As agency leaders grapple with informal directives from President Trump and the Pentagon, the situation is exposing the challenges and costs of removing a major AI vendor from federal supply chains after an aggressive push to embed the technology in the first place.
Nearly three weeks have passed since Trump ordered federal agencies to "immediately cease" using Anthropic's technology, but various federal agencies have yet to receive formal guidance other than Trump's social media post on how to proceed, according to conversations with multiple federal technology leaders.
In turn, the response has varied across the government, with agencies like the General Services Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services abruptly removing Claude within hours of Trump's directive. Other agencies say they are still reviewing Anthropic's use, but the product may still be available.
Trump's directive followed a breakdown in negotiations between the Pentagon and the AI company earlier this month over disagreements on safety guardrails. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth separately deemed Anthropic a supply chain risk, which will be fought over in federal courts later this month.
For staffers at agencies that already moved to eliminate Anthropic, the transition has been confusing and abrupt, federal tech leaders told The Hill.
Anthropic was first approved for classified use in government agencies through a partnership with Palantir nearly two years ago.
At HHS, thousands of employees using Anthropic products had just a few hours to save their chats and coding projects, according to an agency leader.
"Staff were really upset with how quickly" the shutdown happened, the leader said, adding "there was no spin-down time."
"People lost their chats, people lost any coding that they were doing in any projects. Are there equivalent tools that they can use? Sure, but they had been working in a secure environment," the leader added. "It's a loss of a lot of work…it was a waste of government resources."
At another civilian agency, one AI advisor told The Hill there was "a tremendous lack of information," and "nobody has clear answers" even as agency leaders told workers to stop using Anthropic's technology.
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com
No comments:
Post a Comment