D.C. Circuit upholds the Pentagon's Anthropic supply-chain exclusion in a 2-1 ruling
The D.C. Circuit has upheld the Pentagon's decision to exclude Anthropic's Claude from its supply chain, rejecting the company's statutory and constitutional challenges in a 2-1 ruling.
The opinion says the department had ample support for finding a covered national-security risk. Anthropic builds restrictions into Claude, and the court said those restrictions had stopped requested government tasks more than once.
The exclusion remains in place.
The majority also rejected Anthropic's due-process and First Amendment claims. It held that the department gave the company notice and a fair chance to respond, and acted over a disputed contract term rather than Anthropic's advocacy for AI regulation.
Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson dissented. She read the statute's definition of supply-chain risk more narrowly and said it did not cover Anthropic's disclosed restrictions on Claude's use.
