Federal court says Pentagon can label Anthropic a supply chain risk

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the Pentagon's decision to label Anthropic, an artificial intelligence lab, as a supply chain risk. The 2-1 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit validates the Department's position, allowing the Pentagon to continue removing Anthropic's Claude models from its systems and barring their use for Defense Department work.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had previously expressed concerns over the potential misuse of Claude for mass surveillance or autonomous armed drones. The decision is separate from a California ruling this summer, which found the Pentagon acted illegally in punishing Anthropic for criticizing the Pentagon's views on AI use. The majority opinion emphasized the Pentagon's "ample support" for its actions, stating that Anthropic's own admission highlights the company's encoding of restrictions into Claude to prevent it from performing national-security functions.

The ruling has no impact on the federal government's position towards Anthropic's products, which remain not barred from the entire government.