The US Department of Defence has stopped using Anthropic's AI tools, a Pentagon official told the BBC, months after the department designated the company a supply chain risk on national security grounds. The statement, reported on Monday, followed questions from the BBC after multiple people said Claude was still being widely used.
Sources told the BBC that as recently as last week, Anthropic's Claude model was still being used by the department for research, analysis and intelligence gathering, as well as in military operations against Iran, where it was seen as a critical tool for sorting through vast quantities of information.
Why the Pentagon blacklisted Anthropic
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth labelled Anthropic a supply chain risk in February and said the Pentagon would phase the company out by late August. The BBC reports that Anthropic had refused to remove the safety guardrails on Claude and give the military unfettered access, citing concerns over mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.
Anthropic called the designation "unprecedented and unlawful" and has sued the Trump administration to overturn it. Anthropic declined to comment on the Pentagon's statement. Details of the department ending all use of Anthropic's tools had not been previously reported, and it is not clear why the shift happened now.
Claude, Maven Smart System and the shift to OpenAI
Multiple sources said Claude was embedded in Maven Smart System, the Pentagon's primary platform for organising intelligence and other data, which is operated by Palantir. Lauren Kahn, a senior research analyst at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, said that because Claude was so deeply integrated into Maven, removing it quickly would have been difficult.
As the legal fight has played out, the Pentagon has signed contracts with other major tech companies, including Google, xAI and OpenAI. Two people familiar with AI use in the department said OpenAI tools have been more widely adopted in recent months in some military departments.
