Anthropic gets its first court win over the Pentagon’s supply chain risk label

A federal court has overturned the U.S. Defense Department's ban on Anthropic's artificial intelligence models. Judge Rita Lin declared the Pentagon's decision "illegal and baseless." The dispute began in fall 2025 when the Department of Defense approached Anthropic about allowing Claude to be used on an internal platform called GenAI.mil.

The government objected to a clause in Anthropic's terms of use, which prohibited customers from using Claude for mass surveillance or building autonomous weapons. Anthropic refused to alter the clause, leading President Donald Trump to ban federal agencies from using Anthropic's models. In March, Anthropic sued to reverse the ban, arguing that the Defense Department's core legal claims were invalid.

The court agreed with Anthropic, noting that the company has no "backdoor access" to its technology and is no riskier to national security than other AI models. The Pentagon also claimed Anthropic was hostile in its public criticism of AI policies. However, the court ruled that the government's arguments were unconstitutional and inconsistent with the Pentagon's own use of Anthropic's models.

Anthropic welcomed the ruling and continued working with the government to harness AI for national security.