Sen. Warren Presses Hegseth on Anthropic Dispute - MeriTalk

Senator Elizabeth Warren is done waiting for the Pentagon to explain itself. The Massachusetts Democrat sent a letter on March 23 to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accusing the Department of Defense of weaponizing an obscure supply-chain-risk designation to retaliate against Anthropic after the AI company pushed back against U.S. government surveillance demands and autonomous weapons requirements. Warren gave the DOD and OpenAI until April 6 to respond, according to a press release from her office.

Warren wrote that she is "particularly concerned that DoD is trying to strong-arm American companies into providing the Department with the tools to spy on American citizens and deploy fully autonomous weapons without adequate safeguards," the press release states. She separately wrote to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman asking whether the company's new DOD contract contains safeguards against mass surveillance and autonomous weapons use. Her letter to Altman said she was worried "you appear to have rushed into an agreement with Secretary Hegseth that gives him and other Trump Administration officials free rein to engage in domestic surveillance or build autonomous weapon systems."

The letter landed the same day a federal judge in San Francisco heard Anthropic's motion for a preliminary injunction against the ban. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin told a government lawyer during the hearing that the ban on Anthropic's Claude chatbot "looks like an attempt to cripple Anthropic" and that she was concerned the government might be punishing Anthropic for publicly criticizing the government position, NPR reported. When a Justice Department lawyer argued the company posed a supply-chain risk, Lin questioned the standard: "What I am hearing from you... is that it is enough if an IT vendor is stubborn and insists on certain terms and it asks annoying questions, then it can be designated as a supply chain risk because they might not be trustworthy. That seems a pretty low bar," she said, according to CNBC.

The timing of the Pentagon's actions has drawn scrutiny. Anthropic had signed a $200 million contract with the Department of Defense before the dispute arose, CNBC reported. Hours after Anthropic was blacklisted, OpenAI announced its own deal with the DOD, TechCrunch reported. Charlie Bullock, a legal expert at the Institute for Law and AI, told Al Jazeera that Hegseth's post on X announcing the Anthropic designation went "far beyond what the law allows him to say" and that the Pentagon had not completed any of the steps required before declaring a supply chain risk under the statute. "That was clearly illegal," Bullock said.

Warren's letter to Hegseth asks the Pentagon to justify the designation and explain what steps it took before invoking the authority. The DOD and OpenAI have until April 6 to respond. Anthropic declined to comment. The company's lawsuit arguing the designation was retaliation for refusing to build surveillance and autonomous-weapons capabilities remains pending before Judge Lin.

The core legal question is narrow but consequential: whether the government can designate a commercial AI company as a national security risk without a substantive finding beyond the company's unwillingness to comply with certain government requests. If Judge Lin grants the injunction, the Pentagon would have to restore Anthropic's access while the case proceeds. If she does not, Anthropic loses its federal business and the designation stands unless a court strikes it down later. Warren's inquiry adds a congressional layer that puts Hegseth on record one way or another before the judicial process concludes.