Appeals Court Backs Pentagon’s Power to Blacklist Anthropic
Appeals Court Backs Pentagon’s Power to Blacklist Anthropic
The dispute began in February, when President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk after the AI company resisted allowing Claude to be used for what officials described as “all lawful uses.” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei maintained guardrails barring fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance.
Anthropic sued in March after the administration ordered agencies to stop using its products and barred defense contractors from doing business with the company. A federal judge in California later found the parallel action unlawful, concluding that the government could not use national-security rhetoric to retaliate against criticism of its preferred AI uses. The company’s position is that its restrictions are transparent safety limits—not sabotage.
On Friday, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit split 2-1 in favor of the Pentagon. The majority held that a broader procurement statute allowed the department to treat Claude’s restrictions as a supply-chain risk, even absent malicious intent. It said the department had “ample support” for finding a covered national-security risk because Anthropic embeds limits that can stop the model from carrying out requested tasks.
The court framed the stakes starkly: overly constrained systems could fail during vital operations, while unconstrained models could hallucinate targets for lethal force. In the majority’s view, resolving that trade-off belongs to the defense secretary, not the courts.
Judge Karen Henderson dissented, arguing the statute was meant to counter hostile actors infiltrating government systems—not “a contractor’s honest and upfront enforcement of restrictions” the government dislikes. Anthropic said it “respectfully disagrees” and is considering further review, setting up a possible en banc appeal or Supreme Court fight over how far Washington can stretch national-security powers against a U.S. technology company.
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