When the Pentagon decided to make an example out of Anthropic, declaring the AI company a supply chain risk and insisting that no one else should do business with it, most MAGA faithful applauded. But one man has very publicly come out against the move. And he thinks that it’s all part of a bigger problem for the country, going so far as to call it a “death rattle of the old republic.”
Dean Ball is a Republican, a senior fellow at the right-wing think tank the Foundation for American Innovation, and helped write the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan in 2025. Ball was interviewed in the Atlantic, and it’s clear that he’s a true believer in the old conservative worldview of the 20th century.
“America rests on a foundation of ordered liberty,” Ball told the Atlantic. “The state sets broad rules that are intended to be timeless and universal, and implements those rules. We have not always done that perfectly, but the idea was that we were always getting better. And during my lifetime, a lot of things have started to break down.”
Ball said that Pete Hegseth had announced “a desire to kill Anthropic” when he labeled it as a supply chain risk, a designation that’s never been made of a U.S.-based company before. He told the magazine that it was a terrible signal to the business community and compared the actions to the business environment in China.
The comparison to China is one that mainstream liberals have made since the start of Donald Trump’s second term in January 2025, especially as the president has taken a stake in several companies, including a 10% stake in Intel. But it’s the rare conservative who’s willing to point out the rise of authoritarianism under Trump’s watch.
Before he spoke with the Atlantic, Ball laid out his case in a Substack post where he explained in very morbid terms that America is not doing well: “I don’t know where we are in the death process, but I know we are in the hospice room. I’ve known it for a while, though I have sometimes been in denial, as all mourners are wont to do.”
Essentially, Ball believes that the Pentagon had every right to cancel its contracts with Anthropic if Trump and Hegseth decided the company was too woke. But by labeling the company a supply chain risk and barring other companies from doing business with Anthropic, it was exercising a kind of power that a free and ostensibly capitalist society shouldn’t tolerate.
Ball points out that AI providers in China, like DeepSeek, have not been labeled as supply chain risks while Anthropic has, noting that DeepSeek is arguably less risky for any American tech firm to use in the current environment. Ball wrote that even if Hegseth backs down from his threats against Anthropic, “great damage has been done,” something that’s hard to disagree with at the moment.
“Even in the narrowest supply-chain risk designation, the government has still said that they will treat you like a foreign adversary—indeed, they will treat you in some ways worse than a foreign adversary—simply for refusing to capitulate to their terms of business,” he wrote.
Investors have taken notice and are working behind the scenes, according to a new report from Reuters. But it’s hard to see this genie going back into the bottle, especially if the Pentagon’s demands include something so reckless as fully autonomous weapons powered by Claude.
From Ball’s Substack post:
In short, I can see only downsides to the Trump Administration’s decision to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk, particularly considering the far less costly policy alternatives it could have employed. One gets the sense that the people making these decisions at DoW are not acting with strategic clarity nor any respect for the basic principles of the American republic—not to mention in stark contrast to President Trump’s own stated vision of letting AI thrive in America.
Ball’s arguments read like those of a true believer in American capitalism who’s coming to terms with the realities of tech oligarchy but hasn’t quite put together all the ideological pieces yet. Trump’s own stated vision of letting AI thrive in America is one of complete self-interest, not principle. And it’s a little odd to see someone who worked in the Trump administration not understand that yet.
But whether Ball appreciates the reality of Trump’s broader mission yet, he at least understands that it’s a bad idea for people to invest in AI in the current environment.
“Nvidia, Amazon, Google will have to divest from Anthropic if Hegseth gets his way,” Ball tweeted as things were first starting to get dicey. “This is simply attempted corporate murder. I could not possibly recommend investing in American AI to any investor; I could not possibly recommend starting an AI company in the United States.”
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