The Defense Production Act's core authorities are set to expire on September 30, 2026, and the Trump administration is leaning on the Cold War-era law to pull frontier AI developers like Anthropic into national security compliance. A new bill, H.R. 7688, would extend the DPA for five more years while a February meeting between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has already tested how far that leverage can reach.
A Korean War-era law repurposed for AI
The Defense Production Act, first enacted in 1950 to keep American factories running during the Korean War, is now central to the administration's strategy for controlling advanced artificial intelligence, with its core authorities due to lapse on September 30, 2026. The law hands the executive branch sweeping powers: prioritizing government contracts, expanding industrial production, and responding to national emergencies. It has been reauthorized more than 50 times since 1950, applied to everything from wartime manufacturing to pandemic-era supply chains.
That history is now colliding with frontier AI policy. In February 2026, Hegseth met with Amodei and reportedly threatened to invoke the DPA to enforce compliance over military use of Anthropic's AI models. The message was blunt: cooperate with defense applications, or the government has tools to compel it.
Anthropic's safety stance meets national security pressure
Anthropic has positioned itself as the "safety-first" AI lab and has historically maintained restrictions on how its models can be used in military contexts. The February confrontation therefore set the company's corporate AI ethics policy directly against a national security imperative backed by Cold War-era executive power.
The administration has since moved on parallel fronts. Executive Order 14409, issued June 2, 2026, emphasizes developing secure AI technologies for national security applications. Three days later, NSPM-11 directed federal agencies to accelerate AI adoption across the national security apparatus.
A legislative fight over the deadline
The September 30, 2026 expiration date exists because of a one-time extension tucked into the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act. A new bill, H.R. 7688 proposes extending DPA authorities for five years, pushing the deadline to September 30, 2031, while also adding modernization provisions meant to update a law its original 1950 authors never wrote with AI in mind.
Source: Crypto Briefing
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