Artificial intelligence firm Anthropic has launched legal action against the Trump administration, seeking to overturn the Pentagon’s decision to label it a “supply chain risk.”
The designation stems from the company’s refusal to permit unrestricted military applications of its technology.
Anthropic filed two separate lawsuits on Monday, one in a California federal court and another in the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., each targeting distinct facets of the Pentagon’s actions.
The San Francisco-based tech company was formally designated a risk last week following a public disagreement regarding the potential use of its AI chatbot, Claude, in warfare. The legal challenges aim to revoke the designation and prevent its enforcement.
A high-stakes dispute over military use of artificial intelligence erupted into public at the end of February before the U.S. bombed Iran, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth brusquely terminated the Pentagon’s work with Anthropic and other government agencies, using a law designed to counter foreign supply chain threats to slap a scarlet letter on a U.S. company.
Trump and Hegseth accused rising AI star Anthropic of endangering national security after its CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down over concerns the company’s products could be used for mass surveillance or autonomous armed drones.
At the time of the dispute, the San Francisco-based company vowed to sue over Hegseth’s call to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk, an unprecedented move to apply a law intended to counter foreign threats to a U.S. company.
Anthropic said it would challenge what it called a legally unsound action “never before publicly applied to an American company.”
The looming legal battle could have huge implications on the balance of power in Big Tech during a critical juncture, as well as the rules governing military use of AI and other guardrails that are set up to prevent a technology from posing threats to human life.
