.
Weapons, surveillance concerns
The Pentagon had set a deadline yesterday to resolve an escalating feud with San Francisco-based Anthropic over how the military could use AI at war. AI leader Anthropic has raced to win fierce competition to sell novel technology to businesses and government, particularly for national security, ahead of a widely expected initial public offering. The company has said it has not finalised an IPO decision.
At the same time, the battle over technological guardrails had raised concerns that the Defence Department would follow US law but few other constraints when deploying AI for national-security missions, regardless of safety or ethics terms required by the technology’s developers.
Anthropic had sought guarantees that its AI would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or for mass domestic surveillance — applications in which the Pentagon has said it had no interest.
Anthropic was the first frontier AI lab to put its models on classified networks via cloud provider Amazon.com and the first to build customised models for national security customers, the startup has said.
Its product Claude is in use across the intelligence community and armed services.
US Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat and vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, criticised the action taken by Trump, a Republican.
“The president’s directive to halt the use of a leading American AI company across the federal government, combined with inflammatory rhetoric attacking that company, raises serious concerns about whether national security decisions are being driven by careful analysis or political considerations.”
Tech companies and the Pentagon have repeatedly locked horns since at least 2018, when employees at Alphabet’s Google protested against the Pentagon’s use of the company’s AI to analyse drone footage. A rapprochement ensued with companies including Amazon and Microsoft jousting for defence business, while several big-tech CEOs pledged cooperation last year with the Trump administration.
But theoretical “killer robots” have remained a concern held by human-rights and technology activists. At the same time, Ukraine and Gaza have become theatres for increasingly automated systems on the battlefield. — Reuters
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