Federal court allows the U.S. government to label Anthropic a supply chain risk

In the latest twist in Anthropic’s dispute with the Pentagon, a federal appeals court on Friday rejected the AI lab’s challenge to the government’s labeling of it as a supply chain risk. The decision allows the Pentagon to continue to remove Anthropic’s Claude models from its systems and bar the use of its products for Defense Department work. Judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 in the Pentagon’s favor. The dispute between the AI company and the government broke out in February when President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accused Anthropic of endangering national security and designated the company a supply chain risk. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down over concerns the company’s products could be used for mass surveillance or autonomous armed drones. “The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary,” Judge Gregory G. Katsas wrote in the majority opinion. The ruling is separate from one a federal judge made this summer in California, where she foun…