Judge calls Pentagon's moves against AI firm Anthropic "troubling": "It looks like an attempt to cripple Anthropic"
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A judge sharply questioned a lawyer for the federal government on Tuesday over the Pentagon's efforts to cut Anthropic out of its classified systems — the latest development in a dispute between the company and the Trump administration over AI guardrails. In:
A judge sharply questioned a lawyer for the federal government on Tuesday over the Pentagon's efforts to cut Anthropic out of its classified systems — the latest development in a dispute between the company and the Trump administration over AI guardrails.
The back-and-forth revolves around Anthropic's push to bar the military from using its AI model Claude to surveil Americans or power fully autonomous weapons. The Trump administration has said it needs the ability to use Claude for "all lawful purposes." When the two sides were unable to come to an agreement, the Pentagon designated Anthropic a "supply chain risk" and moved to stop private companies from using Claude on military contracts, leading Anthropic to sue.
Anthropic, which argues the Pentagon's action was an unconstitutional attempt to punish it for speech, is asking the judge to block the supply chain risk designation, as well as President Trump's order for all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic.
In a Tuesday afternoon hearing in San Francisco, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin appeared skeptical of the government's actions, calling them "troubling" and saying they "don't really seem to be tailored to the stated national security concern."
"If the worry is about the integrity of the operational chain of command, DOW could just stop using Claude," Lin said, using the acronym for the Department of War, the administration's term for the Defense Department. "It looks like defendants went further than that because they were trying to punish Anthropic. One of the amicus briefs used the term 'attempted corporate murder.' I don't know if it's murder, but it looks like an attempt to cripple Anthropic."
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