Top Pentagon official reaffirms Anthropic blacklist despite Lutnick comments

Pentagon official Emil Michael said Thursday that Anthropic remains a designated Supply Chain Risk at the Department of War and for the Defense Industrial Base, a day after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the company was back on the right side. Michael made the statement in a post on X, as reported by Axios.

At a glance

• A supply chain risk designation reaches contractors and suppliers across the Defense Industrial Base, the network of firms the department buys from, rather than a single procurement decision.
• Anthropic has been elevating co-founder Tom Brown's role in its relationship with the White House, after personality differences under Amodei's leadership sharpened the clash with the administration earlier this year.
• Lutnick told Axios' Mike Allen at the G20 Innovation Summit that the administration trusts Anthropic and Dario Amodei, leaving two departments describing the same company in opposite terms.

The split matters for anything Anthropic moves through defense channels. A supply chain risk label reads as a procurement obstacle rather than a rhetorical one, since it travels with contractors and subcontractors, while a Commerce Secretary's endorsement carries no such mechanism behind it. The gap appears to reflect an administration that has settled its dispute with the company in one department and not in another, which leaves Anthropic's federal standing dependent on which agency is asked.

Michael's post came a day after Lutnick spoke with Axios' Mike Allen on the sidelines of the G20 Innovation Summit. There he said "We trust Anthropic," and he answered yes when asked directly whether he trusts Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei.

They've done what we asked. They're back on the right side. So the answer is: Yes.

The label grew out of months of fighting between the Trump administration and Anthropic over how the military can use the company's models. A federal judge struck down the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic as a supply chain risk in August.

That ruling did not end the matter. Anthropic is still contesting a separate Pentagon designation, issued under a different statute, in the D.C. Circuit. Michael's post refers to a designation that stands at the Department of War and across the Defense Industrial Base.

What the D.C. Circuit still decides The open question is the second designation, made under a statute other than the one a federal judge voided in August. No hearing date or decision timeline has been made public. Until that case resolves, Anthropic sits on the risk list at the Department of War even as the Commerce Secretary says he trusts the company and its chief executive.