Anthropic sues Trump Administration over 'supply chain risk' classification

Anthropic sued the Trump Administration on Monday as part of its ongoing feud with the Pentagon for using its artificial intelligence for military missions.

The company behind Claude AI filed two lawsuits, one in a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., and another in California federal court, to challenge the Pentagon’s decision to classify it as a “supply chain risk,” the Associated Press reported.

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The U.S. struck Iran while still using Anthropic’s tools for targeting and intelligence systems in Central Command, the military’s Middle East headquarters. But Anthropic said it refused to let its technology be used for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance and wouldn’t budge when officials demanded blanket permission to use it in any lawful scenario.

Trump responded by calling Anthropic a “radical-left, woke company” that would never dictate how the military fights. It then classified it as a supply-chain risk, a designation that in the past has generally been reserved for Chinese firms suspected of espionage. The decision means the government could force any company doing business with the Defense Department to prove it doesn’t use Anthropic’s tools.

Anthropic rejected the classification. Its CEO, Dario Amodei, said in a letter last week he does “not believe this action is legally sound, and we see no choice but to challenge it in court.”

—Jackie Snow contributed to this report.

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