Pentagon wins court battle to exclude Anthropic from AI supply chain

A US appeals court has upheld the Pentagon's decision to exclude AI startup Anthropic from its supply chain after the company refused to remove safeguards on its Claude model. The conflict started in February when Anthropic refused to comply with Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth's request to remove restrictions on using Claude for fully autonomous lethal weapons and mass domestic surveillance.

As a result, the military canceled Anthropic's contracts and barred other contractors from using its technology. The designation came after an Anthropic executive raised concerns about the use of Claude by a Pentagon contractor during a military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Anthropic claims it cannot modify its models once delivered to the military, but the company is responsible for determining the behavior of each new version.

Judge Gregory Katsas, writing for two of the three appellate judges, stated that it is ultimately the President and Secretary of War who must determine how to balance risks. Anthropic's ban marks a highly unusual application of authority against a US company, and the Pentagon has since turned to competitors such as OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft.

The White House has criticized Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's warnings about AI dangers, with Trump dismissing the CEO's concerns as a hoax.