By Jack Queen
March 24 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge said on Tuesday that the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic looked like an effort to punish the artificial intelligence lab for going public with its concerns about AI safety in the military.
Anthropic’s lawsuit in California federal court alleges that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth overstepped his authority when he designated Anthropic a national security supply-chain risk. The government can apply that label to companies that expose military systems to potential infiltration or sabotage by adversaries.
U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco, an appointee of former Democratic President Joe Biden, said during a court hearing that the designation “looks like an attempt to cripple Anthropic.”
“It looks like DOW is punishing Anthropic for trying to bring public scrutiny to this contract dispute,” Lin said, using an acronym for the Department of War, President Donald Trump’s new name for the Defense Department.
The hearing concerns Anthropic’s request for a temporary order blocking the designation while the case plays out.
The unprecedented designation, which followed Anthropic’s refusal to allow the military to use its Claude AI software for U.S. surveillance or autonomous weapons, blocks Anthropic from certain military contracts. It could cost the company billions of dollars this year in lost business and reputational harm, Anthropic executives said on March 9.
The company says AI models are not reliable enough to be safely used in autonomous weapons and that it opposes domestic surveillance as a violation of rights.
ANTHROPIC DESIGNATION FIRST FOR U.S. COMPANY
Anthropic’s designation was the first time a U.S. company has been publicly designated a supply-chain risk under an obscure government-procurement statute aimed at protecting military systems from foreign sabotage.
In its March 9 lawsuit, Anthropic alleged the government violated its right to free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution by retaliating against its views on AI safety. The company said it was not given a chance to dispute the designation, in violation of its Fifth Amendment right to due process.
The lawsuit says the decision was unlawful, unsupported by facts and inconsistent with the military’s past praise of Claude.
The Justice Department countered that Anthropic’s refusal to lift the restrictions could cause uncertainty in the Pentagon over how it could use Claude and risk disabling military systems during operations, according to a court filing.
The government said the designation stemmed from Anthropic’s refusal to accept contractual terms, not its views on AI safety.
Anthropic has a second lawsuit pending in Washington, D.C., over a separate Pentagon supply-chain risk designation that could lead to its exclusion from civilian government contracts.
(Reporting by Jack Queen in New York;Editing by Noeleen Walder, Rod Nickel and Matthew Lewis)
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