Anthropic’s Claude AI platform suffered an extended outage early Monday, with the company confirming it identified the issue and is implementing a fix. The disruption follows a directive from President Trump banning U.S. government use of Claude after disagreements over military applications, ordering a shift to OpenAI’s GPT models. Despite the ban, reports indicate Claude was utilized during U.S. strikes on Iran over the weekend.
Anthropic’s popular Claude AI chatbot experienced widespread connectivity issues starting shortly after 6 a.m. ET. The company acknowledged the problem on its status page, stating the issue had been identified and a fix was being implemented.
User reports of problems spiked, as tracked by Down Detector. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the extended outage.
This downtime occurs days after President Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using the AI platform. The move followed disagreements between Anthropic and the Pentagon regarding the model’s use for wartime actions.
“The United States of America will never allow a radical left, woke company to dictate how our great military fights and wins wars!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “That decision belongs to your commander-in-chief and the tremendous leaders I appoint to run our military.”
The U.S. government now has six months to phase out Claude software under an agreement announced Friday. Agencies will instead use OpenAI’s GPT models moving forward.
Despite the presidential order, the Wall Street Journal reported Claude was used during U.S. strikes on Iran early Saturday. The platform’s status remains under scrutiny amidst its technical and political challenges.
