The Pentagon asked two major defense contractors on Wednesday to provide an assessment of their reliance on Anthropic’s AI model, Claude — a first step toward a potential designation of Anthropic as a “supply chain risk,” Axios has learned. That penalty is usually reserved for companies from adversarial countries, such as Chinese tech giant Huawei. Using it to punish a leading American tech firm, particularly one on which the military itself is currently reliant, would be unprecedented. The Pentagon reached out to Boeing and Lockheed Martin on Wednesday to ask about their exposure to Anthropic, two sources with knowledge of those conversations said.

Full report : The DOD asked Boeing and Lockheed Martin to assess their reliance on Claude, a first step toward blacklisting Anthropic; Lockheed confirms DOD contact.