A federal judge has vacated US government directives that blocked agencies and defense contractors from doing business with Anthropic. Judge Rita Lin found that the administration unlawfully retaliated against the Claude maker after it refused to remove restrictions on lethal autonomous warfare and mass surveillance of Americans.
The disputed orders told all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic products and barred defense contractors from any business with the company, including work unrelated to the military. The government called Anthropic a supply-chain risk, but Lin wrote that its technology was no riskier than other “black box” AI models and that Anthropic lacked backdoor access to systems after deployment. She found violations of both the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act.
The order requires the administration to rescind the directives, though it does not force any agency to buy Anthropic technology. A separate case remains under review in the DC Circuit, and the government could appeal this ruling. The decision matters beyond one vendor because it limits the use of procurement and national-security labels to punish a contractor for public positions about how its products should be used. Anthropic said it welcomed the ruling and still intended to work with the government on national-security applications.