1. United States
2. Mont.
3. Letter

I am writing to urge you to oppose the Pentagon's unprecedented threat to designate Anthropic, a leading American AI company, as a supply chain risk. This designation has historically been reserved for companies from adversarial nations like Chinese tech giant Huawei, and its application to an American firm represents a dangerous overreach that threatens both civil liberties and the integrity of our technology sector. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a deadline of 5:01pm Friday to agree to allow military use of Claude for "all lawful purposes," threatening to either invoke the Defense Production Act or declare the company a supply chain risk. The Pentagon contacted Boeing and Lockheed Martin on Wednesday requesting assessments of their reliance on Anthropic's AI model. This is political targeting designed to force a private American company to remove safeguards that prevent mass surveillance of Americans and the development of autonomous weapons that fire without human involvement. Claude is currently the only AI model running in the military's classified systems, and the Pentagon acknowledges its superior performance. Yet rather than work within reasonable ethical boundaries, the Defense Department is weaponizing supply chain risk designations to compel compliance. This sets a chilling precedent where any American company that refuses to enable unchecked government surveillance can be branded a national security threat. Anthropic's refusal to lift these specific safeguards represents responsible corporate citizenship, not a security risk. The company has characterized ongoing discussions as "good-faith conversations" to support national security missions within what their models can "reliably and responsibly do." Meanwhile, competitors like Elon Musk's xAI have already agreed to the Pentagon's "all lawful use" standard, suggesting this pressure campaign may benefit companies willing to abandon ethical guardrails. I urge you to publicly oppose this misuse of supply chain risk designations and support legislation that would prevent the Pentagon from using such tools to coerce American companies into enabling mass surveillance of citizens. Our national security should not come at the cost of constitutional protections against warrantless surveillance.