Trump department plunges into turmoil as computer system shuts off with no notice: insider

An internal system used by the government has been shut down with just a few hours' notice, throwing Donald Trump's administration into turmoil, according to a report.

Insiders say that employees were given just a few hours to salvage their chats with fellow staffers and coding work at the Department of Health and Human Services. The sudden change, reportedly due to a government-approved application, Anthropic, shutting down its systems amid a lawsuit filed against the Trump administration, has left staff reeling from the loss.

An unnamed team leader from the HHS told The Hill that a significant portion of work had been lost as it was built around Anthropic's Claude artificial intelligence model.

"Staff were really upset with how quickly" it happened, according to the unnamed team leader. Those working on projects were given "no spin-down time" to save their work or plan for how to replace the outgoing system.

The staff leader added, "People lost their chats, people lost any coding that they were doing in any projects. Are there equivalent tools that they can use? Sure, but they had been working in a secure environment. It’s a loss of a lot of work…it was a waste of government resources."

Trump's fury against Anthropic was made public in a Truth Social post earlier this year, with the president accusing the firm of trying to get government departments to agree to their terms of service.

"The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution," wrote Trump. "Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY."

Despite government staffers at various departments being told to stop using Anthropic, there is no clear next step for workers. Another leader said, "It's a lot of complicated questions that nobody really knows the answer to."

One federal technology leader familiar with procurement suggested “some political [appointees] seem to be proactively ordering staff based on social media, but that’s up to them.”

An Anthropic spokesperson told NBC News earlier this week, "This is a necessary step to protect our business, our customers, and our partners. We will continue to pursue every path toward resolution, including dialogue with the government."