U.S. Judge Blocks Trump Defense Department’s Anthropic Blacklisting

A U.S. judge on Thursday blocked the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic, ruling that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's designation of the Claude maker as a national security supply-chain risk was "illegal and baseless." U.S. District Judge Rita Lin issued a 59-page order in California federal court, writing that "the empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics.

Jack Queen, Reuters: A U.S. judge on Thursday blocked the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic, the latest turn in the Claude maker’s high-stakes fight with the military over AI safety on the battlefield. Anthropic’s lawsuit in California federal court alleges that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth overstepped his authority when he designated Anthropic a national security supply-chain risk, a label the government can apply to companies that expose military systems to potential infiltration or sabotage by adversaries. ... U.S. District Judge Rita Lin, an appointee of former Democratic President Joe Biden, made the ruling in a 59-page order where she found that the Pentagon’s decision was “illegal and baseless.” “The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” she wrote. The imperial aspects of Trump 2.0 are increasingly coming apart at the seams.