The battle between the Department of War and artificial intelligence developer Anthropic is the hottest story in GovCon. The two parties are embroiled in a legal dispute over to which extent the department should be able to use a contractor’s technology in activities deemed legal and whether a contractor should be able to dictate how the DOW uses its technology.
The DOW versus Anthropic saga covers a variety of issues in GovCon to fascinate everyone—contract writing, autonomous weapon technology, upstart businesses suing a wealthy and powerful government customer, and the role AI will play in future warfare. The fallout from this disagreement has the potential to shape how the Pentagon procures emerging technologies like AI for years to come.
Fortunately, the Potomac Officers Club has you covered with its 2026 Artificial Intelligence Summit on March 18. Hear the latest partnership details directly from Cameron Stanley, DOW chief digital and AI officer and Wash100 Award winner, during his keynote address. Get updates on how the DOW is contracting for AI technologies from other top department officials, including:
- Wally Coggins, Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency CDAO
- Chandra Donelson, Space Force CDAO and Director of Data, AI and Software
- Jonathan Elliott, DOW Director of AI Rapid Capabilities Cell
- Dr. Eric Moore, Army Combat Capabilities Development Command deputy to the commanding general
- Dr. Delester Brown, National Guard Bureau CDAO
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Let’s dive into the five biggest AI efforts with the DOW.
What Are the Biggest AI Developments at the DOW?
1. Anthropic Sues Pentagon Over Supply Chain Risk Designation
Anthropic and the DOW reopened their feud when the company on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon for labeling it a supply chain risk, according to the Wall Street Journal. Anthropic argues that the designation was too extreme of a consequence from a simple dispute over AI guardrails.
Anthropic, in February contract negotiations with the DOW, wanted the department to assure that it wouldn’t use its AI tools for autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance activities. The DOW countered by saying it would not participate in those activities and follows all legal requirements, so Anthropic should allow it to use its AI in all lawful situations.
There’s a lot of money at stake in this disagreement. Not only was Anthropic’s award valued at as much as $200 million, but the decision could ripple through its business. The DOW labeling Anthropic as a supply chain risk, usually reserved for businesses from enemies overseas, means the firm’s customers who also do business with the DOW might have to demonstrate it did not use Anthropic AI models in their DOW work.
2. Pentagon Reaches Deal With OpenAI
Shortly after escalating its disagreement with Anthropic, the Pentagon reached a deal with OpenAI, developer of ChatGPT, to use its AI models on the Pentagon’s classified systems, The Hill reported. OpenAI said that the DOW agreed to prevent its technology from being used on autonomous weapons and local mass surveillance.
OpenAI also agreed to develop technological restrictions so that its technologies behaved as intended and would not escalate out of the DOW’s control. The company said the DOW also requested these limitations.
“We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements,” said Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO.
3. The DOW Releases Its AI Acceleration Strategy
The Pentagon in January issued its overarching AI Acceleration Strategy with a goal of making the U.S. the world’s unquestioned AI-propelled military. The blueprint has a goal of increasing experimentation, reducing bureaucratic obstacles and integrating cutting-edge AI technologies into every mission area.
The DOW is specifically executing a selection of Pace-Setting Projects that will serve as outcome-oriented vehicles for finishing its development of bedrock AI enablers, such as data, infrastructure and others, to accelerate AI integration. These include:
- Warfighting
- Swarm Forge: A program for iteratively discovering, testing and growing new ways of fighting both win, and against, AI-enabled capabilities.
- Intelligence
- OpenAI: Advancing the technical intelligence, or TechINT, path with a goal of turning intelligence into weapons in timeframes as few as hours, not years.
- Enterprise
- GenAI.mil: Facilitating AI testing and experimentation in the DOW by allowing the department’s three million military and civilian personnel, at all classification models, to use cutting-edge AI models.
Are you a GovCon technology executive? Then you cannot afford to miss the Potomac Officers Club’s 2026 Artificial Intelligence Summit on March 18—it was curated just for you! Check out panel discussions on the most important topics in the business, including Operationalizing Vetted, Decision-Ready AI and Effective, Excellent Enterprise AI Through Partnerships. Secure your seat now!
4. Army Testing AI Prototypes in Acquisition
The Army in January began experimenting with AI prototypes with a goal of improving the contracting process. One of these AI technologies was designed to reduce the time it takes to compile Acquisition Requirement Packages from weeks to hours, or minutes. ARPs are packages of documents that explain what the service is buying and how it is following the law in doing so.
ARPs are extremely laborious, consisting of hundreds of pages of documents that may have duplicative, and potentially conflicting, information. Irregularities in ARPs can result in confusing solicitations, delays in the contracting process, possible protests and delays in getting advanced technologies to soldiers.
PEO Enterprise, which created the AI-powered ARP concept, used one of the AI prototypes in FY 2025 to create two supply-type contract awards. The service is now testing the AI tools for additional contract actions, including service-based procurements.
5. Raft Awarded Contract for Operator-Centric AI for CENTCOM Missions
Raft in January was awarded an other transaction agreement by the DOW’s chief digital and AI office, in tandem with Central Command, for the company’s AI Mission System.
The Raft AI Mission System, or [R]AIMS is a fully-containerized agentic AI application that allows users to evaluate, train and deploy new computer vision models without requiring a data science background.
The [R]AIMS supports critical use cases, including:
- Satellite broad area search
- Distributed monitoring
- Counter Unmanned System Threat Detection
Raft received its contract after a five-day vendor competition hosted by CENTCOM that sought novel ways to operationalize AI in combat.
“This wasn’t about building another tool,” said Shubhi Mishra, Raft founder and CEO and a two-time Wash100 Award winner. “This was about rethinking how AI gets built for mission-critical environments and how we empower operators to adapt when the mission demands it.”
