Judge Says Pentagon Turned an AI Dispute Into an Illegal Blacklist

Judge Says Pentagon Turned an AI Dispute Into an Illegal Blacklist
Anthropic’s fight to keep its AI out of mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons has produced a sharp rebuke for the Pentagon: a federal judge found the government crossed the line from procurement hardball into unconstitutional retaliation.

The clash began this winter, when the Defense Department sought access to Anthropic’s Claude model for “any lawful use,” including sensitive military and intelligence work. Anthropic accepted broad national-security cooperation but drew two limits — no mass surveillance of Americans and no lethal autonomous weapons operating without human oversight. Most rival labs accepted the Pentagon’s revised terms; Anthropic did not.

The standoff escalated in February, when President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth branded Anthropic a supply-chain risk, effectively cutting it off from federal business and military contractors. The administration’s position was that a vendor should not retain control over how the government uses technology it has bought, while Justice Department lawyers argued that enormous, opaque AI models could not be assessed like ordinary hardware.

Anthropic sued in March, calling the designation an unlawful campaign of retaliation. It argued that its restrictions were narrow safeguards for democratic values, not objections to particular military operations. Judge Rita Lin initially paused the blacklist; on Thursday, she struck it down in a 59-page ruling.

Lin concluded the record did not support the Pentagon’s claim of a real security danger. The government, she noted, continued pursuing work with Anthropic, even considering measures that would treat the company as essential to national security. “The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” she wrote.

The judge found the designation violated Anthropic’s First Amendment rights and due-process protections, describing the measures as “illegal and baseless.” Anthropic welcomed the decision but emphasized it still wants to work with Washington on national security. The government is expected to appeal, and a separate Anthropic challenge to another Pentagon designation remains pending in Washington, D.C.

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