After the U.S. Pentagon classified the emerging artificial intelligence (AI) Anthropic as a "supply chain risk," the positions of the technology giants in Silicon Valley began to diverge based on their own interests. Among them, Microsoft chose to publicly support Anthropic in suing the Pentagon, while Google took advantage of the situation to expand its penetration of the latter when Anthropic was at odds with the Pentagon.
The British "Financial Times" reported on the 11th that on Tuesday local time, Microsoft publicly supported Anthropic and became the first technology giant to take sides in the dispute between Anthropic and the US Department of Defense. In court filings, Microsoft warned that the "extreme" and "unprecedented" action against the artificial intelligence startup would have "widespread negative consequences" for the U.S. technology industry. Microsoft asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the Department of Defense's decision to list Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" from taking effect while the case is pending.
“This conflict has divided Silicon Valley.” The Financial Times reported that since the current U.S. government came to power, Silicon Valley’s technology giants have been very careful to avoid public confrontation with it.
Based on reports from multiple media outlets including Forbes Magazine, Anthropic’s situation is being viewed by its competitors as a good opportunity to penetrate the government market. Just one day after Anthropic sued the U.S. government on Monday, Google announced that its newly developed AI agent will be deployed in the office environment of about 3 million military and civilian personnel in the Pentagon for non-confidential work such as meeting minutes and mission planning. Meanwhile, there are reports that talks are already underway to extend it to classified and top-secret environments.
Google is not the first company to expand its cooperation with the U.S. Department of Defense in the wake of this conflict. Previously, OpenAI quickly announced that it had reached a cooperation agreement with the Pentagon after the Department of Defense "blocked" Anthropic, claiming that the agreement had "more safety guardrails than any previous AI deployment agreement." However, this move triggered strong disgust in the market. Since the announcement of the cooperation, the uninstall rate of ChatGPT under OpenAI has surged.
It is worth noting that some employees at OpenAI and Google have joined the anti-Pentagon camp, saying that "the U.S. government is trying to divide AI companies by instilling fear."
Anthropic was the only AI vendor operating in the Pentagon's classified cloud environment until February 27, when it was designated a "supply chain risk." This extremely rare measure has historically been reserved for foreign rivals. Anthropic filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon on Monday, calling the Pentagon's actions "unprecedented and illegal" and "causing irreparable harm to the company."
Founded in 2021 by several former OpenAI executives, Anthropic has quickly grown to become one of the fastest-growing technology startups in the United States, with a valuation of $380 billion. The conflict between the two sides broke out in February this year. According to the New York Times, Anthropic drew two red lines in its contract with the Pentagon: it opposed artificial intelligence being used for mass surveillance of Americans and being deployed in autonomous weapons without human involvement at all. According to the Associated Press, U.S. Defense Secretary Hegseth issued an ultimatum to Anthropic in February, asking it to lift all restrictions and allow the military to use AI for "all legitimate purposes," but Anthropic refused. On February 27, the day the Pentagon classified Anthropic as a "supply chain risk," Trump announced that he had ordered all federal agencies to immediately stop using Anthropic's technology. On March 9, local time, Anthropic formally sued the US government.
But according to a Reuters report on the 12th, the Pentagon is loosening its ban on Anthropic. According to the report, a newly exposed internal memo shows that if the relevant AI tools are deemed critical to U.S. national security, the Pentagon will allow some units to continue to retain and use Anthropic's products after the original six-month phase-out period. Analysts believe this reflects the difficulty that most Pentagon suppliers have in ensuring that they can remove Anthropic from their supply chains. Reuters believes that although the Pentagon opened the exemption channel in a low-key manner, the memorandum still directs the priority to remove Anthropic's products from systems that support critical missions, such as nuclear weapons and ballistic missile defense systems.
Dr. Brianna Rosen, executive director of the Cyber and Technology Policy Project at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, said that this dispute is generally regarded as a conflict between the ethics and national security of AI applications. It has exposed the long-standing lack of governance when AI is used in the military and reflects that commercial contract mechanisms can no longer replace a governance framework that can adapt to the reality of AI being used in war.
Nada Sanders, a professor of supply chain management at Northeastern University, said that Anthropic has a good cooperative relationship with the Pentagon and is the first AI company to provide large-scale language model technology for use in government confidential networks. Listing it as a "supply chain risk" is an extremely serious and unprecedented punishment for American companies. She mentioned that labeling U.S. AI companies in this way — especially when it appears to be an effort to retaliate against the company’s negotiating position — could hinder innovation. She said companies that risk being excluded from the government market because of safety or ethical safeguards will hesitate to develop such protection technologies.