‘Illegal and baseless’: US judge blocks the Pentagon blacklisting of Anthropic as a supply chain risk | Daily Reports Online
- Anthropic emerges victorious in legal battle against Pentagon over supply chain risk designation
- The Pentagon wanted to use Anthropic’s models for autonomous weapons and surveillance
- Judge rules that the Pentagon’s supply chain risk claims were “baseless”
A US federal judge has blocked the Pentagon’s attempt to blacklist Anthropic in a major win for the Claude maker amid its ongoing battle against the US military over how its AI models can be used.
The Pentagon had previously demanded that Anthropic allow its Claude models to be used for ‘any lawful purpose’, including military applications, but the company refused to remove two key restrictions it’s placed on Claude use – fully autonomous weapons and mass/domestic citizen surveillance are still banned by the AI firm.
Despite huge advanced in AI technology, Anthropic argues that today’s models are still not reliable enough to make autonomous lethal decisions safely. It also worries over the ethical and civil impacts of AI-powered surveillance.
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Pentagon loses battle against Anthropic
In response, the Pentagon argued that private AI companies should not be able to dictate how the US military conducts its operations.
After failing to negotiate unrestricted use of Anthropic’s models, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went on to designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk, restricting it from certain military contracts. Anthropic warned this could lose it billions in lost business and reputation damage.
Judge Lin has since agreed that the Pentagon’s actions are “illegal and baseless,” finding that the government had unlawfully retaliated against Anthropic. “The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” she wrote.
The court also found a major weakness in the Pentagon’s case – the government continued to work closely with Anthropic even after publicly portraying it as a supply chain threat.
Importantly not just for Anthropic, but all private companies, is that the US government must not use national security powers against technology companies that disagree with its policy.
“We welcome the court’s ruling that this supply chain risk designation was unlawful,” an Anthropic spokesperson shared. “We remain focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology.”
The Pentagon has not yet publicly commented on the case, but Anthropic does have one further lawsuit pending, so the Pentagon could be waiting for that to come to a close.
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