The Trump administration is preparing an executive order to formally purge Anthropic from all federal contracts — a dramatic escalation in an internecine battle between the White House and artificial intelligence (AI) startup over national security, corporate guardrails, and executive overreach.
The proposed order, as first reported by Axios report, would establish a legal framework for a government-wide offboarding of Claude, Anthropic’s flagship AI model. While agencies like the Treasury Department have already begun severing ties, the executive order seeks to cement a policy President Trump has championed on the campaign trail: the elimination of “woke” AI from the federal bureaucracy.
The conflict traces back to a breakdown in negotiations between Anthropic and the Pentagon. Anthropic reportedly sought assurances that Claude, the only AI model authorized for use on classified networks, would not be deployed for mass domestic surveillance or to power lethal autonomous weapons.
The Department of Defense rejected the constraints, demanding the technology be available for “all lawful use.” After a Feb. 27 deadline passed without a resolution, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth officially designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk.”
“Under the Trump Administration, our military will obey the United States Constitution — not any woke AI company’s terms of service,” White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said in a statement.
Anthropic responded Monday by filing a 48-page lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, labeling the administration’s actions “unprecedented and unlawful.” The company claims the government is retaliating against its protected speech and that the President lacks the statutory authority to blacklist a domestic firm outside of standard procurement laws. (OpenAI and Google filed an amicus brief supporting Anthropic.)
“The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech,” the filing said. It cautioned the ban jeopardizes hundreds of millions of dollars in current and future contracts.
While the President has previously used executive orders to target foreign tech entities like Huawei and TikTok, legal experts note there is little precedent for a targeted strike against a specific U.S.-based company. In the case of Huawei, a formal name-specific ban required an act of Congress.
The White House says any formal policy announcement will come directly from the President. If signed this week, the order could trigger a landmark judicial review of the limits of presidential power over the burgeoning AI industry.
Despite the rhetoric, the transition remains messy. Reports indicate the Pentagon has continued to utilize Claude during ongoing military operations in the Middle East, even as the administration moves to phase it out over the next six months.
