Hundreds of tech workers have signed an open letter urging the Department of Defense to withdraw its designation of Anthropic as a “supply-chain risk.” The letter also calls on Congress to step in and “examine whether the use of these extraordinary authorities against an American technology company is appropriate.”
The letter includes signatories from major technology and venture capital firms, including OpenAI, Slack, IBM, Cursor, Salesforce Ventures, and more. It follows a dispute between the DOD and Anthropic after the AI lab last week refused to give the military unrestricted access to its AI systems.
Anthropic’s two red lines in its negotiations with the Pentagon were that it didn’t want its technology to be used for mass surveillance of Americans or to power autonomous weapons that could target and fire without a human in the loop. The DOD said it had no plans to do either of those things but that it didn’t believe it should be limited by the rules of a vendor.
After Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei declined to reach an agreement with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, President Donald Trump on Friday directed federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology after a six-month transition period. Hegseth then moved to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk — a designation normally reserved for foreign adversaries that would blacklist the AI firm from working with any agency or company that does business with the Pentagon.
In a post on Friday, Hegseth wrote: “Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.”
But a post on X does not automatically make Anthropic a supply-chain risk. The government needs to complete a risk assessment and notify Congress before military partners have to cut ties with Anthropic or its products. Anthropic said in a blog post the designation is “legally unsound” and that it would “challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.”
Many in the industry see the administration’s treatment of Anthropic as harsh and clear retaliation.
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