The Pentagon has stopped using Anthropic's AI tools, a department official told the BBC on Monday, months after Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth designated the company a national security supply-chain risk. Claude remained in use last week, including in operations against Iran, through Palantir's Maven Smart System. Anthropic refused to remove Claude's safety guardrails and has sued the Trump administration.
The Pentagon says it has stopped using Anthropic's Claude after designating the company a supply chain risk in February. Microsoft has cut its projected $1 billion internal Anthropic spend by more than a third, and Meta halved Claude Code seats to roughly 30,000. Anthropic plans an IPO before year end at a $2 trillion valuation.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveils six Pentagon initiatives, including an Autonomous Warfare Command slated to become a four-star combatant command by Oct. 1, 2027, and Project Meridian, which gives Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich 120 days to review next-generation military technology.
A divided D.C. Circuit panel upholds the Pentagon’s supply-chain-risk designation of Anthropic, keeping Claude barred from military and defense-contractor use after talks collapsed over safeguards against autonomous weapons and domestic mass surveillance.
Anthropic says an unidentified northern Yemen cell is using Claude to aid guided-rocket and ballistic-missile development, including the R2000 missile family and a system it claims can travel more than 2,000 kilometers.
Anthropic says a China-aligned account lacking Arabic skills uses Claude over several days to draft regional-dialect messages recruiting Uyghurs in Syria and translate targets’ replies live, while separate suspected Russian and Yemen-linked users employ automated workflows for phishing and missile-related coding.
Mach Industries raises a $600 million Series C extension after paying $50 million in cash and equity for Exquadrum, outbidding at least eight suitors and expanding into solid rocket motors through its new Mach Energetics unit.
Anthropic says it has blocked several attempts to use its AI for biological-weapons research, while former safety leaders Evan Hubinger and Paul Christiano warn that the industry still lacks an adequate plan to control potentially catastrophic superintelligent systems.
Anthropic says a Yemen-based operation uses Claude Code to build rocket-guidance software and seeks troubleshooting advice after a failed test flight, while Chinese labs including Alibaba, DeepSeek, Moonshot and Xiaomi allegedly use thousands of fraudulent accounts to distill Claude outputs.
The Pentagon rolls out ChatGPT Mil and Grok for Government through its secure GenAI.mil portal, granting 3 million military and civilian personnel access to cutting-edge AI tools, with over 1.7 million users already onboarded — while Anthropic's Claude remains excluded after being flagged as a supply-chain risk by the Trump administration.