The US blacklisted Anthropic as a security threat. Its spy agencies are using Claude anyway.

This article was published on May 24, 2026 A chip shortage forced the NSA to keep using Anthropic’s AI despite a Pentagon blacklist. The White House approved $9B for classified data centres. The US government has a problem it cannot publicly resolve. The Pentagon has officially blacklisted Anthropic as a national security supply chain threat. The NSA is using Anthropic’s AI anyway because there is no alternative. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles authorised the National Security Agency to continue using an advanced Anthropic model, the New York Times reported. The decision was forced by a critical shortage of the advanced chips needed to run frontier AI models on classified networks. The compromise emerged alongside a secret $9 billion emergency funding request approved by the White House. The money is designed to help America’s premier spy agencies, including the CIA and NSA, secure the high-end semiconductors required to run generative AI on top-secret infrastructure. The computing demands of modern AI have outpaced what defence experts and congressional committees anticipated. Frontier models consume processing power far beyond what classified networks were built to deliver