March 27 (UPI) -- A federal judge has ordered that the Trump administration's attempt to block Anthropic from all government contracts is illegitimate and likely illegal.
Northern California U.S. District Judge Rita Lin said in her court order Thursday that the Department of Defense's designation of Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" is likely unlawful. She is granting the Trump administration a week to respond before the order will take effect.
"Defendants' designation of Anthropic as a 'supply chain risk' is likely both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious," Lin wrote. "The Department of War provides no legitimate basis to infer from Anthropic's forthright insistence on usage restrictions that it might become a saboteur."
The Trump administration cut off usage of Anthropic's AI in February after Anthropic refused to allow its Claude AI service to be used for autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance.
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