If the government can brand a contractor a national security threat for refusing to accept contract terms, every federal contract negotiation becomes existential.
jessicatillipman.com?p=2260
You cannot blacklist a federal contractor by tweet.
The government had lawful tools for ending its relationship with Anthropic. It did not use them.
cc @alanrozenshtein.com for the companion piece.
Less than two weeks ago, GSA proposed a new AI procurement clause for federal AI procurements. The clause gets the governance problem right, then blows right past it.
My new piece in @lawfaremedia.org:
www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...
Just to be clear, this is not how our procurement system was designed to work.
Ok, so let's take them at their word that the post was just the beginning. This means that the Secretary publicly announced the outcome, directed his subordinates to produce the justification, and the justification confirms the predetermined conclusion.
The government's own brief concedes the sequence, arguing that the Secretary's social media post was not final agency action but merely "the beginning" of the process.
But here they bypassed all of that. The President tweeted, then the Secretary tweeted, then the Department reverse-engineered an administrative record to backfill the justification.
The government has long understood that excluding a contractor can have severe consequences. That's why we call it the corporate death penalty.
It includes notice to the contractor, an opportunity to respond, a debarring official who is insulated from political pressure, findings based on grounds specified in the regulation, and judicial review.
FAR 9.4 covers this situation. If the government believes a contractor is not responsible (i.e., it can't be trusted to perform reliably or poses a risk to government interests), there is a detailed, decades-old framework: suspension and debarment. jessicatillipman.com/u-s-federal-pr…
No one is saying the government can't decide to stop contracting with Anthropic. It obviously can.
The issue is that we have tools in our procurement system to exclude contractors, and blacklisting by tweet isn't one of them.
It's that GSA is doing so after months of policy statements pointing in the opposite direction, through a commercial channel, with a clause that reads like too many competing agendas forced into a single instrument.
Less than two weeks ago, @USGSA proposed a new AI procurement clause for federal AI procurements. The clause gets the governance problem right, then blows right past it.
What's striking is not that the government is finally building governance into AI acquisition.
The GSA correctly identifies the governance gaps in federal AI procurement as an issue to be addressed but its proposed contract clause tries to do too much at once through the wrong channel, writes @jtillipman.bsky.social.
"Although the public debate has framed this as a fight over whether the Pentagon or Silicon Valley controls military AI, the deeper problem is structural: a procurement framework carrying questions it was never designed to answer," writes @jtillipman.bsky.social.
Dean Jessica Tillipman has published an essay for @lawfaremedia.org about the Anthropic / Pentagon / OpenAI story, and asks: why are rules on surveillance, autonomous weapons, and intelligence oversight being made through contracts in the first place?
www.lawfaremedia.org/article/mili...
In my new essay for @lawfaremedia.org, I analyze the OpenAI-Pentagon agreement and what the language actually constrains. The larger question: why is surveillance, autonomous weapon, and intelligence policy being decided through contracts?
www.lawfaremedia.org/article/mili...
The public debate has framed the Anthropic-DOD fight as a struggle between the Pentagon or Silicon Valley over control of military AI. But the deeper problem is a structural one, argues @jtillipman.bsky.social.
Thank you!
Can AI companies restrict government use of their technology? They do it all the time. Whether and how depends on the acquisition pathway, contract type, and terms. My explainer: jessicatillipman.com/what-rights-...
#Anthropic #openai #pentagon #DoD #govcon
The bigger issue here is that it waters down these designations. They are transforming what is designed to be national security tools into a point of leverage for business.” (2/2)
I talked to the NYT about the Pentagon / Anthropic dispute.
“The Pentagon knows they are issuing an extreme threat. They are using every button or lever they have….. (1/2) www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/u...
The Pentagon v. Anthropic. “Any lawful use” contract language can sound wonky and niche to most people, but it has huge consequences as evidenced by this current impasse. I addressed this topic and more with Sam Lee on his podcast below. youtu.be/fPiUVXsJl1k?...
@jtillipman.bsky.social: "complex challenges arise when [AI tools] extend into discretionary functions, including core evaluative tasks, that federal procurement doctrine presumes a human decision-maker will perform."
www.yalejreg.com/nc/abdicated...
Federal agencies are adopting AI evaluation tools without asking whether the awards will survive protest scrutiny. It was a privilege to contribute to @YaleJREG’s symposium on AI and the APA: www.yalejreg.com/nc/abdicated...
AI procurement has a hidden supply chain. Most public-sector procurement teams never see it.
In this piece, I explain why I use a wedding cake as a risk-identification tool for procurement stakeholders.
🔗 Read it here: jessicatillipman.com/why-a-weddin...
The latest volume of the SSRN Public Procurement, Government Contracts & Outsourcing eJournal, sponsored by the GW Law Government Procurement Law Program, is now available.
🔗 Read it here: hq.ssrn.com/journals/Vie...
Despite the current narrative framing the program as “fraud-filled,” “fraud” under US law requires proof of intent, determined only through judicial process. The audit can identify leads and make referrals, but can’t determine fraud.
Read more: jessicatillipman.com/testimony/ (2/2)
Today’s the deadline for submission of documents in response to the @SBAgov’s 8(a) audit. A friendly reminder—here are the categories of things the audit may find:
• Documentation deficiencies
• Administrative errors
• Eligibility violations
• Waste/mismanagement
(1/2)