The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has officially ceased all operational use of Anthropic products following a months-long standoff over safety guardrails.
“The Department of War has ceased the use of Anthropic products,” a department spokesperson told MeriTalk.
Under the Trump administration, the DOD was rebranded as the Department of War.
The move comes eight months after the Pentagon designated the artificial intelligence (AI) company a supply chain risk.
The dispute began with the Pentagon’s push to use Claude for “all lawful uses.” Anthropic objected to two applications: mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.
After negotiations between Anthropic and the Pentagon broke down, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the department to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk. Anthropic challenged the designation, arguing that the government had unlawfully retaliated against the company. The administration defended the action as a national security measure.
The months-long legal battle resulted in conflicting rulings, with one federal court siding with Anthropic and the D.C. Circuit upholding the Pentagon’s designation of the company as a supply chain risk.
On Sept. 25, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the Pentagon’s designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk in a 2-1 decision, allowing the DOD to continue excluding Anthropic’s AI models from its systems and defense contract work. Earlier, on Aug. 27, U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin in California sided with Anthropic in its challenge to broader federal restrictions stemming from the same dispute.
The two rulings leave Anthropic with a mixed legal outcome. The company prevailed in its California case challenging the administration’s broader restrictions but lost its challenge to the Pentagon’s supply chain risk designation in Washington.
As a result, the Pentagon can continue excluding Claude from its systems and defense contract work, while the California ruling remains in place. Anthropic could ask the full D.C. Circuit to reconsider the ruling or ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case.