Pentagon's removal of Claude ran past Hegseth's six-month deadline

The contract side of the switch was already in place. In July 2025 the Pentagon had given contracts to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI, so swapping out Claude did not by itself call for a new contract ^[13]. DefenseScoop reported that as of October 5th Anthropic models were out of the department's systems, and that it was using Google, xAI and OpenAI models or moving over to them ^[12]. Those are the other three companies on the July awards ^[20]. The BBC reports that OpenAI tools have gained wider adoption in some military departments ^[11].

The software side took longer. Palantir runs Maven, a system that organizes intelligence and other data for the Pentagon ^[3]. Several people familiar with how the department uses AI told the BBC that Claude had become an important tool inside it for processing large volumes of information ^[4]. The BBC's sources said it was used for research, analysis and intelligence work ^[2]. The Defense Department's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office said some workflows required migration and modification ^[14].

In my view that migration work, more than any contract step, explains why the transition ran long ^[8]. Each modified workflow has to work on the new model before the old one can be switched off. Lauren Kahn, a former defense official who is now a senior research analyst at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, told the BBC that because Claude was so integrated, it could not be pulled out quickly ^[5]. "Once they become integrated it can be painful to remove them," she said ^[6].

A Pentagon official said the department "has ceased the use of Anthropic products" ^[1]. The BBC's sourcing on recent use ^[21] and DefenseScoop's October 5th date ^[12] describe different points in one transition. Neither the statement nor the reporting says when final access ended, whether every contractor environment finished, or how many users and systems were affected ^[7][15].

The dispute was about a contract term from the start. In a February 26th statement, Amodei wrote that Anthropic "cannot in good conscience accede" to the Pentagon's request for an "any lawful use" term ^[10]. The D.C. Circuit majority found that Anthropic's ability and willingness to limit how Claude is used was something the department could treat as a supply-chain risk ^[18]. It said the department acted over a contract term it considered essential to national security ^[18]. According to the runtimewire account of the BBC reporting, the ruling did not settle how quickly a deployed model can be removed once it is built into operational software ^[19].