Anthropic hires Trump-affiliated lobbying firm Ballard Partners; previous negotiations broke down due to the Pentagon's demand for unrestricted AI use

ME News report, April 14 (UTC+8), according to monitoring by 1M AI News, Anthropic has hired Ballard Partners, the largest lobbying firm in Washington, which is closely tied to the Trump administration. The lobbying disclosure filing shows the engagement’s effective date was March 9—only four days after the Pentagon formally notified Anthropic of its supply chain risk determination. Ballard Partners disclosed its lobbying matter as “related to War Department procurement” (DOW, i.e., Department of War, the Trump administration’s term for the Department of Defense).

Bloomberg also reported the core disagreement between the two sides that had caused their earlier talks to collapse: the Pentagon demanded that Anthropic’s tools be used without restriction for all lawful purposes, while Anthropic required assurances that its products would not be used for fully autonomous weapon deployment or large-scale surveillance targeting American citizens. Ballard Partners is the sixth external lobbying firm Anthropic has hired since last November; previously, it had also hired Avenue Solutions and Navigators Global.

Last month, Anthropic established its own think tank, appointed Sarah Heck as head of public policy, and registered a federal political action committee (PAC). Lobbying expenditure data shows that Anthropic’s federal lobbying spending in 2025 rose more than 330% year over year to $3.1 million, while OpenAI’s increased nearly 70% to about $3 million. AI-related lobbying hit a quarterly historical high of $37.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, up 38% year over year. (Source: BlockBeats)