Department of Defense (stylized as the Department of War) has officially informed Anthropic that the US-based generative AI company has been designated a supply chain risk.

The formal designation comes despite Anthropic's Claude being heavily used by the DoD and its suppliers in the ongoing war on Iran.

The Maven Smart System, built by Palantir, relies on Claude to suggest and prioritize targets, speeding up strikes on Iran. Claude is also used for logistics, intelligence summaries, and other military support functions.

This is the first time an American company has ever been publicly named a supply chain risk. It means that defense vendors and contractors will have to certify that they do not use Anthropic’s models in their work with the Pentagon.

US President Donald Trump previously said such companies have six months to remove Anthropic from their supply chains.

The dramatic move came after Anthropic refused to change its terms of service to allow mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. President Trump called the company "Leftwing nut jobs" and threatened "criminal consequences."

Following the comments and the initial announcement of a supply chain risk designation, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote a lengthy internal memo that claimed the attacks were due to the company not donating to Trump or giving "dictator-style praise."

In the leaked essay, he called the DoD's "messaging just straight up lies," and hit out at rival OpenAI for its move to take over the DoD contract.

Amodei has since walked back his comments. In a statement, he said: "I also want to apologize directly for a post internal to the company that was leaked to the press yesterday... It was a difficult day for the company, and I apologize for the tone of the post. It does not reflect my careful or considered views."

He added: "Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences," with Amodei using the name the Trump administration uses for the DoD.

The company plans to continue offering services to the DoD at nominal cost during the transition. At the same time, it plans to fight the designation in court. "We do not believe this action is legally sound," Amodei said.

The company also said that the designation letter's language "applies only to the use of Claude by customers as a direct part of contracts with the Department of War, not all use of Claude by customers who have such contracts."

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had previously claimed that any company with DoD contracts would have to cease working with Anthropic, something that would have included all of the company's cloud providers.

Anthropic's legal interpretation was affirmed by Microsoft, which said in a statement: “Our lawyers have studied the designation and have concluded that Anthropic products, including Claude, can remain available to our customers - other than the Department of War - through platforms such as M365, GitHub, and Microsoft’s AI Foundry and that we can continue to work with Anthropic on non-defense related projects.”

Anthropic has committed to spending $30 billion on Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, while Microsoft has agreed to invest up to $5bn in Anthropic.