Appeals court lets Pentagon treat Anthropic as a defense supply threat; Claude stays banned in the US military
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Publication time restored from the build log. . Updated: .
The court sided with the military: a company that says in advance what its SI will not do can be left without military contracts. The dispute over who decides how SI can be used, the developer or the state, goes on, all the way to the Supreme Court.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 to uphold the "supply chain risk" designation the Department of Defense assigned to Anthropic in March. The majority found that the department had sufficient evidence that Claude's built-in restrictions and an unresolved contract dispute could undermine the model's reliability for military tasks; the free speech and procedural violation arguments were rejected. Judge Karen Henderson wrote in dissent that the law does not make a contractor's honest and open adherence to its own restrictions grounds for a blacklist. The designation bars the military from using Anthropic's models and defense contractors from using them in work for the Pentagon. The ruling will not take effect immediately: Anthropic has been given time to seek reconsideration, and the company is "considering all options"; a separate ruling by a California court, which found the government's parallel ban unlawful, remains in force for now.