This came months after the US government designated the company a supply chain risk on national security grounds. Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth labelled Anthropic a supply chain risk in February, and announced that the Pentagon would stop using it by late August. Multiple sources last week told the BBC that Anthopic’s Claude model was still being used by the department in research, analysis and intelligence gathering as well as in military operations against Iran. It was viewed as a critical tool for sorting through vast quantities of information, the sources were quoted as saying. They include former US defence officials and contractors who have worked closely with the Pentagon specifically on AI.
A spokesman for Anthropic was said to have declined to comment when asked about the Pentagon’s statement. The details of the department stopping all use of Anthropic’s tools have not been previously reported. The firm had been used by the US government and military since 2024 and was the first advanced AI company to have its tools deployed in government agencies doing classified work. But earlier this year, the Pentagon pressed it to remove its safety guardrails from Claude and give the military unfettered access to its AI products.
When Anthropic refused, citing concerns of mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, Hegseth designated the company a “national security supply-chain risk” – a law typically reserved for companies based in countries that pose a threat to the US. Anthropic said the move was “unprecedented and unlawful” and has sued the Trump administration in an effort to overturn the designation. As this legal fight has played out in the courts, the Pentagon has signed contracts with other major tech companies, including Google, xAI and OpenAI. OpenAI tools have been more widely adopted in recent months in some military departments, according to two people familiar with AI use in the defence department The Pentagon’s statement on Monday came in response to a question from the BBC about its use of Anthropic, after multiple people said in interviews that Claude was still being widely used.
It was embedded in a larger data platform used by the Pentagon called Maven Smart System, multiple sources said. Maven, which is operated by Palantir, is the Pentagon’s primary platform for organising intelligence and other data. A senior research analyst at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Lauren Kahn said because Claude was deeply integrated into Maven it would have been difficult to remove it quickly from the system. “The fact that it took the Pentagon until now to remove all use of Claude from across the system is indicative that these things are not just plug and play. “Once they become integrated it can be painful to remove them,” Kahn, a former US defence official, said.
When Hegseth initially ordered Anthropic to be phased out of government, “there was concern with moving beyond Anthropic to OpenAI” and other tools, a former senior US defence official said. Hegseth set a six-month deadline to phase out Anthropic on 27 February, one day before the US and Israel attacked Iran. Pentagon employees continued to use Anthropic’s Claude tools, including its powerful Mythos models, “throughout the whole period of the controversy” with the company, one of the people said. Claude was used in particular for intelligence gathering and analysis, including through Palantir’s Maven system, several sources said. Palantir, a leading defence tech firm, was founded by the billionaire ally of President Donald Trump, Peter Thiel.
Sources familiar with the way the technology is used said analysts and other defence officials rely on Maven to access and organise visual data, including satellite imagery and drone footage. The data was then fed into Claude and other large language models for tasks such as identifying potential military targets. Officials frequently used the technology when compiling onepage briefs that were passed up the chain of command, according to a source who was given a demonstration of Maven by Palantir earlier this year.
