Cruz questions full Anthropic ban: 'I have not seen a basis laid out'

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Tuesday expressed uncertainty about President Trump banning all federal agencies from using Anthropic after the AI company and the Pentagon traded blows in recent weeks. 

“I’ll confess, I have not seen a basis laid out for why the government would be prohibited from using Anthropic,” Cruz told host Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “Claude is one the many AI tools that can be very helpful.”

The president last month directed federal agencies to cease using Anthropic technology. That followed the firm’s CEO, Dario Amodei, pushing the Pentagon to pledge it would not use its Claude tool for fully autonomous lethal weapons or mass domestic surveillance of Americans.

After Trump’s order, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk to national security, which bans any contractor, supplier or partner of the U.S. military from conducting commercial activity with Anthropic. 

Hegseth said the Pentagon would phase out the use of Anthropic over the next six months. The Defense Department previously reached deals worth up to $200 million with Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI last July.

Anthropic sued the Trump administration Monday, challenging the Pentagon’s designation of the company. The suit, filed in federal court in Northern California, calls the move “unlawful” and alleges it “undoubtedly harms Anthropic’s reputation.”

Republican Sen. Mike Rounds (S.D.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also told Politico last week that he requested a briefing from the Pentagon on the back-and-forth.

Cruz, the chair of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said Tuesday that Hegseth’s reasoning was “reasonable on the face of it,” noting that the Pentagon chief “rightly said that the military is not going to allow a private sector [company] set military defense policy for America.”

But as for barring all federal agencies from using Anthropic technology, the Texas Republican added that “without more information, I don’t have a view one way or the other.”