A U.S. judge ​today temporarily blocked the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic PBC after the Department of Defense last month designated the company a “supply chain risk” over disagreements over how it intends to use its chatbot Claude.

The spat originated after Anthropic won a contract to provide the Pentagon with access to its Claude series of large language models. Defense officials later asked the company to modify its terms of service to permit “all lawful use.” Anthropic rebuffed the request because of the possibility of its software being used to develop fully autonomous weapons or spy on the American public.

The move lit a fire under President Donald Trump, and he ordered all federal agencies to stop using Claude within six months. It was then that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (pictured) designated the company as a supply chain risk.

Anthropic subsequently launched a lawsuit alleging the government had violated free speech laws protected by the First Amendment when it retaliated against its principles concerning AI safety. ​The company further alleged that its Fifth Amendment rights had been violated when it hadn’t been given the option to dispute the designation.

“Defendants’ designation of Anthropic as a ‘supply chain risk’ is likely both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious,” U.S. District Judge Rita Lin of Northern California wrote in her order today. “The Department of War provides no legitimate basis to infer from Anthropic’s forthright insistence on usage restrictions that it might become a saboteur.”

The order does not require the DOD to use any of Anthropic’s services. Nor does the order prevent the Pentagon from “transitioning to other artificial intelligence providers” as long as those “actions are consistent with applicable regulations, statutes, and constitutional provisions.”

Anthropic said it was grateful the court had moved swiftly. “While this case was necessary to protect Anthropic, our customers, and our partners, our focus remains on working productively with the government to ensure all Americans benefit from safe, reliable AI.”

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