{"id":449741,"date":"2026-02-28T05:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T05:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/449741\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T05:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T05:20:07","slug":"trump-has-ordered-government-agencies-to-stop-using-anthropic-ai-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/449741\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump has ordered government agencies to stop using Anthropic AI tools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Prior to Trump&#8217;s Friday decision, Anthropic received support in its stance against the government.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">OpenAI boss Sam Altman offered support to rival AI executive Amodei. He sent a note to staff stating that he had the same &#8220;red lines&#8221; when it came to the application of the firms&#8217; products.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In the note seen by the BBC, Altman said any OpenAI contracts for the military would also reject uses that were &#8220;unlawful or unsuited to cloud deployments, such as domestic surveillance and autonomous offensive weapons&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He later confirmed on X that OpenAI had reached a deal with the Department of War to use its AI models on classified cloud networks. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Amodei is a long-time figure in tech, rising to prominence as an early employee of OpenAI. He and a handful of other OpenAI employees left the company to found Anthropic after disagreements with Altman.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The two startups now compete directly for users and corporate customers with an evolving offer of AI chatbots, agents and other tools.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I do not fully understand how things got here; I do not know why Anthropic did their deal with the Pentagon and Palantir in the way they originally did it,&#8221; Altman wrote in his company memo.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But regardless of how we got here, this is no longer just an issue between Anthropic and the [Department of War] DoW; this is an issue for the whole industry and it is important to clarify our stance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hegseth on Tuesday called Amodei to Washington DC for a meeting amid growing tensions. It culminated in two contradictory ultimatums if Anthropic refused to grant the department free rein of its tools.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hegseth said he would invoke the Defense Production Act, allowing the government to use Anthropic&#8217;s products as it saw fit, and deem it a &#8220;supply chain risk&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">By Thursday, Amodei said he would rather stop working with the Pentagon than acquiesce to such threats. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A former official with the DoD, who asked not to be named, told the BBC that Anthropic appeared to have the upper hand in the fight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This is great PR for them and they simply do not need the money,&#8221; the former official said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Anthropic&#8217;s work with the Pentagon is part of a contract worth $200m. The company&#8217;s most recent valuation came earlier this month and put the company&#8217;s worth at $380 billion, based on its current revenue and future expected earnings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The former official added that the defence department&#8217;s basis for threatening Anthropic with invoking either the Defense Production Act and being labelled a supply chain risk was &#8220;extremely flimsy&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prior to Trump&#8217;s Friday decision, Anthropic received support in its stance against the government. OpenAI boss Sam Altman&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-449741","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}