The Department of Defense on Friday entered agreements with seven artificial-intelligence companies to deploy their technology across the agency's classified networks for "lawful operational use," leaving out Anthropic, the San Francisco startup the Pentagon designated a supply-chain risk in February, a label that means its technology purportedly threatens U.S. national security.
The seven firms named in the announcement are Google, OpenAI, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, SpaceX, which merged with Elon Musk's xAI, and Reflection, a startup developing open-weight models. Also on Friday, DOD Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael told CNBC's "Squawk Box" that Anthropic remains blacklisted but that its cyber-capable Mythos model is a "separate national security moment."
A bifurcated posture
"I think the Mythos issue that's being dealt with government-wide, not just at Department War, is a separate national security moment where we have to make sure that our networks are hardened up, because that model has capabilities that are particular to finding cyber vulnerabilities and patching them," Michael said. He added that the department still wants guardrails, and that those "are negotiable based on what they are with all the companies, and they have different views on that."
The supply-chain risk designation, issued in late February by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, requires defense contractors to certify that they do not use Anthropic's Claude models in their work for the military. Anthropic sued the Trump administration in March in federal courts in San Francisco and Washington to reverse the designation. Both cases are still pending.
Despite the blacklist, the Pentagon has continued to use Anthropic's models to support military operations in the Iran war, and the National Security Agency, which sits inside the DOD, is using Mythos, Axios has reported. "From a national security standpoint, you always have to look at those things," Michael said. "NSA and Commerce evaluates all frontier models, including Chinese frontier models, to see what the capabilities are at the edge."
The seven companies named Friday will be permitted to deploy their tools for any lawful use inside the department's classified systems, PBS NewsHour reported. Anthropic has objected to its technology being used for fully autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance, a stance PBS identified as central to the legal dispute.
Neither side has closed the door on a settlement. Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei met with senior Trump administration officials at the White House earlier in April to discuss Mythos, an exchange both sides described as "productive." After that meeting, President Trump told CNBC that "it's possible" Anthropic and the DOD reach a deal, calling the company "very smart" and saying it could "be of great use." OpenAI struck its own Pentagon agreement within hours of Hegseth's February designation; Chief Executive Sam Altman later wrote on X that the timing "looked opportunistic and sloppy."
Neither wire account on Friday carried partisan reaction; left- and right-leaning commentary on the seven-company package and Anthropic's continued exclusion was not in the day's reporting.
How the DOD could deploy Mythos without violating its own supply-chain risk designation remains unresolved, with Anthropic's two federal lawsuits against the administration still pending in San Francisco and Washington.