Judge Blocks Anthropic Blacklist

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin blocked the Pentagon from enforcing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s February designation of Anthropic as a “supply-chain risk,” vacating restrictions that would have cut the AI company off from federal use. Lin ruled the Defense Department violated the First Amendment by retaliating against Anthropic over its criticism of military AI uses and refusal to loosen limits on Claude for weapons and surveillance. The court also found the designation arbitrary and capricious, rejecting the government’s national-security justification as unsupported.