Lawrence Lessig

02/19/2026

There are a million stories you should be watching closely. This one should be at the top of that list.

The Pentagon has threatened to effectively destroy one of America’s most important technology companies. In the process of attempting to procure contracts with AI companies, the Pentagon demands contracts that permit it to use the technology however they want for whatever purpose they want, including automated weapon systems and spying on Americans. Every other AI company in America has given in to these demands. Only Anthropic said they wouldn’t sell their technology to the Pentagon unless the Pentagon agreed not to use their product for automated weapons purposes or to spy on Americans.

The Pentagon was not happy with these conditions. And the authoritarians who run our government have now threatened to retaliate. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense (which he is until Congress changes the name of his department which it has not), has threatened to deem Anthropic “a supply chain risk.” That designation would mean that any company doing business with the US military would need to certify that they don’t do business with Anthropic. That designation would effectively destroy the company - unless they give in.

One might question whether Anthropic is right to insist on its principles. And one might well say that the government should have discretion to decide which companies actually present a national security risk. But what’s absurd about this act of extortion is that there is no relationship between Anthropic’s behavior and any national security risk. The Pentagon has many companies that will help it spy on Americans or develop AI driven weapon systems. The fact that there’s one that won’t cannot in any conceivable way create a “supply chain risk.” The designation has nothing to do with Anthropic’s behavior. And if the principles of due process actually lived in America, they would ban this illegal behavior by our government.

The Defense Department does have the power to force private companies in America to do business with it. The Defense Production Act (DPA) gives the government extraordinary power to force any American company to supply it with the defense supplies that it needs. But that statute is carefully crafted to ensure that, in fact, the government needs what it is demanding. The statute requires the President or his designate to make a finding that the demand is “necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense.” If the service is available from other willing suppliers, then it is not “necessary.” The declaration of policy under the DPA states that the government should only resort to this extraordinary remedy “when national defense needs cannot otherwise be satisfied in a timely fashion.” But again, the needs can be supplied by any number of other AI providers. There therefore would be no statutory power under the Defense Production Act to compel Anthropic to supply its technology to the Defense Department. And even if the Defense Production Act applied in this case, the remedy for a failure to comply with a proper order is not the corporate death penalty of being labeled a “supply chain risk.” The statute instead has explicit penalty provisions that cover an illegal refusal.

Yet this is the Trump administration’s standard operating procedure: It advances some putative legal authority to justify its demands, and yet ignores the legal constraints on that authority, extorting behaviors out of a public that otherwise will not voluntarily comply.

…if courts don’t systematically stop this wide-ranging practice of extortion, we will lose something fundamental about who we are. This is, or was, a rule of law nation. The rule of law means that you risk losing your company only if you do something wrong. Anthropic has done nothing wrong. And yet, because of the extortionate demands of the Defense Department, it faces a life or death choice: Compromise or close shop.

If this threat is allowed to stand, we are not a government of laws. We are instead, all of us, vulnerable to the whims of our king. This should terrify any company-not just those unwilling to help the government spy on its citizens or empower automated weapons systems that not even AI scientists believe can be adequately controlled.