The White House is drafting guidance that would allow federal agencies to bypass the Pentagon’s supply chain risk designation on Anthropic and clear the way for government use of its tools, including the cyber-focused Mythos model. Axios first reported the plans on April 29, with Nextgov/FCW confirming details from two sources familiar with the matter.
The administration is also drafting an AI executive order that could address how the government uses Anthropic’s tools, according to Nextgov/FCW.
How the Designation Happened
The Pentagon labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk earlier this year after the company declined to ease restrictions on its products being used in domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. The White House subsequently ordered a governmentwide phaseout of Anthropic’s technology. Anthropic legally challenged the label, and a federal judge issued a temporary injunction on the designation in late March, which the government has said it intends to appeal.
Why the Reversal Now
Mythos, Anthropic’s cyber-focused model unveiled earlier this year, appears to be driving the shift. The model has become a reference point for cybersecurity practitioners because it demonstrates how advanced models can be purpose-built for real-world cyber operations, including those planned inside the intelligence community, according to Nextgov/FCW.
Retired Gen. Paul Nakasone, who led NSA and Cyber Command and now serves on OpenAI’s board, told reporters at a national security event in Nashville last week: “I don’t think it was accurate that Anthropic is a supply chain risk. I feel uncomfortable with the fact that part of our nation’s capability is not being used by our government,” per Nextgov/FCW.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine also stated at the same event that autonomous weapons will be a “key and essential part of everything we do,” according to Nextgov/FCW.
President Trump himself signaled the thaw in a CNBC interview last week, saying Anthropic is “shaping up” and can “be of great use” in the future.
The Vendor Landscape Fracture
The dispute has rattled Washington’s AI vendor landscape for months. Companies have scrambled for clarity on contracting requirements as uncertainty grew over how much Anthropic use the government would permit, according to Nextgov/FCW.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon has moved to expand classified AI access through Google Gemini, OpenAI, and xAI, completing a vendor realignment that excluded Anthropic from defense classified workloads.
A White House official told Nextgov/FCW: “The White House continues to proactively engage across government and industry to protect our country and the American people, including by working with frontier AI labs. The collective effort of all involved will ultimately benefit our economy and country.”
The Federal AI Vendor Question
If the guidance goes through, the federal government would effectively have access to all four major frontier model providers: OpenAI, Google, xAI, and Anthropic. The question shifts from “which vendors are allowed” to how agencies manage a multi-vendor AI stack where each provider carries different restrictions, pricing models, and capability profiles. For federal contractors and systems integrators, the uncertainty of the past months may give way to a different kind of complexity: procurement frameworks that need to accommodate rapid policy shifts on which models are cleared for which workloads.