Anthropic Petitions Appeals Court Over Pentagon 'National Security Risk' Label

Anthropic petitioned a US appeals court in Washington, DC, on Tuesday to reconsider a ruling that upheld its designation as a national security supply chain risk by the Pentagon. A federal appeals court previously upheld the Pentagon's designation in a 2-1 decision in September, agreeing that Anthropic's safety restrictions could compromise military operations. The Pentagon's blacklisting stems from Anthropic's refusal to allow its AI models to be utilized in autonomous weapons or mass surveillance systems. Anthropic claims the national security designation has cost the company billions of dollars in lost business and was retaliatory against its speech on AI safety. In a separate lawsuit in August, a federal judge in California struck down a parallel designation under a different law. Anthropic argued that the panel majority misinterpreted and transformed a federal law "aimed at hostile foreign actors into one that presumptively reaches every government contractor." — Anthropic Petition