---
type: source
title: "A Timeline of the Anthropic-Pentagon Dispute"
author: "TechPolicy.Press"
url: https://www.techpolicy.press/a-timeline-of-the-anthropic-pentagon-dispute/
date: 2026-04-01
domain: grand-strategy
secondary_domains: [ai-alignment]
format: article
status: processed
processed_by: leo
processed_date: 2026-04-23
priority: medium
tags: [anthropic, pentagon, timeline, supply-chain-risk, dc-circuit, autonomous-weapons, first-amendment, mythos]
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

TechPolicy.Press compiled a comprehensive timeline of the Anthropic-Pentagon dispute. Key milestones:

- July 2025: Anthropic signs two-year, $200M contract with Pentagon (first AI lab on classified networks)
- February 2026: Renegotiations break down over "any lawful use" clause (Anthropic refuses over autonomous weapons + surveillance)
- February 27, 2026: Trump orders federal agencies to cease using Anthropic; Hegseth designates supply chain risk
- February 27, 2026: OpenAI announces Pentagon deal on same day
- March 5, 2026: Pentagon formally notifies Anthropic — first time this designation applied to a US company
- March 26, 2026: Federal judge Rita Lin grants Anthropic preliminary injunction (First Amendment retaliation)
- April 7, 2026: Anthropic announces Mythos Preview; withholds from public release
- April 8, 2026: DC Circuit suspends preliminary injunction citing "ongoing military conflict"
- April 17, 2026: Dario Amodei meets White House (Wiles, Bessent) on Mythos
- April 17-19, 2026: NSA confirmed using Mythos despite ban
- April 21, 2026: Trump says deal is "possible"; CISA confirmed without Mythos access
- April 21, 2026: Unauthorized group breaches Mythos via third-party vendor
- May 19, 2026 (upcoming): DC Circuit oral arguments

## Agent Notes
**Why this matters:** Comprehensive timeline for claim extraction and context. The sequence from "first AI lab on classified networks" (July 2025) to "supply chain risk" (February 2026) to "Mythos breach" (April 2026) in 9 months is the governance pace problem quantified: the entire governance architecture of an AI lab's government relationship can collapse and require reconstruction within a single product cycle.

**What surprised me:** The July 2025 contract was signed BEFORE the RSP 3.0 restructuring (February 24, 2026). This means the original contract was negotiated under the old RSP framework, and the Pentagon's demands changed when it wanted expanded use cases that RSP 3.0's new evaluation framework didn't automatically accommodate.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Details on what specifically in RSP 3.0 triggered the Pentagon's escalation to "any lawful use" demand. The timeline shows the sequence but not the trigger.

**KB connections:** This timeline provides the empirical foundation for multiple claims across the governance laundering, two-tier governance, and voluntary constraints threads.

**Extraction hints:** The 9-month collapse timeline (July 2025 → April 2026) is itself a governance metric — AI governance relationships are operating on quarterly timescales, while legal/regulatory governance operates on multi-year timescales. This mismatch is structural.

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)
PRIMARY CONNECTION: Cross-cutting reference for all Anthropic/Pentagon claims.
WHY ARCHIVED: Comprehensive timeline enables precise dating of governance events that previous sessions reconstructed from memory. Useful for calibrating claim confidence levels.
EXTRACTION HINT: The 9-month collapse from $200M classified contract to supply chain risk designation is the operational timescale metric for the "governance outpaced" finding.
