A US federal judge’s decision to halt the Trump administration’s designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk — a preliminary win for Anthropic in its lawsuit against the Pentagon — shows just how little this fight had to do with national security concerns. “If the concern is the integrity of the operational chain of command, the Department of War could just stop using Claude,” the judge wrote, describing the Pentagon’s actions as “classic illegal First Amendment retaliation.”
In question isn’t whether Anthropic is a supply chain risk, but how the Pentagon wants to approach algorithmic warfare. To get answers on this, I sat down this week with Drew Cukor, the original architect of the Pentagon’s Project Maven, who dragged a reluctant defense establishment into the AI age.
Now, the fragile alliance he helped forge is unraveling in federal court, shadowed by the Iran war and the devastating US strike on a school in Minab that left more than 160 civilians dead. Cukor spoke about his time on the frontlines of defense innovation, the fallout from Iran, and whether Silicon Valley’s ethics can survive the realities of global conflict. “There’s going to be an adjudication, a review. Where does the human belong in this process?” he said.