Anthropic is suing the Pentagon for designating it a supply chain risk, arguing the move is an unconstitutional retaliation for the company’s AI safety policies rather than a legitimate national security threat.
Anthropic has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense challenging its designation as a national security supply chain risk, a move legal experts say may have overstepped the bounds of an obscure military sabotage law. The AI lab alleges that the Trump administration’s decision which could cost the company billions in 2026 revenue violates its free speech and due process rights, claiming the blacklist is a retaliatory strike against Anthropic’s refusal to lift safety restrictions on the use of its Claude AI for autonomous weaponry.
While the Pentagon invoked Section 3252 to guard against “adversary” infiltration, critics point out that Secretary Pete Hegseth previously called the tool “exquisite” and noted that the military used it in recent strikes on Iran, leading University of Minnesota Law School professor Alan Rozenshtein to observe: “The government was simultaneously threatening to use the (Defense Production Act) to force Anthropic to sell its services, using its services in active military operations, and saying it’s too dangerous to use them in government contracts. Not all of these things can be true.” Despite the executive branch’s typical latitude on national security, the lack of foreign entanglement and the public nature of the “bad blood” between the administration and the “RADICAL LEFT WOKE COMPANY” may lead courts to find the Pentagon’s actions “arbitrary and capricious.”