Supply chain implications
If Hegseth were to make good on the threat to ban Anthropic, this would have major implications for the DoD and its long supply chain. In principle, companies that are part of the broader Defense Industrial Base (DIB) would have to stop using Anthropic’s AI platform in all its forms, including, presumably, the Claude Code Security cyber system launched only this week.
This seems highly unlikely. Banning a US company would be unprecedented; such an action was previously reserved for a small number of foreign companies. Anthropic is also currently one of only two frontier AI models that has achieved Impact Level 6 (IL6) certification for use on classified networks, having been joined only this week by xAI’s Grok.
Ripping Anthropic out altogether is unthinkable, not in the least because it is already tightly integrated with Palantir’s systems, which are also critical to the DoD. More likely, the DoD will simply compel Anthropic to concede ground by invoking the Defense Production Act, the downside of which being that this might sour cooperation in the longer run.
