New York, March 5, 2026, 10:32 EST
Palantir Technologies is scrambling to pull Anthropic’s Claude from a Pentagon-facing build of its Maven Smart Systems, following an order from U.S. President Donald Trump for the government to cut ties with Anthropic, two sources told Reuters. Overhauling and replacing Claude could stretch on for months, those familiar with the process said, as Palantir must rework sections of software tied to Maven.
Maven stitches data from a range of sources, spotlighting military targets and shaving time off for intelligence analysts. Dropping in a different embedded AI model isn’t just a matter of swapping parts—far from it. The Pentagon, for its part, has been doubling down on these types of systems.
On Feb. 27, Trump rolled out a federal government-wide ban on Anthropic, giving agencies half a year to wind down use. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth followed up, warning military contractors off any “commercial activity” with the AI firm. Defense industry attorneys told Reuters most suppliers are expected to fall in line regardless; Lockheed Martin said it would comply and anticipated “minimal impacts.” General Dynamics and RTX, Raytheon’s parent, wouldn’t comment. Reuters
Palantir was trading at $154.20, up roughly 0.7% as of 10:18 a.m. EST, putting its market value near $433 billion.
Maven Smart Systems relies on “prompts”—that is, text instructions entered into an AI model—and combines those with other workflows set up using Claude code, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. This week in Washington, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, at a defense tech conference, cautioned that Silicon Valley companies risking both white-collar jobs and, in his words, those that “screw the military,” could end up triggering “the nationalization of our technology.” Investing
The Pentagon’s talk of a supply-chain risk tag over a procurement dispute has the tech lobby sounding alarms, according to a letter sent Wednesday. Information Technology Industry Council CEO Jason Oxman told Hegseth that emergency designations should be reserved for “genuine emergencies,” and warned that pulling parts out of existing solutions would turn into a “complex endeavor.” Reuters
The limits on Pentagon authority over contractors could end up being litigated, possibly forcing companies to redo their systems if policies change once more. People with knowledge of the talks said Anthropic has already stated it would contest any supply-chain risk label, while certain investors are urging the company to manage tensions with the Pentagon during ongoing negotiations.
Claude is a large language model, built to generate prompt-based responses after training on immense volumes of text. Swapping out one model for another in defense systems isn’t simple; such a move can disrupt interfaces, trigger new rounds of safety checks, and force additional security reviews.
Palantir’s core business—data-analysis software for governments and corporations—now leans even harder into U.S. defense thanks to Maven. The key issue: How fast can Palantir shift to a new model, without shaking up a platform the Pentagon already sees as pivotal for its AI ambitions?
