The Defense Department says it has stopped using Anthropic products. BBC sources said Claude remained in some military workflows until recently.
The U.S. Defense Department says it has stopped using Anthropic products, completing a phase-out that began after the Pentagon designated the AI company a national-security supply-chain risk earlier this year, the BBC reported. The statement followed questions about reports that Claude was still being used.
Several people familiar with the department’s operations told the BBC that Claude remained in use as recently as the previous week for research, analysis and intelligence gathering, including through Palantir’s Maven data platform. The department set a six-month deadline for the phase-out in February. The BBC’s sources said Claude had helped sift large volumes of information. The Pentagon has not publicly detailed the final removal process.
The dispute began when the Pentagon sought broader access to Anthropic’s models for military work. Anthropic wanted contractual safeguards against mass surveillance of U.S. citizens and the use of its models in fully autonomous weapons. The company refused to remove those restrictions, after which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated it a supply-chain risk. Anthropic is challenging the designation in court.
The BBC reported that the military has signed agreements with other AI companies, including Google, xAI and OpenAI. People familiar with military AI use said OpenAI tools had become more widely adopted in some departments in recent months. A Georgetown University analyst cited by the BBC said Claude’s integration into the Maven system made rapid removal difficult.
Separately, Heise, citing The Information, reported that Microsoft’s internal spending on Claude was expected to be about one-third below a forecast of at least $1 billion for the year. Meta’s reported employee use of Claude Code fell from 60,000 to 30,000. These figures were not independently confirmed in the material reviewed for this article and do not establish the overall effect on Anthropic’s business.