U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday ordered the immediate suspension of all use of Anthropic technology by all federal agencies, after the company refused to grant unlimited access to its tools to the Pentagon.

Trump announced the decision in a post on Truth Social, stating: “I ORDER ALL federal agencies of the U.S. government to IMMEDIATELY STOP any use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and we will no longer work with them.” The post came nearly one hour before the deadline the Pentagon had set for the company to allow unrestricted access to its artificial intelligence tools.

The U.S. president described the California-based startup’s refusal as a “catastrophic mistake,” arguing that “their arrogance puts American lives, our troops, and national security at risk.” He added that the withdrawal of Anthropic’s tools from government projects would take place gradually over the next six months, including within the Department of Defense.

Anthropic, the second-largest artificial intelligence company after OpenAI, offers a large family of generative AI models known as Claude. These models can perform a wide range of tasks, from image captioning and drafting emails to solving mathematical problems.

Anthropic’s stance and Trump’s criticism

Trump’s decision came one day after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said he would not yield to pressure for unlimited use of the company’s technology, citing concerns that the systems could be exploited for “mass domestic surveillance” and “fully autonomous offensive weapons.” Anthropic has voiced objections specifically to such uses of its tools, including Claude.

The Department of Defense has said it is not seeking AI for those purposes, but wants the company to accept “any lawful use” of its tools. In the United States, however, the legal framework governing artificial intelligence remains limited.

Threats of consequences

Trump further threatened the company, stating that “they’d better comply and be helpful during the phased shutdown, otherwise I will use the FULL POWER of the Presidency to force compliance, with serious civil and criminal consequences.” Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Support from Altman and sector-wide reactions

At the same time, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared to support Amodei, noting in an internal memo to staff that he shares the same “red lines.” According to the memo obtained by the BBC, OpenAI will also reject defense uses that are “illegal or inappropriate for deployment on cloud infrastructure, such as domestic surveillance and autonomous offensive weapons.”

In a meeting earlier in the week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act, allowing the government to use Anthropic’s products as it sees fit, while warning that the company could be labeled a “supply chain risk,” rendering it unsafe for government use. Amodei said he would rather end cooperation with the Pentagon than accept such terms.

Deputy Defense Secretary Emil Michael personally attacked Amodei in posts on X, claiming that he “wants to bypass Congress and impose his own rules, disregarding democratically enacted laws.”

Billion-dollar contracts and an open letter from workers

Anthropic holds a $200 million contract with the Pentagon, and its recent valuation reached $380 billion, based on current revenues and projected future profits. A former Defense Department official told the BBC that the company “has the upper hand” and that the legal basis for threats involving the Defense Production Act or a supply chain risk designation is “extremely weak.” If those threats were carried out, Anthropic could pursue legal action against the department or its officials.

Meanwhile, unions representing roughly 700,000 employees at Amazon, Google, and Microsoft signed an open letter urging their companies to “refuse to comply” with Pentagon demands. “Tech workers stand united in the position that our employers should not engage in warfare,” said a separate statement from the elected leadership of the Alphabet Workers Union.