Appeals Court Upholds Pentagon Ban on Anthropic

A federal appeals court in Washington, DC, has upheld the Department of Defense’s designation of Anthropic as a supply-chain risk, allowing the ban on Claude models within military systems to remain in place. The judges ruled that the government had ample support for concluding that Anthropic’s refusal to permit autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance presented a statutory national security risk. This decision rejects Anthropic’s arguments regarding due process and free speech, framing the dispute as standard contract negotiations rather than censorship. While a separate San Francisco judge previously blocked one of the designations, this ruling ensures the Pentagon can continue steering contracts toward competitors like SpaceX’s Grok and Google’s Gemini.