Nextgov/FCW’s Alexandra Kelley on the government’s breakup with Anthropic

The Defense Department and Anthropic are on opposite ends of a nasty disagreement, with government-wide and industry-wide implications, over what the company’s Claude large language model and other offerings can be used for. Alexandra Kelley, our Nextgov/FCW colleague who covers emerging tech, has extensively covered the fallout from that impasse as agencies are working to comply with President Trump’s executive order to stop using Claude after the Pentagon essentially broke up with Anthropic. “Alexa,” as we and other GovExec colleagues call her, joins our Ross Wilkers for this episode to explain how those phase-out processes are taking place and provide an initial look at the government’s AI landscape without Anthropic in it. Claude is embedded in so many workflows across government that fully removing it is not a matter of simply deleting the app, as Alexa points out. Private sector, former military leaders urge Congress intervene in Pentagon-Anthropic dispute House amendment responding to Pentagon-Anthropic conflict fails committee vote Defense tech enters a new era: the case of Anthropic and the DOD Pentagon’s war on Anthropic based on ‘dubious’ legal thinking and ideology—not real risk, sources say Agencies begin to shed Anthropic contracts following Trump’s directive Trump directs government to ‘immediately cease’ using Anthropic technology It would take the Pentagon months to replace Anthropic’s AI tools: sources Anthropic CEO defends support for AI regulations, alignment with Trump policies Anthropic CEO sees 3 areas where policymakers can help with AI GSA and Anthropic ink deal for Claude AI across all government branches AWS GovCloud gets high-level security approvals for Anthropic and Meta AI models Anthropic introduces new Claude Gov models with national security focus AI startup Anthropic to build out public sector team