Islam Times – A US court has struck down the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic, ruling that the department unlawfully sanctioned the AI developer after it refused to allow its Claude model to be used for certain military operations.In a 59-page ruling Thursday, US District Judge Rita Lin said Secretary of War Pete Hegseth exceeded his authority by designating Anthropic a “supply-chain risk to national security.”
She also ruled that the move amounted to unlawful retaliation under the First Amendment and denied Anthropic due process under the Fifth Amendment.
“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” Lin wrote.
She said the government appeared to be making an example of Anthropic over its criticism of Washington and found the designation violated the relevant statute and was “arbitrary and capricious.”
The dispute began as the Pentagon sought military access to AI models for “any lawful use.” Anthropic had previously worked closely with the Pentagon, with Claude deployed in various operations under an agreement worth up to $200 million.
However, CEO Dario Amodei said in February that while he supported military use of Claude, the model should not be used for mass domestic surveillance or to guide fully autonomous weapons, arguing that frontier AI was not yet reliable enough for the latter.
As tensions escalated, President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies on February 27 to stop using Anthropic technology, branding it a “radical Left AI company.”
Hegseth then imposed the supply-chain-risk designation and barred Pentagon partners from commercial activity with Anthropic.
Anthropic sued in March, arguing that Washington had retaliated against protected speech and denied the company an opportunity to challenge the allegations.
Hegseth defended the decision, comparing Anthropic’s restrictions to “Boeing giving us airplanes and telling us who we can shoot at” and calling Amodei an “ideological lunatic.”
Lin stressed that the Pentagon remains free to choose another AI supplier and abandon Claude if Anthropic’s conditions do not meet its requirements.
However, the department had reportedly been reluctant to lose access to the model, with a defense official telling Axios that “the problem for these guys is they are that good.”
A separate Anthropic lawsuit is pending in Washington, DC, challenging another supply-chain-risk designation that could potentially exclude the company from civilian government contracts.