A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Pentagon from branding Anthropic a supply-chain risk, handing the Claude maker an important win in a case that could shape how Washington deals with AI vendors that push back on military use. According to reporting by the Associated Press, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin also blocked enforcement of President Donald Trump’s directive ordering federal agencies to stop using Anthropic and Claude, writing that the government’s actions appeared broad, punitive and potentially crippling to the company.
The dispute grew out of Anthropic’s effort to stop its AI from being used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance. Lin made clear the ruling was not a referendum on defense AI policy itself. Instead, she focused on whether the government could use an extraordinary national-security label against a U.S. company after a contract fight and public disagreement. In the judge’s words, the Pentagon could simply stop using Claude if it no longer trusted the vendor; what it could not do, she suggested, was punish the company for speaking out.
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