Leading U.S. technology firms have rallied unexpectedly to support Anthropic, the AI specialist suing top Trump administration officials for what it calls unconstitutional retaliation.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple submitted court briefs this week challenging Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to brand the company a supply chain risk—the first time such a label has hit an American business.
At the heart of the dispute lies Anthropic’s refusal to allow its Claude AI models, used by federal agencies since 2024, to power mass surveillance or autonomous weapons. Negotiations soured in February when CEO Dario Amodei publicly rejected demands to remove ethical safeguards from DoD contracts. President Trump responded on Truth Social by ordering Claude’s removal from government systems, prompting Hegseth’s blacklist.
Microsoft, with its extensive defence ties, warned of “broad negative ramifications for the entire technology sector” and endorsed Anthropic’s position that AI tools “should not be used to conduct domestic mass surveillance or put the country in a position where autonomous machines could independently start a war.”
The Chamber of Progress, representing Google, Apple, Amazon and Nvidia, filed a joint brief decrying the move as “a potentially ruinous sanction” like a “temper tantrum.”
It stated, “If left in place, that sanction imposes a culture of coercion, complicity, and silence, in which the public understands that the government will use any means at its disposal to punish those who dare to disagree.” The group opposes governmental attempts to force or restrict access to speech, though Meta quit last year.
Separate filings came from 40 OpenAI and Google staff plus 24 ex-military leaders, who said such actions signal “the risk of capricious retaliation or disproportionate punishment for voicing disagreement.” In a San Francisco hearing, Anthropic revealed DoD outreach to its clients urging them to walk away; the Justice Department did not deny it.
The support surprises given tech execs’ recent Trump donations and endorsements, but the overreach has alarmed insiders. Remesh AI CEO Gary Ellis told the BBC, “When the government starts to overreach and step on basic levers of capitalism, the alarm bells go off. If the government can do this and blacklist a company, one that has incredibly good technology, these executives know this is serious and can quickly impact them.”
Free speech advocate John Coleman hopes others follow suit. “It’s our hope that other Silicon Valley companies follow Anthropic’s lead in staying true to their principles and rejecting federal pressure to abandon them. A free society requires no less.”