Warren Calls Pentagon's Anthropic Blacklist 'Retaliation'
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- Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calling the Pentagon's supply-chain risk designation of Anthropic 'retaliation,' arguing the DOD could have simply terminated its contract rather than blacklist the company.
- The Defense Department designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk last month after the AI lab refused to allow its systems to be used for mass surveillance of Americans or for targeting or firing decisions of lethal autonomous weapons without human intervention.
- The supply-chain risk label requires any Pentagon contractor to certify it does not use Anthropic's products, effectively barring the company from any firm that also works with the U.S. government—a designation typically reserved for foreign adversaries.
- Employees and companies including OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, along with legal rights groups, have filed amicus briefs supporting Anthropic, which is suing the DOD for First Amendment infringement and punishment based on ideological grounds.
- District Judge Rita Lin is set to hear Anthropic's preliminary injunction request at a Tuesday hearing in San Francisco, with Anthropic having submitted two court declarations last week arguing the government's rationale rests on technical misunderstandings and concerns not raised in negotiations.
- Warren also wrote to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seeking details of OpenAI's agreement with the Pentagon, which was signed one day after Anthropic was blacklisted.
Why it matters: Tuesday's injunction hearing in San Francisco will determine whether Anthropic remains locked out of the Pentagon's broader contractor network while its First Amendment lawsuit proceeds. Warren's parallel request to OpenAI's Sam Altman for details on a DOD deal struck the day after Anthropic was blacklisted opens a congressional lens on how the military is sourcing AI from competing labs.
