Tuesday · October 20, 2026

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Tech Leaders Urge Pentagon to Reconsider Anthropic Supply-Chain Risk Designation

Hundreds of technology professionals have signed an open letter calling on the U.S. Department of Defense to withdraw its designation of Anthropic as a supply-chain risk and urging Congress to review the use of such authorities against an American AI company. Signatories include employees and investors affiliated with OpenAI, Slack, IBM, Cursor, and Salesforce Ventures, among others.

The appeal follows a breakdown in negotiations between Anthropic and the Pentagon after Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei declined to permit unrestricted military use of the company’s AI systems, maintaining prohibitions on mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. President Donald Trump subsequently directed federal agencies to phase out Anthropic technology, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the supply-chain risk designation, though formal review procedures remain pending.

Industry voices, including OpenAI researcher Boaz Barak, said concerns about potential government misuse of AI and called for safeguards comparable to those applied to other high-risk domains.

Featured image: Credit: Wikipedia

James Dargan
About the author
James Dargan

James Dargan is a writer and researcher at The AI Insider. His focus is on the AI startup ecosystem and he writes articles on the space that have a tone accessible to the average reader.

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