By Karen Freifeld
March 4 (Reuters) – A Big Tech industry group on Wednesday expressed concern to U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth about his declaring AI company Anthropic a supply-chain risk, saying such a designation creates uncertainty for companies that could threaten the military’s access to the best products and services.
“We are concerned by recent reports regarding the Department of War’s consideration of imposing a supply chain risk designation in response to a procurement dispute,” the Information Technology Industry Council, whose members include Nvidia, Amazon.com and Apple, said in a letter dated Wednesday.
The letter did not directly name Anthropic, instead focusing on the designation and its potential consequences.
Last week, capping off a heated weeks-long dispute with Anthropic over technology guardrails on Claude tools used by the military, President Donald Trump announced a federal agency-wide ban on the company with a six-month phaseout period and Hegseth ordered Pentagon suppliers to purge Anthropic’s prized AI tools from their supply chains.
The letter, sent to Hegseth on Wednesday, also stated that the declaration threatens “to undermine the government’s access to the best-in-class products and services from American companies that serve all agencies and components of the federal government,” according to a copy seen by Reuters.
The Department of Defense, which the Trump administration has renamed the Department of War, said it “will respond directly to the authors as appropriate,” as it does with all correspondence.
The letter is the first significant support Anthropic has received from the tech industry, a group of companies that includes its investors, suppliers and customers.
In the letter, ITI CEO Jason Oxman said that contract disputes should be resolved through continued negotiation or selecting alternate providers through established channels.
“Emergency authorities such as supply chain risk designations exist for genuine emergencies and are typically reserved for entities that have been designated as foreign adversaries,” Oxman wrote.
He said the department should work through the Federal Acquisition Security Council, which was created to evaluate risk in federal procurement, when considering whether private companies present legitimate supply chain risks.
Many of the council’s members have long partnered with the federal government and provide “mission-critical capabilities” to the Pentagon, Oxman added, suggesting the designation would be disruptive.
“Our member companies strive to provide best-in-class solutions to meet the needs of U.S. departments and agencies,” Oxman wrote in the letter, which was also copied to other parts of the government. “Removing parts of these solutions, as would be required based on recent reports, will be a complex endeavor.”
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York; Editing by Chris Sanders and Matthew Lewis)
