A federal appeals court in DC upheld the Pentagon's designation of Anthropic as a supply-chain risk, allowing continued exclusion of its Claude AI models from federal systems. The ruling came after the Trump administration’s decision to label the company a national-security risk under two separate supply-chain laws, which the Pentagon aims to enforce by this month.
The court affirmed that the Pentagon had ample support for its conclusion that the continued integration of Claude into the department’s information systems, by the department or its contractors, presented a statutorily covered national-security risk. The judges noted that Anthropic encodes restrictions into Claude that prevent the model from performing tasks the company wishes to prevent.
Anthropic spokesperson Danielle Cohen said the company remains confident in its position and is considering all options, including appealing to a broader panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals or the US Supreme Court.
The company has argued that the government acted beyond what the supply-chain law allows, but for now, the Pentagon will be able to continue steering clear of Claude.
"The department had ample support for its conclusion that the continued integration of Claude into the department’s information systems, by the department or its contractors, presented a statutorily covered national-security risk," the judges wrote in a majority opinion. The ruling means the Pentagon’s blocking of Anthropic can continue indefinitely, with both rulings facing years of appeals before being fully resolved.
The decision was somewhat expected, as the same panel had declined to temporarily block the supply-chain-risk designation in April after finding that Anthropic failed to meet “stringent requirements” for an immediate reprieve. The final decision came in 2-1, with the majority also rejecting Anth,ropic’s claims that its due process and free speech rights were violated.
The Pentagon has not provided detailed updates about its progress in replacing Claude with alternatives such as SpaceX’s Grok, Google’s Gemini, or OpenAI’s GPT models.
Some employees at Google and OpenAI have objected to their employers striking a deal with the US military that Anthropic had rejected, citing ethical concerns. But the companies have brushed aside protests and described supporting the US government as crucial.
Source: wired
