The US Department of Defense officially designated Anthropic a supply chain risk, after repeatedly threatening to do so.
The designation is usually reserved for firms in unfriendly countries, such as China’s Huawei, and theoretically means Anthropic cannot work with any companies with military contracts. But its chatbot Claude is deeply embedded in the military’s systems, and removing it will be “painful,” an analyst told Bloomberg: Claude has been used in recent operations in both Venezuela and Iran.
Anthropic said it would sue — a lawsuit legal scholars think it would win — and insisted the move would have little impact on its business. A group of former intelligence and military officials wrote an open letter saying the move “sets a dangerous precedent.”