Anthropic is expanding its offerings for the federal government, even as its legal disputes with the Department of War continue. During a September 9 fireside chat at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit,Teresa Carlson, Anthropic’s global head of public sector, said Claude 5.1 was now available through the Claude for Government platform, according to a FedScoop report.

Carlson said any agency that requires FedRAMP High, the U.S. government’s highest cloud security clearance level, can use Claude Fable 5.1.

Carlson also said Anthropic plans to move Claude for Government Desktop, which includes Claude Code and Cowork, from public beta into general availability in the coming weeks. The desktop offering entered public beta in July.

Training and Trust, Not Just Access

Carlson used much of her talk to focus on training government partners to use Anthropic’s tools safely, not just rolling them out. She said some agencies are not yet ready for full access to the company’s most capable models, and described a “crawl, walk, run” approach as a reasonable way to build that readiness.

She pointed to Glasswing, Anthropic’s program for using its models to identify and patch cybersecurity vulnerabilities, as a key part of that effort. Carlson also described the “Mythos moment” as a wake-up call that prompted the U.S. commercial AI industry to engage with the White House about the model’s safety standards and appropriate access controls.

Assessing Vendor Risk and the Importance of Training

For chief data officers (CDOs), this is an example of how a vendor’s public disputes with one government customer don’t necessarily slow its growth elsewhere. 

That split matters for vendor risk assessments. One high-profile conflict, even an active lawsuit, is not enough to judge a vendor’s overall trajectory and warrants watching how the vendor responds to the setback before drawing conclusions. Another important takeaway is Carlson’s focus on training, which points to a bigger AI governance question: rolling out a capable model needs to be accompanied with a real plan for how its people will be trained to use it safely.