The Senate on Monday confirmed Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s nomination to lead the Department of Homeland Security.

The Oklahoma Republican was chosen by President Donald Trump earlier this month to replace Kristi Noem, who attracted a flurry of scrutiny from Democrats and Republicans alike for her leadership of the department and her use of taxpayer dollars.

The Senate voted 54-45 to confirm Mullin.

“My goal in six months is that we’re not the lead story every single day. My goal is for people to understand we’re out there, we’re protecting them and we’re working with them,” Mullin said last week at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Two Democrats — Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico — voted with most Senate Republicans in favor of Mullin’s appointment. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who publicly feuded with Mullin at his confirmation hearing, was the lone Republican to vote no.

Mullin now takes over a DHS that’s shut down as Democrats continue to withhold support for a funding package over concerns about immigration enforcement policies. Trump, meanwhile, is trying to jam through an unrelated voter-ID bill and has told Republicans to hold off on a DHS funding deal with Democrats until the SAVE America Act is passed.

Funding lapsed for the agency in February, the month after federal immigration agents in Minneapolis killed two U.S. citizens during an enforcement surge.

Mullin is generally well-regarded by his Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and at his confirmation hearing he signaled he was open to shifting the direction of the agency.

He told the panel he would require immigration agents to obtain judicial warrants to enter private property and said he would like to see ICE become a “transport more than the front line” in immigration enforcement.

“This is going to surprise some people, but I consider Markwayne Mullin a friend. We have a very honest and constructive working relationship,” Heinrich said in a statement on Sunday after supporting Mullin in a procedural vote.

“I have also seen firsthand that Markwayne is not someone who can simply be bullied into changing his views, and I look forward to having a secretary who doesn’t take their orders from Stephen Miller,” Heinrich continued, referring to the White House deputy chief of staff and homeland security advisor, whom Democrats say called the shots during Noem’s tenure.

Despite the cross-party camaraderie, many Democrats on the Senate panel pressed Mullin on his close ties to Trump, his hard-line stances on immigration and a trip he said he took abroad while a member of the House that he said was “classified.”

Mullin also got in a spat with the committee chair Paul, whom the Trump nominee recently called a “freaking snake.” Before earning the DHS nomination, Mullin also reportedly said he could “understand” why Paul’s neighbor assaulted the Kentucky Republican in 2017.

Mullin did not apologize when confronted by Paul in the hearing room.

“I just wonder if someone who applauds violence against their political opponents is the right person to lead an agency that has struggled to accept limits to the proper use of force,” Paul said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to label Anthropic a “Supply-Chain Risk to National Security” on Friday resulted in more questions than answers.

“It’s all very puzzling,” Herbert Lin, a senior research scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, told CNBC in an interview.

Anthropic is the only American company ever to be publicly named a supply chain risk, as the designation has traditionally been used against foreign adversaries. But the company hasn’t received any official declaration beyond social media posts.

A formal designation will require defense vendors and contractors to certify that they don’t use Anthropic’s models in their work with the Pentagon.

The dispute centered around how Anthropic’s artificial intelligence models could be used by the military. The Department of Defense wanted Anthropic to grant the agency unfettered access to its Claude models across all lawful purposes, while Anthropic wanted assurance that its technology would not be tapped for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance.

With no agreement reached by Friday’s deadline, President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to “immediately cease” all use of Anthropic’s technology, and said there would be a six-month phaseout period for agencies like the DOD.

Experts told CNBC the supply chain risk designation is highly unusual, especially since the U.S. and Israel began carrying out strikes in Iran just hours later. A group of retired defense officials, policy leaders and executives wrote to Congress on Thursday, defending Anthropic and calling the Trump administration’s designation a “dangerous precedent.”

Anthropic’s models are still being used to support U.S. military operations in Iran, even after the company was blacklisted, as CNBC previously reported.

Talks between Anthropic and the DOD are now reportedly back on, according to the Financial Times, but there are still big questions hanging over the issue as of Thursday.

Why is the U.S. government still using Claude?

Stanford’s Lin doesn’t understand why the DOD is still using Anthropic’s models in sensitive settings if they pose such a threat. If the Trump administration really sees Anthropic as a risk to national security, he said, it wouldn’t make sense to phase out the models over an extended period of time.

“OK, wait a minute, they’re a really dangerous player for U.S. national security, so you’re going to use them for another six months? Huh?” Lin said. 

Michael Horowitz, a senior fellow for technology and innovation at the Council on Foreign Relations, said it’s “especially notable” that Anthropic’s models were used to support the U.S. military action in Iran. He said “there’s no clearer signal” of how much the Pentagon values the technology.

“Even in a situation where there is this intense feud between the company and the Pentagon, they are using their technology in the most important military operation that the United States is conducting,” he said. 

Transitioning away from Anthropic toward a new vendor takes time and comes at a significant cost in terms of efficiency, said Jacquelyn Schneider, a Hargrove Hoover fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

Until recently, Anthropic was the only AI company approved to deploy its models across the agency’s classified networks. OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI received clearance, but their systems can’t be deployed or adopted overnight.

What’s the actual threat?

By designating Anthropic a supply chain risk, the DOD is suggesting that the company is “really bad” for U.S. national security, Lin said. But he stressed that the agency hasn’t clearly outlined what kind of threat the company poses. 

“They don’t point to any technical failing, they don’t point to any hack,” Lin said. “They say things like ‘They’re arrogant,’ and ‘We don’t want you telling the DoD what to do in some hypothetical situation that hasn’t happened yet.'”

Lin said the other punishment that Hegseth was threatening to impose on Anthropic, invoking the Defense Production Act, also contradicts the idea that the company threatens national security. 

The Defense Production Act allows the president to control domestic industries under emergency authority when it’s in the interest of national security. It could essentially compel Anthropic to let the Pentagon use its technology. 

Horowitz said he thinks the clash between Anthropic and the DOD is “masquerading” as a policy dispute. 

Months earlier, venture capitalist and White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks criticized the company for “running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering,” after an essay published by an executive, and conservatives have repeatedly accused Anthropic of pushing “woke AI.”

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei took a different approach than other tech executives, avoiding getting cozy with the Trump administration in its early days.

“This feels to me like a dispute that is about politics and personalities,” Horowitz said. 

Is an official designation on the way?

Anthropic hasn’t been designated a supply chain risk by any official measure, and there’s an open question as to if or when the company should expect one. Defense contractors have to decide whether they will follow Hegseth’s directive on social media or wait for more formal guidance. 

Several executives told CNBC that their companies are moving away from Anthropic’s models, and a venture capitalist said a number of portfolio companies are switching “out of an abundance of caution.” But others, including C3 AI Chairman Tom Siebel, said he doesn’t see a “need to mitigate” the technology “until it gets litigated.” 

Schneider said businesses are rational, and if they think it’s high risk to work with Anthropic, whether it’s formally declared a supply chain risk or not, they’re going to hedge and look for other partners.

“There’s all sorts of decisions that have been made within the Trump administration that, by law, require more codification,” Schneider said. “Even the example of moving from DoD to [Department of War]. That by law needs more codification, but all the contractors are using DoW.”

Even so, Samir Jain, vice president of policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said social media posts likely aren’t enough to actually cause a designation.

“There’s a process that the statute requires, including an actual finding that Anthropic presents national security risks if it’s part of the supply chain,” he said in an interview. “I don’t think, factually, that that predicate could possibly be met here.”

Anthropic said in a statement Friday that it will challenge “any supply chain risk designation in court.”

Does this have anything to do with the U.S. strikes on Iran?

For Schneider, the war in Iran now looms large over the spat between Anthropic and the DOD. She said she’s left wondering whether the two conflicts were happening in parallel, or if they were somehow related. 

“Obviously, you’re not going to walk away from technologies that are deeply embedded in your wartime processes right before you go to war,” Schneider said.

She said planning a military operation of that magnitude would have required “a lot of sleepless nights,” so she was surprised the DOD was willing to spend such a “remarkable amount of energy” on a public clash ahead of the initial attack.

What happens next?

As the war in Iran stretches into its sixth day, Anthropic’s path forward with the DOD remains a big mystery.  

Horowitz said he would bet that the six-month off-boarding period will become a “a locus for some re-examination” within the Pentagon, especially since members of Congress and broader public markets have shown so much interest in the dispute. 

Lin expressed a similar sentiment, and said he wouldn’t bet on Anthropic’s models being out of the DOD a year from now.

Schneider is less convinced. 

“I wish I had a more definitive thought about where this is all going to go, but everything is so unprecedented,” she said. When it comes to historical examples or analogous cases, Schneider said: “I don’t have those. It’s just super limited.”

The DOD declined to comment. Anthropic didn’t provide a comment.

WATCH: Anthropic tops $19 billion in annual revenue rate

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is back at the negotiating table with the U.S. Department of Defense after the breakdown of talks on Friday over the use of the company’s AI tools by the military, according to The Financial Times. 

Amodei is in talks with Emil Michael, under-secretary of defense for research and engineering, in a last-ditch effort to reach an agreement on the terms governing the Pentagon’s access to Anthropic’s Claude models, the Times reported, citing anonymous sources with knowledge of the matter.

Discussions fell apart Friday, with President Donald Trump directing federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s tools, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saying he would designate the company a supply-chain risk to national security.

Last week, Michael had attacked Amodei, calling him a “liar” with a “God complex,” in an X post.

Agreeing to a new contract would enable the U.S. military to continue using Anthropic’s technology, which has reportedly been utilized in Washington’s war with Iran. 

Claude became the first major model deployed in the government’s classified networks through a $200 million contract awarded by the DoD to Anthropic, but the company later sought guarantees that its tools would not be used in domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons. The Pentagon had demanded that the military be allowed to employ the technology for any lawful use.

In a Friday memo seen by FT, Amodei reportedly told staff that near the end of negotiations with the Defense Department, it had offered to accept Anthropic’s terms if they deleted a “specific phrase about ‘analysis of bulk acquired data'” — a line he said, “exactly matched this scenario we were most worried about.” 

Amodei also wrote in his note that messaging from the Pentagon and OpenAI, which struck a new deal with the Defense Department on Friday, was “just straight up lies about these issues or tries to confuse them.” 

The timing of OpenAI’s deal with the Pentagon, announced within hours of the White House decrying Anthropic, had caused a public backlash, with Claude seeing a surge of app downloads while ChatGPT reportedly saw app uninstallations surge.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman later said that his company “shouldn’t have rushed” its deal and outlined revisions to its own safeguards with how the Defense Department can use its technology. 

In a post on X, Altman further addressed the controversy, saying: “In my conversations over the weekend, I reiterated that Anthropic should not be designated as a [supply chain risk], and that we hope the [Department of Defense] offers them the same terms we’ve agreed to.”

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI staff and researchers, who left the firm after disagreements over its direction, with the company marketing itself as a “safety-first” alternative.

Government officials have for months criticized Anthropic for allegedly being overly concerned with AI safety.

A tech industry group, whose members include Nvidia, Google and Anthropic, had sent a letter to Hegseth on Wednesday expressing concern over his designating a U.S. company as a supply-chain risk.

The Defense Department and Anthropic did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment on their reported negotiations.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., lashed out at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday, calling her leadership of the agency a “disaster.”

“We’re an exceptional nation. And one of the reasons we’re exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership. And you have demonstrated anything but that,” said Tillis, who has previously called on Noem to resign. He struck out at Noem for her handling of disaster response and the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, among other things.

“What we’ve seen is innocent people getting detained that turned out are American citizens,” Tillis said in a roughly 10-minute diatribe that included references to passages from her autobiography in which she describes killing a poorly behaved dog.

Noem was making her first appearance before Congress since the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents during the Minnesota immigration crackdown. It is the first of two this week, as she is due to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

She was met with hostility from Tillis, who is retiring at the end of his term, and Democrats on the panel and skepticism even from some other committee Republicans.

“Mistakes have been made,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in his opening remarks. “Let’s make it clear. One death is too many. But officers should never be threatened or harmed while enforcing our laws,”

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., questioned Noem on a $220 million taxpayer-funded ad campaign, that included a lucrative contract with a Republican consulting firm with ties to Noem and Department of Homeland Security aides. Those commercials feature Noem prominently, in one case on horseback with Mount Rushmore in the background, and warn immigrants about entering the country unlawfully. She denied any role in choosing the firm and said the ads have been “extremely effective.”

“Well they were effective in your name recognition,” Kennedy said. “It troubles me. A fifth to a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayer money when we’re scratching over every penny and we’re fighting over rescission packages. I just can’t agree with.”

Noem’s appearance also coincided with an ongoing DHS shutdown. Funding for DHS lapsed last month, and Democrats have so far refused to back an appropriations bill over frustrations with the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics. DHS still has billions of dollars at its disposal to keep some programs running thanks to last year’s massive tax and spending bill.

Some Republicans argued that in light of the recent military action in Iran, failing to fund DHS presented a security risk.

“Can we not understand America’s under siege now, likely to be attacked because radical Islam is under siege and they’re going to hit back, and we’re sitting here looking at each other and not funding DHS?” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Democrats in Congress have been sharply critical of Noem’s leadership of DHS. Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., introduced articles of impeachment for Noem in January after federal officers killed Good and Pretti.

“Under your leadership, the Homeland Security Department has been devoid of any moral compass or respect for the rule of law,” Senate Judiciary ranking member Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said at the hearing. “Without hesitation or remorse, DHS agents have wreaked havoc in our cities … and acted with unspeakable cruelty against children, immigrant families and American citizens.”

Friends and family members of individuals in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention were present at the hearing. They held signs and shouted in Noem’s direction as she took her seat in a Senate committee room.

Two protesters interrupted testimony and were forcibly removed from the room.

Durbin and others members also took issue with Noem’s handling of the Pretti shooting in Minnesota. In the immediate aftermath, Noem said Pretti, a Minneapolis intensive care unit nurse, “committed an act of domestic terrorism,” then walked the claim back after video of the incident emerged.

“Do you retract these statements identifying these individuals as domestic terrorists?” Durbin asked.

“When we have these situations happen, we always offer condolences to those families, and I offer mine as well. These are tragic situations,” Noem said.

Given the broad use of ICE and DHS agents throughout the country, many Democrats have expressed anxiety that federal officers could be deployed to polling places for midterm elections this November, as some White House allies, like Steve Bannon, have urged.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., asked Noem whether she would “rule out the deployment of ICE or CBP to polling places this November?”

“There are no plans to have ICE officers at our polling locations,” Noem said. She did not explicitly rule it out.

President Donald Trump said Friday that he was ordering every U.S. government agency to “immediately cease” using technology from the artificial intelligence company Anthropic.

Trump in a Truth Social post said there would be a six-month phase-out for agencies such as the Defense Department, which “are using Anthropic’s products, at various levels.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, soon after Trump’s order, said on X that he was ordering the Pentagon to “designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security” after the AI startup refused to comply with demands about the use of its technology.

Anthropic said in a statement late on Friday that it is “deeply saddened by these developments.” The company said it will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court. 

“We believe this designation would both be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government,” Anthropic said.

Anthropic, which signed a $200 million contract with the Pentagon in July, wanted assurances that its AI models would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance of Americans.

The Pentagon, which strongly resisted that request, set a deadline of 5:01 p.m. ET Friday for Anthropic to agree to its demands that the U.S. military be allowed to use the technology for all lawful purposes.

That deadline passed without an agreement.

“Anthropic’s stance is fundamentally incompatible with American principles,” Hegseth said in a statement on X.

“Their relationship with the United States Armed Forces and the Federal Government has therefore been permanently altered.”

“Anthropic will continue to provide the Department of War its services for a period of no more than six months to allow for a seamless transition to a better and more patriotic service,” the Defense secretary said. “America’s warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech. This decision is final.”

Trump, in his Truth Social post, wrote, “The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution.”

“Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.”

“Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology,” Trump wrote.

“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!”

Sen. Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who is vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, condemned Trump’s action.

“The president’s directive to halt the use of a leading American AI company across the federal government, combined with inflammatory rhetoric attacking that company, raises serious concerns about whether national security decisions are being driven by careful analysis or political considerations,” Warner said in a statement.

“President Trump and Secretary Hegseth’s efforts to intimidate and disparage a leading American company — potentially as the pretext to steer contracts to a preferred vendor whose model a number of federal agencies have already identified as a reliability, safety, and security threat — pose an enormous risk to U.S. defense readiness and the willingness of the U.S. private sector and academia to work with the IC [Intelligence Community] and DoD, consistent with their own values and legal ethics,” Warner said.

Elon Musk, the mega-billionaire who had been Trump’s biggest financial backer in the 2024 election, owns xAI, which aims to compete directly with Anthropic and another major AI company, OpenAI.

Musk in recent weeks has repeatedly bashed Anthropic on his social network X, writing on Friday that the company “hates Western civilization.”

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Thursday that his company “cannot in good conscience” allow the Pentagon to use its models without limitation.

In a statement on Thursday, Amodei said, “It is the [Defense] Department’s prerogative to select contractors most aligned with their vision. But given the substantial value that Anthropic’s technology provides to our armed forces, we hope they reconsider.”

“Our strong preference is to continue to serve the Department and our warfighters — with our two requested safeguards in place,” Amodei said.

“Should the Department choose to offboard Anthropic, we will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider, avoiding any disruption to ongoing military planning, operations, or other critical missions. Our models will be available on the expansive terms we have proposed for as long as required.”

On Friday, another major AI company, OpenAI, said it has the same “red lines” as Anthropic regarding the use of its technology by the Pentagon and other customers.

“We have long believed that AI should not be used for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons, and that humans should remain in the loop for high-stakes automated decisions,” Open AI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a memo seen by CNBC.

OpenAI last year signed its own $200 million contract with the Pentagon.

OpenAI’s contract is for AI models in non-classified use cases, which include everyday office tasks.

Anthropic’s contract with the Defense Department included classified work.

The Defense Department had no comment on Friday other than pointing to Trump’s announcement.

Hegseth, in a post on X, included a screengrab of Trump’s post, and cc:ed Anthropic and Amodei with the message, “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this article