Judge sides with Anthropic and temporarily blocks Pentagon ban on working with the company

Federal court temporarily blocks Pentagon's ban on collaboration with Anthropic. U.S.

District Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California granted the company's motion for a preliminary injunction — meaning that the U.S.

Department of Defense's decision to blacklist the creator of Claude is suspended for the entire duration of the legal proceedings. The decision will take effect in seven days. The conflict has been ongoing for several weeks.

The U.S. Department of Defense (officially renamed the Department of War) assigned Anthropic the status of "supply chain risk" — a legal mechanism that effectively closes the company's access to all federal contracts.

Such status is typically applied to vendors with foreign ties or serious information security violations. The Anthropic case turned out to be fundamentally different. According to the Department of Defense's own documents, Anthropic was labeled a "risk" due to "hostile manner of conduct in the press."

This refers to the fact that the company publicly criticized the military's position on the terms of government contracts — including their approach to applying AI in lethal autonomous systems and mass surveillance tools. It was for this public dissent that the company ended up on the blacklist. Judge Lin in her ruling statement called such actions a classic violation of the First Amendment to the U.

S. Constitution. "Punishing Anthropic for drawing public attention to the government's position on contract matters — this is a classic unlawful restriction of freedom of speech," she wrote.

The court found that the state had used the contractual mechanism as a tool for suppressing inconvenient public statements, which directly contradicts constitutional guarantees. Anthropic is one of the world's leading AI developers, creator of the Claude model family. The company was founded by former OpenAI employees and positions itself as an organization that puts AI safety at the forefront.

For several years, Anthropic has publicly expressed concerns about the ethical constraints on applying its models for military and government purposes. This course has earned the company a reputation as one of the most responsible developers in the industry, but at the same time has created friction with the military department. The preliminary judicial injunction is a significant but intermediate victory.

The full proceedings will continue, and the final decision may be different. Courts issue preliminary injunctions only when they see real grounds for the claim: the fact that the court sided with Anthropic already at this stage suggests the seriousness of the constitutional arguments. For the entire AI industry, this case sets an important precedent.

A technology company openly confronts the military department in court — and wins the first round. At a moment when governments around the world are forming rules for working with AI suppliers, the ability to protect the right to public criticism through the courts becomes a strategically important tool. Regardless of the final outcome, this episode has already entered the history of AI regulation.