MW Hegseth reportedly considering severe penalty on Anthropic as negotiations stall

By Steve Goldstein

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reportedly considering a severe penalty against Anthropic, the maker of Claude.

Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth reportedly is close to putting artificial-intelligence services company Anthropic on a "supply chain risk" list that would be a devastating blow to its finances.

Axios quoted a Pentagon spokesman as saying the U.S. government was "reviewing" its relationship with Anthropic, the maker of the Claude large language model, as it also quoted a senior official it didn't name making the threat. If Anthropic was put on the supply-chain-risk list, it would force other companies that do business with the Pentagon to severe their Anthropic relationship too.

Merely losing the Pentagon contract would be less of a financial blow, given it's valued at up to $200 million.

The Pentagon is a user of Anthropic's Claude and reportedly used it, through a Palantir (PLTR) product, in the successful raid to apprehend Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Axios reported Claude is the only AI model available in its classified systems.

The issue is with Anthropic's negotiations on how its products can be used, drawing a line at it being used to spy on Americans en masse or to develop weapons that fire with no human involvement, according to Axios. The report said the government is concerned about "gray areas" as well as the prospect of having to negotiate individual use cases.

An Anthropic spokesman is quoted as saying there are "hard limits around fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance," but denied that it had objected to the Venezuelan operation.

Rival AI models from OpenAI, Alphabet's $(GOOGL)$ Google and SpaceX's xAI are used by the Pentagon, but only in unclassified settings, the report said.

Anthropic last week raised funds at a $380 billion valuation, and along with OpenAI and SpaceX, is one of the most hotly awaited initial public offerings from companies that are still private.

-Steve Goldstein

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February 16, 2026 08:58 ET (13:58 GMT)

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