Pentagon Maintains Anthropic Supply Chain Risk Status One Day After Commerce Trust

The Department of Defense confirmed on Sept. 3 that Anthropic is still a designated supply chain risk to the U.S. defense industrial base. This official designation contradicts a Sept. 2 interview with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who told Axios that the Trump administration now trusts the AI developer and that the company is "back on the right side" after meeting government requests.

The risk label remains in place despite a ruling that previously struck down the classification. The internal disagreement between agencies transforms Anthropic into a test case for how much control developers of frontier models retain over the military application of their technology and the requirements for entering the national security supply chain.