New Delhi: American artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic confirmed it has been formally designated a “Supply Chain Risk (SCR)” by the US government, as the firm’s CEO also apologised for criticising President Donald Trump. The company said it received a letter on March 4 informing formal designation as SCR, and that it will challenge the decision in court.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei apologised for a leaked internal memo in which he criticised President Trump, calling the erstwhile assessment “out-of-date”, adding that it was not the company’s view.
In a blog post, Amodei said Anthropic does not believe the designation under 10 U.S.C. 3252 is “legally sound”. He said the statute is “narrow” and exists to “protect the government rather than to punish a supplier”.
“The War Department and our company are both committed to advancing US national security and agree on the urgency of applying AI across government. The language used by the DoW matches our statement on Friday, that the vast majority of customers are unaffected by SCR designation,” Amodei wrote.
The CEO clarified that the designation would apply only to use of Anthropic’s Claude models within Department of War contracts and not to “all use of Claude by customers who have such contracts”.
Amodei said that the post criticising President Trump was written within a few hours of the President’s Truth Social post announcing Anthropic would be removed from all federal systems, and that the tone was because it was “a difficult day for the company”.
The firm said that individual customers or holders of a commercial contract with Anthropic will have access to Claude, through API, claude.ai, or any of the company’s products, completely unaffected.
For DoW contractors, the SCR designation—if formally adopted—would only affect their use of Claude on DoW contract work and use any other purpose is unaffected, it added.
Indian tech giant Infosys recently announced a partnership with Anthropic to develop and deliver advanced enterprise AI solutions across telecommunications, financial services, manufacturing, and software development sectors.
