Anthropic has won a major legal victory against allegations that it poses a national security supply-chain risk, though the fight isn’t fully over. A federal judge in California has ruled that the Trump administration acted unlawfully in treating Anthropic as a national security risk. The court found that the government crossed a constitutional line when it took action against the AI company following a dispute over the military use of its technology. Anthropic filed a lawsuit against the US government for unlawfully retaliating against the company for setting ‘red lines’, or unacceptable military use cases of its AI technology. Though the new court ruling has given Anthropic a legal win, the government is expected to appeal, and it doesn’t require the Pentagon to use the AI company’s tools.
The conflict between Anthropic and the Trump administration started last winter when Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defence of the United States, wanted to change the Pentagon’s AI contracts so the military could use AI for any legal purpose.
During talks with the US military, Anthropic, along with many other AI companies, agreed to allow broad use of its technology. But the company wanted two restrictions. The AI company did not want its models used to support mass surveillance of Americans or lethal autonomous weapons that could select and attack targets without human control.
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The Pentagon rejected those conditions as Hegseth argued that the military needed to be able to use AI for any lawful purpose once it was deployed. The disagreement quickly became more public, and after negotiations failed, Hegseth designated Anthropic as a supply-chain risk. He said that the company could pose a security threat if it had access to sensitive government systems.
Anthropic responded by taking the Pentagon to court. Judge Rita Lin first ruled in favour of Anthropic back in March, temporarily stopping the Pentagon from enforcing its blacklisting of the company and pausing Trump’s directive ordering federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s Claude.
In that ruling, Lin wrote that the government’s actions did not appear to be directed at its stated national security interests and that ‘if the concern is the integrity of the operational chain of command, the Department of War could just stop using Claude’, saying the measures instead appeared designed to punish Anthropic.
In her latest 59-page ruling on Thursday, Lin went further, finding the government’s actions against Anthropic unlawful. She wrote that the government had tried to justify its treatment of the company by pointing to Anthropic’s ‘increasingly hostile manner through the press’ and its criticism of the Department of War’s views on AI use and said that neither the Constitution nor the federal statute the government invoked allows officials to ‘impose sweeping penalties based principally on Anthropic’s critique of the administration’s views’.
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Moreover, Lin has also described the government’s rationale as ‘Orwellian’ in her rulings, saying nothing in the governing statute supports branding an American company ‘a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government. ‘
Judge Lin ordered the Pentagon to cancel its decision to label Anthropic as a supply-chain risk. The judge also stopped the government from forcing federal agencies to end their work with Anthropic. However, she also said that the Pentagon does not have to work with Anthropic, and the military is free to choose other AI companies instead.