US court refuses to overturn Pentagon ban on Anthropic

A US appeals court has upheld the Pentagon's decision to ban AI startup Anthropic from its supply chain. The company had challenged the government's labeling of it as a supply chain risk, but the court ruled 2-1 in the Pentagon's favor.

The dispute began when the Pentagon accused Anthropic of endangering national security and designated the company a supply chain risk. Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, had refused to remove safeguards on its Claude models, citing concerns they could be used for mass surveillance or autonomous armed drones.

The court ruled that the Pentagon had good reason to conclude that Anthropic's AI products pose a supply chain risk. According to Judge Gregory G. Katsas, the Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude's design to prevent it from performing national-security functions. The ruling allows the Pentagon to continue removing Anthropic's Claude models from its systems and bar the use of its products for Defense Department work.

Brief written by urgent.news from Punch, Fast Company, Quartz, Winnipeg Free Press, Business Insider — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.