Pentagon’s supply chain risk label for Anthropic narrower than initially implied, company says | CNN Business

Anthropic on Thursday said a Pentagon designation of the AI company as a “supply chain risk to America’s national security” won’t impact their business partners as heavily as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth implied last week. Hegseth had announced in a post on X that, as a result of a breakdown in contract negotiations with the AI company on Friday, “no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic” as part of the supply chain risk designation, a label usually reserved for companies tied to foreign adversaries. But Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Thursday in a statement that the language in the Pentagon’s letter on the designation means military contractors are only banned from using their AI model Claude “as a direct part of contracts with the Department of War, not all use of Claude by customers who have such contracts.” The Pentagon and Anthropic have been at odds over restrictions the company places on the use of Claude, the first AI system to be used in the military’s classified network. The government’s response sparked fears of a blacklist eating into Anthropic’s