Anthropic’s Supply Chain Risk: American artificial intelligence company Anthropic has confirmed that the US government has formally designated it as a “Supply Chain Risk (SCR)”. The company also said it plans to challenge the decision in court. According to Anthropic, it received a letter on March 4 informing it about the SCR designation.
Meanwhile, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei apologised for a leaked internal memo in which he had criticised US President Donald Trump. He described the earlier remarks as “out-of-date” and said they did not represent the company’s official position.
In a blog post, Amodei said Anthropic believes the designation under 10 U.S.C. 3252 is not legally sound. He added that the law is narrow in scope and is meant to protect the government rather than 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 the government. The language used by the DoW matches our statement on Friday that the vast majority of customers are unaffected by the SCR designation,” Amodei wrote.
The CEO clarified that the designation would apply only to the 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 the post criticising President Trump was written within a few hours of the President’s Truth Social post announcing that Anthropic would be removed from all federal systems. He added that the tone reflected that 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 the 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 for DoW contract work, while its use for any other purpose would remain unaffected, it added.
Indian tech giant Infosys recently announced a partnership with Anthropic to develop and deliver advanced enterprise AI solutions across the telecommunications, financial services, manufacturing, and software development sectors. (With IANS Inputs)
