After their dramatic breakup, it doesn’t look like Anthropic and Pentagon will ever reunite.
Instead, the Pentagon is building a tool to replace Anthropic’s AI, according to a Bloomberg conversation with Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon’s chief digital and AI officer.
“The department is actively pursuing several LLMs in a suitable government-owned environment,” he said. “Engineering work on this LLM has begun and we expect it to be operational soon.”
Anthropic’s $200 million contract with the Department of Defense (DOD) collapsed over the past few weeks after the two parties failed to reach an agreement on the extent to which the military would have unrestricted access to Anthropic’s AI.
Anthropic has tried to include a clause in its contract that would prohibit the Department of Defense from using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans or deploy weapons that can be launched without human intervention, but the Pentagon has not budged. Instead, OpenAI swooped in and signed its own contract with the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense, known as the War Department under the Trump administration, also signed a contract with Elon Musk’s xAI to use Grok in classified systems.
It makes sense, then, why the Pentagon is working to phase out Anthropic’s technology from its workflow. While some reports have said there is little chance of Anthropic reconciling with the Department of Defense, this news suggests the government is preparing to move forward without them.
In fact, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared Anthropic a supply chain risk. This is a designation typically given to foreign adversaries, which prohibits companies that work with the Department of Defense from working with Anthropic. Anthropic is challenging this designation in court.
