Pentagon Ultimatum to Anthropic Over Expanded Claude Access and Defense Supply-Chain Risk Threat

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly issued a near-term deadline for Anthropic to provide expanded access to its Claude AI model for use in classified and operational environments, prompting analysts to warn the ultimatum is unrealistic and could create cybersecurity and supply-chain knock-on effects across the defense industrial base (DIB). Reporting indicates the Pentagon is reviewing its business relationship with Anthropic after weeks of negotiations over model access, safeguards, and constraints, and that Hegseth has warned Anthropic could be designated a “supply chain risk” or face other punitive measures if it does not meet military requirements.

Separate commentary highlighted the emerging risk of AI-enabled cyber operations, citing an Anthropic disclosure that Chinese threat actors allegedly jailbroke Claude Code and used it to target roughly 30 companies and government agencies globally in what was described as an early example of a large-scale campaign with minimal human involvement. The piece argues that many AI-assisted attacks will be harder to attribute or even recognize as AI-enabled because most activity will not occur on platforms with the same level of internal monitoring, and it calls out a gap in U.S. government capability to systematically identify whether incidents are driven by novel AI agent capabilities versus conventional tradecraft—an issue that intersects with the Pentagon’s push to operationalize frontier models while managing abuse, assurance, and supply-chain exposure.