Trump orders purge of 'woke' Anthropic from government

Without a single 'You're Fired' joke

updated President Trump has escalated Anthropic's dispute with the Defense Department with a social media post ordering the entire federal government purge the company's software from its systems. 

In a post on Truth Social, the President called Anthropic a "radical left, woke" company and said he was directing all federal agencies to cease use of its technology "immediately." The move comes after a dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon over the AI firm's refusal to relax safeguards barring its models from use in mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons systems.

"The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution," Trump said, apparently referring to the part of the Constitution about spying on Americans with AI and letting autonomous weapons make targeting and firing decisions.

To be clear, neither party actually says the Pentagon intend to use Anthropic's AI for those purposes, but Anthropic's stance was enough to escalate tensions with the Defense Department and raise questions for agencies that had signed up for $1-for-a-year software deals that included Anthropic's AI.

Trump said in his post that he was giving agencies six months to phase out Anthropic's AI for something less woke - perhaps like Grok. 

"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," Trump said. 

It's not clear what level of official action the President's social media is intended to convey, and it doesn't include any mention of the formal cancellation of Anthropic's up to $200 million Pentagon contract. However, after publication, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also made a social media post that said he's directing his department to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk to national security, meaning that nobody doing business with the US military may have any commercial activity with Anthropic.

The General Services Administration has also announced it is removing Anthropic from USAi.gov and its Multiple Award Schedule procurement vehicle.

Following publication, Anthropic pointed us to its response to Hegseth's post, noting that the company had tried to negotiate and had received no formal notification of its status from Trump nor the DOD. It also explained, "We held to our exceptions for two reasons. First, we do not believe that today's frontier AI models are reliable enough to be used in fully autonomous weapons. Allowing current models to be used in this way would endanger America's warfighters and civilians. Second, we believe that mass domestic surveillance of Americans constitutes a violation of fundamental rights."

We also contacted the White House to determine if and when the President intended to issue a formal order canceling Anthropic. We'll update this story if we hear back. ®