A federal judge on Thursday ruled that the Pentagon acted illegally when it deemed Anthropic a national security supply chain risk, a designation that barred the company from certain U.S. military contracts.
Anthropic’s lawsuit in California federal court alleges that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth overstepped his authority when applying the designation in March, citing national security concerns about the company. Under federal law, a supply-chain risk is the risk that an adversary could expose military systems to infiltration or sabotage.
The company had refused to change the user policy for its AI tool, Claude, to allow the government to use it for what it described as “mass surveillance” and “fully autonomous weapons.” The Pentagon denied that it planned to use Claude for such purposes….