Court skeptical as Trump admin defends Anthropic blacklist
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- Trump administration defended its designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk in oral arguments at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday, even as it seeks to adopt Anthropic's most powerful model, Mythos, to combat cyber threats.
- Pentagon says it's unworkable to rely on Anthropic because the company could pull out over its "ideological" AI safety views, noting Anthropic refused the military's "all lawful use" standard and maintains red lines against mass domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons.
- Judge Karen Henderson openly questioned the government's case, saying "I do not see any evidence of maliciousness" and calling the designation "a spectacular overreach by the department."
- Judge Gregory Katsas pressed Anthropic on the difficulty of locking in usage policies for fast-evolving models — "AI three months from now will be totally different from the AI of today" — and raised concerns about model opacity.
- Government lawyer Sharon Swingle framed the dispute as a trust issue, citing a "very real prospect of new red lines" and arguing the Pentagon used the supply chain risk designation because it had to act quickly.
- Anthropic's lawyer Kelly Dunbar countered that the government could simply decline to do business with the company — a less intrusive step Congress requires agencies to consider first — rather than impose a permanent legal disbarment.
- A split between the D.C. Circuit and a San Francisco court means Anthropic can't enter new Pentagon contracts but can keep existing non-Defense work; Trump gave the Pentagon until August to rip out Anthropic entirely.
Why it matters: The administration is simultaneously branding a major U.S. AI company a national security threat while racing to deploy its most advanced model — a contradiction the D.C. Circuit judges flagged from the bench, with a ruling possible within weeks and Trump's August deadline to remove Anthropic from the Pentagon hanging in the balance.
