Federal judge blocks ‘illegal’ Pentagon blacklisting of Anthropic

The company was labeled a national security risk after it refused to allow its Claude chatbot to be used for domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons.

A federal judge blocked the Defense Department’s blacklisting of Anthropic on Thursday, ​the latest turn in the Claude maker’s high-stakes fight with the military over AI safety ‌on the battlefield.

Anthropic’s lawsuit in federal court in California alleges that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth overstepped his authority when he designated Anthropic a national security supply chain risk, a label the government can apply to companies that expose military systems to potential infiltration or ​sabotage by adversaries.

Hegseth’s unprecedented move, which followed Anthropic’s refusal to allow the military to use AI chatbot ​Claude for U.S. surveillance or autonomous weapons, blocked Anthropic from certain military contracts. Anthropic ⁠executives have said it could cost the company billions of dollars in lost business and reputational harm.

Anthropic says that ​AI models are not reliable enough to be safely used in autonomous weapons and that it opposes domestic ​surveillance as a violation of rights, but the Pentagon says private companies should not be able to constrain military action.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, made the ruling in a 59-page order in which she ​found that the Pentagon’s decision was “illegal and baseless.”