Shortly before the U.S. announced that its military is dropping AI firm Anthropic, Anthropic announced that it has been blocking firms with ties to the Chinese Communist party (NDTV, February 27, 2026).
In a statement issued on Thursday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company chose to block Claude’s usage by entities connected to the CCP, including some designated by the US Department of War as Chinese Military Companies and that the company shut down CCP-sponsored cyberattacks that attempted to misuse the AI system.
Amodei further stated that the AI firm has advocated for strong export controls on advanced chips to help maintain a democratic advantage in artificial intelligence.
“Anthropic has also acted to defend America’s lead in AI, even when it is against the company’s short-term interest. We chose to forgo several hundred million dollars in revenue to cut off the use of Claude by firms linked to the Chinese Communist Party (some of whom have been designated by the Department of War as Chinese Military Companies), shut down CCP-sponsored cyberattacks that attempted to abuse Claude, and have advocated for strong export controls on chips to ensure a democratic advantage,” the statement from Anthropic read.
That’s fine, if accurate, although the reference to “cutting off the use of Claude” by the CCP-linked firms seems to imply that Anthropic had previously allowed these firms to use Claude.
Also, Amodei errs when suggesting that it is somehow inimical to a company’s short-term interests to avoid making money by providing weapons to the Chinese Communist Party. Any firm’s or person’s short-term interests are properly defined in relation to long-term interests, which don’t include willfully increasing the danger to self and country by arming arch enemies or indulging in a pretense that causes enacted now are not followed by effects that happen after now.
RADICAL LEFT
Whatever Anthropic has done at the cost (in its view) of its own short-term interest to avoid endangering U.S. security isn’t enough in the view of the president and the Pentagon.
The U.S. is replacing Anthropic with OpenAI. The problem, per President Trump in a Truth Social post, is that “RADICAL LEFT” Anthropic, led by “Leftwing nut jobs,” is trying to “DICTATE HOW OUR MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS!”
Trump whispers that he is directing “EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again! There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic’s products, at various levels. Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.” Anything to ease the transition.
The Pentagon is also designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk to national security, which means that companies doing business with the Department of Defense/War will have to attest that they don’t use Anthropic’s AI models.
According to the CNBC report, Anthropic, first “to deploy its models across the DoD’s classified network…wanted assurance that its models would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans.” Yet OpenAI’s Sam Altman recently stated in a memo to employees that “Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems.”
So it seems that why exactly Anthropic is out and OpenAI is in cannot be reduced to disagreement about insistence on these two prohibitions.
