By Andrea Shalal, Jeffrey Dastin and Ryan Patrick Jones
WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he was directing every federal agency to immediately cease work with artificial intelligence lab Anthropic, adding there would be a six-month phaseout for the Defense Department and other agencies that use the company's products.
"I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it,
we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!" Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
Trump's directive came during a weeks-long feud between the Pentagon and the San Francisco-based startup over concerns about how the military could use AI at war.
Spokespeople for Anthropic, which has a $200 million contract with the Pentagon, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump's decision stopped short of threats issued by the Pentagon, including that it could invoke the Defense Production Act to require Anthropic's compliance. The Pentagon had also said it considered designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk, a step previously used against businesses tied to foreign adversaries.
But Trump vowed further action if Anthropic did not cooperate with the phaseout.
The setback comes as AI leader Anthropic raced to win a fierce competition selling novel technology to businesses and government, particularly for national security, ahead of its widely expected initial public offering. The company has said it has not finalized an IPO decision.
At the same time, the battle over technological guardrails had raised concerns that the Department of Defense would follow U.S. law but little other constraint when deploying AI for national-security missions, regardless of safety or ethics service terms embraced by the technology's developers.
Anthropic had sought guarantees that its AI would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or for mass domestic surveillance - applications in which the Pentagon has said it had no interest.
(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones in Toronto, Andrea Shalal in Washington, Ismail Shakil in Toronto and Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Writing by Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Caitlin Webber and Matthew Lewis)
