The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Friday upheld the Department of War’s decision to remove Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence system from its supply chain, rejecting the company’s challenge to the move. The court’s majority ruled that the Department had sufficient grounds to determine that continued use of Claude presented a national-security risk covered by federal law.
Anthropic, the company behind Claude, had challenged the decision after refusing to accept certain limits on how the system could be used by the military. The Department had sought contractual permission to use Claude for all lawful military purposes. Anthropic agreed to most of the request but maintained restrictions on certain uses, saying those limits reflected the company’s core values.
The court also rejected Anthropic’s First Amendment claim, finding that the Department excluded the company from its supply chain because Anthropic refused to accept a contractual term the Department considered essential, rather than because of the company’s views on government regulation of AI.
