The US president told CNBC on Tuesday that Anthropic is ‘shaping up’ following a White House meeting last Friday at which the company’s CEO Dario Amodei discussed its Mythos AI model with Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
The Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic remains in legal limbo, with a federal appeals court and a San Francisco district court having reached conflicting conclusions.
President Donald Trump told CNBC’s Squawk Box on Tuesday that a deal allowing Anthropic’s AI models to be used within the Department of Defense is “possible,” describing the company as “shaping up.”
“They came to the White House a few days ago, and we had some very good talks with them, and I think they’re shaping up,” Trump said.
“They’re very smart, and I think they can be of great use.” The comments mark a striking rhetorical reversal from a president who, in late February, posted on Truth Social ordering all federal agencies to “IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology” and declared that his administration would “not do business with them again.”
Trump’s remarks follow a White House meeting on Friday 18 April at which Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to discuss the company’s new Mythos model, a frontier AI system Anthropic has described as highly capable at cybersecurity tasks and has so far made available only to a small group of organisations.
The White House described the conversation as “productive and constructive.” Anthropic said Amodei had a “productive discussion” with administration officials about how the company and the US government can “work together on key shared priorities such as cybersecurity, America’s lead in the AI race, and AI safety.”
When reporters asked Trump about the meeting on a runway in Phoenix, he responded “Who?” and said he had “no idea” Amodei had been there.
The meeting took place against the backdrop of a dispute that has few precedents in the relationship between Washington and the technology industry.
In July 2025, Anthropic signed a $200 million contract with the Pentagon, becoming the first AI lab to have its models approved for use on the DOD’s classified networks.
But as negotiations over Claude’s deployment on the department’s GenAI.mil platform began in September, talks broke down. The Pentagon demanded that Anthropic grant unfettered access to its models for all lawful purposes.
Anthropic drew two firm lines: its AI would not be used in fully autonomous weapons systems that select targets without human intervention, and it would not be used for domestic mass surveillance of Americans.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded by designating Anthropic a “supply chain risk to national security” in late February 2026, a label previously reserved for companies associated with foreign adversaries.
The formal designation, confirmed to Anthropic’s leadership on 5 March, required defense contractors to certify they were not using Anthropic’s models in work with the military. Trump amplified the measure with his Truth Social directive.
The designation was, as Anthropic argued in subsequent litigation, unprecedented: as US District Judge Rita Lin noted in a stinging 43-page ruling that granted Anthropic a preliminary injunction in late March, it appeared to be directed not at a genuine national security threat but at punishing the company for “bringing public scrutiny to the government’s contracting position”, “classic illegal First Amendment retaliation,” she wrote.
The legal situation remains split. A federal appeals court in Washington DC denied Anthropic’s request to temporarily block the supply chain risk designation on 8 April. Judge Lin’s preliminary injunction in San Francisco, from a separate but related case, bars enforcement of Trump’s Truth Social ban on Claude across the rest of the government.
The practical effect is that Anthropic is excluded from Pentagon contracts but can continue working with other government agencies while both cases proceed. The DOD has continued to use Claude during the US-Iran war, which began before the blacklisting took effect.
What appears to have shifted the White House’s posture is Mythos. Parts of the intelligence community and CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, have been testing the model.
The White HouseOffice of Management and Budget is setting up protocols to allow federal agencies to access a controlled version.
Treasury Secretary Bessent’s presence at Friday’s meeting was read by sources close to the negotiations as a signal that the economic and financial security arguments for Mythos access had reached the most senior levels of the administration.
As one administration source told Axios: “It would be grossly irresponsible for the US government to deprive itself of the technological leaps that the new model presents. It would be a gift to China.”
Whether any resumption of the Anthropic–Pentagon relationship is possible remains uncertain. Trump’s Tuesday comments refer to talks that have been promising but did not produce a deal.
The appeals court ruling on the supply chain risk designation still stands. Hegseth has not withdrawn his position. Anthropic, meanwhile, has engaged Ballard Partners, the lobbying firm where Wiles previously worked, for advocacy around Department of War procurement, a move that signals it understands the political dynamics as well as the legal ones.
The company’s annualised revenue has reached $30 billion and it is considering an IPO; the supply-chain risk designation damages enterprise credibility even where it does not block commercial deals.
