The United States Department of War (formerly Dept of Defense) and Anthropic PBC have confirmed that the artificial intelligence company has been formally designated as a ‘Supply Chain Risk’ (SCR) by the government.
In a blog post on Thursday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said that the company received a letter from the DoW the day prior, on 4 March, to this effect, and added that Anthropic would pursue legal action against the move.
Amodei also apologised for a leaked internal memo in which he criticised US President Donald Trump, adding in the statement that the assessment was “out-of-date” and not of the company’s.
‘Do not believe this action is legally sound’
“Yesterday (March 4) Anthropic received a letter from the Department of War confirming that we have been designated as a supply chain risk to America’s national security. We do not believe this action is legally sound, and we see no choice but to challenge it in court,” Amodei said.
He added that the statute applied (10 USC 3252) is “narrow” and exists to “protect the government rather than to punish a supplier”. SCR “doesn’t (and can’t) limit uses of Claude or business relationships with Anthropic if those are unrelated to their specific Department of War contracts”, the statement said.
According to the CEO, Anthropic was “having productive conversations” with the DoW over the “last several days”.
“The War Department and our company are both committed to advancing US national security and agree on urgency of applying AI across government. The language used by the DoW matches our statement on Friday, that vast majority of customers are unaffected by SCR designation,” he wrote.
‘Leaked internal post is an out-of-date assessment’
Amodei further said that the leaked memo “does not reflect my careful or considered views and is an out-of-date assessment of the current situation” and issued an apology in the blog post.
He wrote: “I also want to apologize directly for a post internal to the company that was leaked to the press yesterday. Anthropic did not leak this post nor direct anyone else to do so—it is not in our interest to escalate this situation.”
The blog provided context for the memo: “That particular post was written within a few hours of the President’s Truth Social post announcing Anthropic would be removed from all federal systems, the Secretary of War’s X post announcing the supply chain risk designation, and the announcement of a deal between the Pentagon and OpenAI, which even OpenAI later characterized as confusing.”
“It was a difficult day for the company, and I apologize for the tone of the post. It does not reflect my careful or considered views. It was also written six days ago, and is an out-of-date assessment of the current situation,” it added.
What’s ahead for Anthropic?
According to the CEO, the priority is to ensure that national security experts are “not deprived of important tools”.
He said, “Our only concerns have been our exceptions on fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance. We will provide our models to DoW and the national security community, at nominal cost and with continuing support from our engineers.”
Amodei added that Anthropic will continue to provide its models “for as long as necessary” to facilitate the transition and as long as it is permitted to do so.
On the SCR designation, he clarified that it only applies to the use of Claude by customers as a direct part of contracts with the DoW and “not all use of Claude by customers who have such contracts”.
What does this mean for Anthropic’s customers?
According to the company in another blog post addressing Secretary Pete Hegseth’s remarks against Anthropic, SCR extends only to the use of Claude within DoW contracts, not to how contractors use Claude to serve other customers. In practice, this means:
- If you are an individual customer or hold a commercial contract with Anthropic, your access to Claude—through our API, claude.ai, or any of our products—is completely unaffected, it said.
- If you are a DoW contractor, this designation—if formally adopted—would only affect your use of Claude on DoW contract work. Your use for any other purpose is unaffected, it added.
