Whatever This Is, We’ve Never Seen Anything Like It

Blacklisting Anthropic feels like a peek at an uncertain future. If you’re confused about what’s happening with Anthropic, you’re not alone. The U.S. Department of Defense decided to pick a fight with Anthropic last week, a fight that ended with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insisting that no one who wanted to do business with the Pentagon could continue to work with the AI company. There are still a lot of unanswered questions (and lawsuits to be filed, as Anthropic has said it will do), but there’s one thing that’s certain as the dust starts to settle: All of this is new in some form or another. Hegseth gave Anthropic an ultimatum early last week. The defense secretary demanded that the company remove guardrails in its AI model Claude that prohibit mass surveillance of Americans and fully automated weapons. If Anthropic refused, he might invoke the Defense Production Act or designate the company as a “supply chain risk,” something that’s never been done before to an American company. Foreign companies like Huawei have been given a similar designation under a different authority due to supply chain concerns, after the U.S. listed the Chinese electronics manufacturer as a national security threat. But Hegseth seems intent on using 10 USC section 3252 to make the supply chain risk designation, an entirely new move for a U.S. company. As Lawfare notes, a Swiss cybersecurity company with Russian ties received the designation from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in 2025. Experts believe Hegseth’s legal ability to do that is much narrower than he claimed in a tweet on Friday. Tess Bridgeman, former advisor to the Obama administration and co-editor-in-chief at Just Security, told Gizmodo that it’s unprecedented. And Hegseth’s broad insistence that he can stop other companies from doing business with Anthropic is likely being used improperly. “A supply chain risk designation is about excluding a company from bidding for certain contracts in the most highly sensitive DoD IT systems, not prohibiting other companies (even DoD contractors) from routine business dealings with the designated company,” Brideman told Gizmodo. Part of the problem, however, is that we have no sign Hegseth has actually done that as of Wednesday, leading some to speculate there might still be room for a deal with Anthropic. But given the way President Donald Trump and the Pentagon are talking, nobody should be banking on that. Uncharted territory President Trump has spent his second term pushing the boundaries of what’s considered legal, often declaring he’ll do something unprecedented and leaving legal experts scratching their heads about whether it’s even possible under existing law. That’s where the Anthropic situation seems to be resting at the moment. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei laid out his company’s reasons for not agreeing to the Pentagon’s terms in a letter on Thursday. Hegseth had given Anthropic a deadline of 5:01 p.m. ET on Friday, and Amodei went to the public, making his case that AI should not be used for domestic surveillance because it’s unethical, nor for fully autonomous weapons because the tech just isn’t reliable enough yet. By Friday, Trump was the first to respond, though it wasn’t entirely clear whether Trump had intended to designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk. Nothing in his tweet explicitly said as much, and it wasn’t until Hegseth sent a tweet following the president that the terms became more obvious. “In conjunction with the President’s directive for the Federal Government to cease all use of Anthropic’s technology, I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security,” Hegseth tweeted. “Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic. Anthropic will continue to provide the Department of War its services for a period of no more than six months to allow for a seamless transition to a better and more patriotic service,” wrote Hegseth. It’s happening whether it’s legal or not The government is currently disentangling itself from contracts with Anthropic. Federal agencies like the Commerce Department are booting Anthropic’s products from the building, acting on orders from the president. And defense contractors like Lockheed Martin are doing the same, according to Reuters. Greg Nojeim, the director of the Center for Democracy and Technology Project on Security and Surveillance, told Gizmodo that it’s unclear whether the Pentagon’s threats are even legal. “The Pentagon is imposing what is essentially a secondary boycott on Anthropic,” said Nojeim. “It is cutting off not only its own contracts with Anthropic, but threatening those DOD contractors who rely on Anthropic’s