Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei looks on during a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on February 19, 2026.
Ludovic Marin | AFP | Getty Images
A group of former defense and intelligence officials and policy experts sent a letter to Congress on Thursday calling for an investigation into the Pentagon’s decision to designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk.
In a letter shared with CNBC, the bipartisan coalition of 30 said the purpose of labeling a company as a supply chain risk is “to protect the United States from infiltration by foreign adversaries.” The group characterized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision against Anthropic last Friday as a “serious deviation” that “sets a dangerous precedent.”
Hegseth announced the X directive after President Donald Trump told federal agencies that the popularity of Anthropic’s Claude model and services has skyrocketed, primarily in the corporate world.
“Applying this tool to punish U.S. companies that refuse to lift safeguards against domestic mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons is a categorical error with implications far beyond this conflict,” the group said in a letter to the chairs and ranking members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.
Signatories include retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Donald Arthur, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Diana Banks Thompson, former Andreessen Horowitz general partner John O’Farrell, Kat Duffy of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Shaun White, CEO of Refractive AI.
“For the sake of national security, the United States is engaged in an AI race that it cannot afford to lose,” the letter reads. “Blacklisting one of America’s leading AI companies and requiring thousands of its contractors and partners to also sever ties with them will weaken, not strengthen, our competitive position.”
The group is calling on Congress to “enforce oversight of the inappropriate use of executive branch power” and put in place legal guardrails that “protect the United States from foreign threats, rather than punishing American companies for disagreements with the executive branch.”
The letter came the day after a meeting of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), which included the following members: Nvidia, google And Anthropic sent a letter to Hegseth expressing similar concerns.
“Contractual disputes should be resolved through ongoing negotiations between the parties or through the Ministry’s selection of an alternative provider through established procurement channels,” ITI said in the letter. “Emergency authorities such as supply chain risk designations exist for true emergencies and are typically reserved for entities designated as foreign adversaries.”
CNBC reports that several defense technology companies have told their employees to stop using Anthropic’s Claude service, following a White House order.
Spotlight: Anthropic has annual revenue of more than $19 billion.
