The White House Plans to Sign Executive Order for Anthropic, Jeff Dean, and Other Competitors to Be Completely Purged, Co-signed by Employees in Solidarity

According to 1M AI News monitoring, hours after Anthropic sued the Pentagon on Monday, the White House further escalated the confrontation: preparing an executive order that would formally direct the federal government to fully remove Anthropic's AI systems, with the earliest signing scheduled for this week. This action will escalate the dispute from the Pentagon procurement level to the presidential executive order level. Trump previously stated that his administration would not use "woke AI." The Treasury Department, Department of Health and Human Services, and State Department have started to decommission Claude. White House officials stated that "any policy announcements will come directly from" the president, and discussions regarding the executive order are "speculative."

During his first term, Trump issued executive orders targeting foreign tech companies such as Huawei and TikTok, but even in the case of Huawei, the executive order did not directly name the company, with formal bans enacted through congressional legislation. Issuing an executive order to specifically target and remove a U.S. company has almost no precedent outside the standard procurement process.

On the same day, over 30 employees from OpenAI and Google DeepMind submitted an amicus curiae brief to the court in their personal capacity supporting Anthropic, with signatories including Google's Chief Scientist Jeff Dean. The brief stated that the Pentagon's supply chain risk assessment is "an improper and arbitrary use of power, with serious consequences for our industry," which will "undoubtedly have consequences for America's industrial and scientific competitiveness in the field of artificial intelligence and beyond," and will "stifle open discussions on the risks and rewards of AI systems in our field." The brief pointed out that if the Pentagon is unhappy with contract terms, they can terminate the contract and transition to other company services, rather than blacklisting Anthropic, and affirmed that the two red lines proposed by Anthropic (not for use in large-scale monitoring of U.S. citizens, not for use in autonomous lethal weapons) are legitimate concerns that require full protection. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly stated that "the implementation of a supply chain risk assessment against Anthropic is very detrimental to our industry and country," and "this is an extremely dangerous precedent, and I hope they handle it differently." OpenAI has announced a partnership with the Pentagon after Anthropic was banned.