Federal judge says Trump administration still lacks evidence for Anthropic supply-chain risk ban

A federal judge overseeing Anthropic's lawsuit against the Pentagon said at a Thursday hearing that the Trump administration still has not produced evidence justifying its designation of Anthropic as a national security supply-chain risk, months after issuing a preliminary injunction against the same ban on First Amendment grounds.

What's new

TechCrunch reported that U.S. District Judge Rita Lin, presiding over Anthropic PBC v. U.S. Department of War, said the government "hasn't presented enough evidence to justify labeling Anthropic a supply-chain risk and banning the federal government from using the company's technology."

The government has argued that Anthropic's public criticism of the Department of Defense's contracting position justifies the ban. Per TechCrunch: "The government has also argued that Anthropic’s public criticism of the DOD justifies the ban — logic that U.S. District Judge Rita Lin called “really troubling,” warning it could set a precedent of retaliating against federal contractors who disagree with the administration."

On a separate DOD claim -- that Anthropic could disable or alter its models mid-deployment during military operations -- Lin was similarly unpersuaded, saying she saw no proof Anthropic could alter a delivered model or "flip some kind of kill switch."

Context

The dispute traces back to stalled contract negotiations between Anthropic and the Department of Defense over deploying Claude on the DOD's GenAI.mil platform. Anthropic said it would not permit its AI to be used for mass surveillance of Americans or for autonomous lethal-weapon targeting decisions, citing the technology's readiness; the Pentagon countered that a private company should not dictate how the military uses the technology and said it would use the tools in "lawful" ways. After the Pentagon designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk, Lin issued a preliminary injunction in March blocking the designation, and the Trump administration's bid to have that injunction lifted has not succeeded. Thursday's hearing was part of one of two lawsuits Anthropic filed against the DOD in March challenging the ban; the second is being heard separately in Washington. Lin is now weighing whether to make the injunction permanent.

Why it matters

This is one of the first direct legal tests of whether the federal government can use a national-security supply-chain designation to pressure an AI lab over policy disagreements rather than a documented technical risk. A ruling against the Pentagon would limit how national-security tools can be used against contractors who decline specific government use cases on safety grounds -- relevant well beyond Anthropic, as more AI labs sign defense contracts with their own use restrictions attached.