Anthropic may have lost a fan in Donald Trump, but it seems to have gained plenty of new ones after refusing to make a deal with the United States government, citing ethics concerns.
The AI company was embroiled in debate with the Department of Defense, which has been using Anthropic’s technology internally at various levels. After the Defense Deparment announced it would only contract with AI companies that agreed to “any lawful use” of their products, Anthropic pushed back, asking that certain safeguards remain in place to prevent its technology from being used for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.
The Defense Department (which Trump renamed the Department of War last year) set a deadline of 5:01 p.m. on Friday, February 27, for Anthropic to agree to its new policy or risk being blacklisted by the government. The day before the deadline, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei released a statement explaining the company’s position.
“In a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values,” Amodei said. “Some uses are also simply outside the bounds of what today’s technology can safely and reliably do. … We cannot in good conscience accede to their request.”
The February 27 deadline passed without agreement, and President Trump quickly ordered all government agencies to “immediately cease” using all Anthropic technology: “The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth followed Trump’s post with a statement on X, saying he was directing the Pentagon to designate Anthropic as “a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security,” barring any company in business with the U.S. military from any commercial activity with Anthropic.
“America’s warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech,” Hegseth added.
But a bad rap from the Trump administration apparently translates to popularity with the general public. The day after being blacklisted by Trump, Anthropic’s app Claude jumped to No. 1 on Apple’s ranking of the top free apps in the U.S., topping both OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
On Monday, March 2, the Claude app temporarily went down. Anthropic cited “unprecedented demand” as the cause for the crash while it worked to resolve the issue.
Meanwhile, AI users across social media have applauded Anthropic’s decision not to bend to the government. That includes workers from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, who co-authored a letter calling on their employers to follow Anthropic’s lead should the U.S. government offer them similar deals; as well as celebrities like Katy Perry, who posted a screenshot of her apparently subscribing to Claude’s annual Pro subscription with the caption “done.”
Following Hegseth’s announcement that Anthropic could be designated as a supply chain risk, the company released another statement saying it was “deeply saddened by these developments.”
“We believe this designation would both be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government,” Anthropic said. “No amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.”