Anthropic Files Lawsuit Against the US

AI startup Anthropic filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. The move comes after the company was blacklisted and labelled a threat to US national security.

The lawsuit filed in a California district court stated the Department of War’s (DoW) decision to designate Anthropic as a supply-chain risk is unprecedented and unlawful and will irreparably harm the company. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and DoW secretary Pete Hegseth have publicly clashed over the military’s use of the AI player’s large language models.

The AI company refused to grant the Pentagon unfettered rights to deploy its models over concerns about domestic surveillance and use in lethal autonomous weapons, which led to the DoW cancelling the $200 million contract with the developer on 27 February. In the lawsuit, Anthropic noted its contracts with the federal government are already being cancelled.

“Current and future contracts with private parties are also in doubt, jeopardising hundreds of millions of dollars in the near-term,” according to the lawsuit. “On top of those immediate economic harms, Anthropic’s reputation and core First Amendment freedoms are under attack. Absent judicial relief, those harms will only compound in the weeks and months ahead.”

Last week, Anthropic confirmed it was officially designated as a supply chain risk, a move that is typically associated with companies from foreign countries such as China. The same day, the company declared that, while it does not believe this action is legally sound, they see no choice but to challenge it in court. Anthropic has sought to distance itself from rivals by positioning the company as an ethical developer of AI ever since it was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives.