Tech workers urge DOD, Congress to withdraw Anthropic label as a supply chain risk | TechCrunch

Hundreds of tech workers have signed an open letter urging the Department of Defense to withdraw its designation of Anthropic as a “supply chain risk.” The letter also calls on Congress to step in and “examine whether the use of these extraordinary authorities against an American technology company is appropriate.” The letter includes signatories from major technology and venture capital firms including OpenAI, Slack, IBM, Cursor, Salesforce Ventures, and more. It follows a dispute between the DOD and Anthropic after the AI lab last week refused to give the military unrestricted access to its AI systems.  Anthropic’s two red lines in its negotiations with the Pentagon were that it didn’t want its technology to be used for mass surveillance on Americans or to power autonomous weapons that made targeting and firing decisions without a human in the loop. The DOD said it had no plans to do either of those things, but that it didn’t believe it should be limited by the rules of a vendor.  In response to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s refusal to cave to Hegseth’s threats, President Donald Trump on Friday directed federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology after a six-month transition period. Hegseth said he would make good on his threats and designate Anthropic a supply chain risk — a designation normally reserved for foreign adversaries that would blacklist the AI firm from working with any agency or company that does business with the Pentagon.  In a post on Friday, He...