Defense Secretary summons Anthropic’s Amodei over military use of Claude

TechCrunch · Feb 23, 2026 · Collected from RSS

Full Article

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is calling in Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to the Pentagon on Tuesday morning to discuss the military use of Claude, according to reporting from Axios. The meeting comes as the Pentagon threatens to declare Anthropic a “supply chain risk” — a label typically reserved for foreign adversaries — after the AI firm refused to allow the Department of Defense to use its tech for the mass surveillance of Americans and the development of weapons that fire without human involvement. Anthropic signed a $200 million contract with DOD last summer, and Claude was reportedly used during the January 3 special operations raid that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, an episode that brought the two sides’ tensions into the open. A source told Axios that Hegseth is giving Amodei an ultimatum: play ball or be banished. It’s unclear whether he’s bluffing — replacing Anthropic would be a significant undertaking. But the stakes are real: a supply chain risk designation would void Anthropic’s contract and force other Pentagon partners to drop Claude entirely.