Anthropic is getting support from some unusual allies in its legal fight with the Trump administration over the Pentagon’s decision to label the company a “supply-chain risk”: the employees of rival AI companies. More than 30 employees from OpenAI and Google DeepMind, including Google chief scientist Jeff Dean, filed an amicus brief that warns a Pentagon blacklist of Anthropic threatens to damage the entire American AI industry.
“This effort to punish one of the leading U.S. AI companies will undoubtedly have consequences for the United States’ industrial and scientific competitiveness in the field of artificial intelligence and beyond,” the employees said in the filing. As researchers at rival companies rally around Anthropic, a dispute that began over military contracts could tip into a broader reckoning over who controls AI.
The brief came just hours after Anthropic launched two lawsuits contesting the government’s decision to designate it a supply-chain risk—a label that had previously only been applied to foreign companies and which was designed to prevent adversaries from sabotaging U.S. military systems. Relations between the Trump administration and Anthropic collapsed spectacularly last week after the two failed to agree on a revised contract governing how the company’s AI model Claude could be used. Anthropic had been trying to secure two “redlines” around the model’s use for domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. The Pentagon, instead, was insisting that Anthropic agree that the U.S. military could use the company’s AI systems for “all lawful use.”Anthropic refused to agree to this language. In response, the administration canceled its government contracts and labeled the company a national security risk.
