California court ruling invalidates Anthropic risk to Pentagon supply chain

A recent court ruling in California declared illegal Anthropic’s classification as a supply chain risk, a designation made by Donald Trump’s administration. The determination was issued by a federal judge.

In her ruling, United States District Judge Rita Lin pointed out that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s classification of Anthropic constituted “illegal retaliation”, violating the First Amendment of the Constitution, in addition to being “arbitrary and capricious”. The decision also indicated that the company was denied its right to due process, contrary to the Fifth Amendment.

Earlier this year, Secretary Hegseth and former President Donald Trump had categorized Anthropic as a supply chain risk, issuing an order for all federal agencies, including non-defense ones, to cease collaboration with the Claude model developer.

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Um post compartilhado por Claude by Anthropic (@claudeai)

At the heart of the dispute was the strict security guidelines imposed by Anthropic, which limited the use of its models for purposes such as autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of American citizens by the Pentagon. The Pentagon, in turn, denied that it would use the company’s models for any illicit purposes and claimed that Anthropic could try to exercise control over the use of systems that had already been acquired by the armed forces.

In her analysis, Judge Lin stated that “the government’s words and actions confirm that the challenged measures were based on a desire to publicly expose Anthropic as an example of ‘arrogance’ in criticizing the government.”

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The judge also emphasized the contradiction in government actions, such as Hegseth’s proposal to apply the Defense Production Act to Anthropic. Such a measure would designate it as crucial to national security, which would contradict the classification of a threat to the supply chain. Furthermore, she cited that the Department of Defense continued to seek contracts from the company and collaborate in the development of the new Mythos model for cybersecurity, indicating an inconsistency in the official stance.

Lin further reinforced that Anthropic “arguably lacks” any unauthorized access to its technology after it was handed over to the Department of Defense.

“While the War Department arguably has the freedom to choose the AI ​​vendor it prefers, the evidence demonstrates that the broad measures imposed on Anthropic were unlawful and unfounded,” Lin wrote in his decision. She added that “the mere invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics.”

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An Anthropic spokesperson expressed satisfaction with the verdict. “We welcome the court’s ruling that this supply chain risk designation was illegal,” the representative said in a statement, reaffirming the company’s commitment to collaborating with the government to strengthen national security through artificial intelligence.

The company Anthropic had filed two complaints against the Department of Defense in March, one in California and the other in Washington, D.C. The process being processed in Washington, D.C., is still ongoing.