A U.S. court has sided with Anthropic and is temporarily blocking the Pentagon from calling the company a supply chain risk. The ruling comes after the AI tech company sued the Department of War for designating it as such, after the military’s demand to bypass the firm’s AI safety policies was refused. According to the Associated Press, the U.S. government argues that it should be able to use the AI tool in any way it deems lawful, but U.S. District Judge Rita Lin said that her ruling was not about how the Pentagon wanted to use Claude, but its response when Anthropic refused to give in to the department’s demands.
“Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government,” Judge Lin wrote in her decision. She also added, “If the concern is the integrity of the operational chain of command, the Department of War could just stop using Claude. Instead, these measures appear designed to punish Anthropic.”
