The White House has approved a massive $9 billion initiative for advanced computer chips and infrastructure designed to enhance artificial intelligence capabilities for U.S. spy agencies, according to current and former U.S. officials.
The request focuses on boosting the availability of infrastructure that can support Nvidia’s state-of-the-art Blackwell AI chips—a highly advanced graphics processing unit microarchitecture purpose-built for extreme-scale artificial intelligence, generative AI, and high-performance computing applications.
U.S. officials stated Anthropic and the government are nearing completion of a classified agreement to preserve the National Security Agency’s access to the company’s products. Congress must still approve the funding.
Anthropic and the U.S. Department of War are embroiled in a high-stakes legal and policy dispute over the military use of artificial intelligence. The conflict erupted when Anthropic refused to grant the Pentagon unrestricted access to its Claude models, citing strict policies against enabling autonomous weapons systems and mass domestic surveillance.
Officials emphasized that the agreement will include safeguards preventing the AI model from being used on Americans’ data. The White House also hopes this contract will become a template for similar agreements with other companies.
“Our intelligence community needs the frontier—the best AI chips, models, systems, talent—on a timeline that matches the threat,” Vinh Nguyen, former chief data scientist at the NSA and senior fellow on AI at the Council on Foreign Relations, stated in a report.
The report comes amid a surge in demand for memory chips, which has outstripped supply and driven up prices. Manufacturers are now prioritizing components for high-margin data center applications. This shortage has constrained supply for consumer electronics such as smartphones, personal computers, gaming consoles, and the Nintendo Switch. Nvidia’s chips are widely used in PC gaming and the Nintendo platform, while Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox consoles utilize AMD hardware.
The White House declined to discuss the chip shortfall directly.
“Sensitive national security deliberations are conducted with the seriousness they demand—not leaked to reporters and repackaged through selectively sourced, unverified claims designed to drive headlines rather than truth,” said Steven Cheung, a White House spokesman.
“The United States is leading the world in technology and remains well prepared to deal with any issues that may arise.”
