Palantir keeps using Anthropic’s Claude despite Pentagon risk label

Palantir said it still uses Anthropic’s Claude in its tools despite the Pentagon’s supply-chain risk designation, Alex Karp, chief executive officer, told CNBC at AIPcon in Maryland.

The Department of Defense designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk last week, but is still using Claude models to support the war in Iran, as CNBC previously reported.

Anthropic sued the Trump administration on February 13 to reverse the supply-chain risk designation and is seeking a stay on the DOD action.

Karp said Palantir’s products are integrated with Anthropic and that they will probably be integrated with other large language models in the future.

Anthropic and Palantir partnered with Amazon Web Services to support the DOD in 2024, and other defense tech companies, including Lockheed Martin, have told employees to stop using Claude as the clash plays out.

🔗 Source: CNBC

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

A policy clash over AI guardrails has trapped Palantir

The dispute started after the Department of Defense (DOD) asked Anthropic to waive July 2025 contract limits that block mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons systems 1.
Anthropic declined, then the DOD told the company it now carried a “supply chain risk” label 1.
Palantir faces a technical squeeze because its flagship AIP platform uses Anthropic’s Claude models, including in some U.S. government work; one report puts Claude in 15% of AIP mission workflows across five federal agencies 2.
Swapping out Claude could take months, plus steep costs to rewrite workflows and recertify systems; one report says OpenAI and Google options still lack accreditation for some classified environments 2.

A domestic “supply chain risk” designation is being tested in court

The label stands out as the first supply chain risk designation applied to an American company, based on a legal update 1.
Anthropic says the scope stays narrow and covers Claude use that directly supports DOD contracts, not broader customer use tied to those customers 3.
Anthropic has sued, stating in its filing that the government is unlawfully punishing the company for protected speech 4.
The fight has drawn support from parts of the tech community, with AI developers at OpenAI and Google submitting a brief backing Anthropic, according to the Associated Press 5.