U.S. appeals court upholds Pentagon designation of Anthropic as supply chain risk – CNBC

U.S. appeals court upholds Pentagon designation of Anthropic as supply chain risk  CNBC

In a 2-1 decision, a federal appeals court upheld the Department of Defense's blacklisting of Anthropic. A federal appeals court panel in Washington, D.C., on Friday upheld the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic, dealing a blow to the artificial intelligence company in its months-long battle with the Trump administration. The 2-1 decision rejected Anthropic's argument that the Department of Defense's ban on its Claude models was arbitrary, unauthorized and unconstitutional. "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," Judge Gregory Katsas wrote in the majority opinion for the U.S.

Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which Judge Neomi Rao joined. Katsas and Rao were appointed by President Donald Trump. Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, who was appointed by former President George H.W. Bush, dissented. In March, the DOD labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk, meaning the company purportedly threatened U.S. national security, after negotiations about how the military could use its Claude AI models spiraled out of control. The designation prevents the U.S. military from using Anthropic's models and blocks defense contractors from using them in their work with the agency. Anthropic's relationship with the Trump administration has been fraught ever since, and Trump has repeatedly slammed