A day after Anthropic sued the Trump administration over its supply chain risk designation, Google said it would introduce a new feature allowing civilian and military personnel to build custom AI agents for unclassified work on GenAI.mil, the Pentagon's enterprise AI portal.
The tool - called Agent Designer - gives the Department of Defense's workforce of more than 3 million people a no-code or low-code interface to create their own digital assistants for repetitive administrative tasks, from drafting meeting notes to breaking large projects into step-by-step plans.
DOD technology chief Emil Michael told Bloomberg he has "high confidence" Google will be "a great partner on all networks", and that the Pentagon was "moving on" from its Anthropic dispute - and that the matter would not be resolved through the courts.
Along with Google, OpenAI's ChatGPT and Elon Musk's xAI Grok have also been cleared for the GenAI.mil platform, while Anthropic sits in federal court arguing the designation - historically reserved for foreign adversaries - was applied unlawfully and without due process.
Anthropic's blacklisting
Anthropic had signed a $200 million contract with the Department of Defense back in July, becoming the first AI lab to deploy its technology across the agency's classified networks.
Negotiations ultimately stalled ahead of a 27 February deadline set by the Pentagon.
The DoD wanted Anthropic to grant the agency unfettered access to its AI models across all lawful purposes, while Anthropic wanted assurance that its models would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance.
Anthropic filed lawsuits in two separate jurisdictions, alleging the federal government's moves constitute an "unlawful campaign of retaliation."
The company's chief strategy officer warned that the government's actions could reduce Anthropic's 2026 revenue by multiple billions of dollars.
The designation carries commercial weight beyond government contracts. It will require all defence vendors and contractors to certify they do not use Anthropic's Claude models in their work with the Pentagon, putting private-sector partnerships under pressure as well.
Google's internal contradiction
Interestingly, Google AI chief Jeff Dean, along with employees from OpenAI and Google, signed an amicus brief backing Anthropic in its court battle against the Pentagon.
The irony is not lost on this reporter: One of Google's most senior AI researchers publicly supporting the company's adversary in a legal fight, while the corporate entity moves to fill the contract vacuum that the adversary just vacated.
The Pentagon had been expected to integrate Anthropic's AI tools into GenAI.mil, but cut ties with the company after the heated dispute over autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance.
