Court rules Pentagon can’t ban Anthropic’s AI models
A federal court has overturned the U.S. Defense Department’s ban on Anthropic PBC’s artificial intelligence models.
Judge Rita Lin wrote in a late Thursday ruling that the Pentagon’s move was “illegal and baseless.”
The saga began in fall 2025, when the Defense Department approached Anthropic about bringing Claude to an internal platform called GenAI.mil. The government took issue with a section of the company’s terms of use. The relevant clause specifies that customers may not use Claude to conduct mass surveillance of Americans or build autonomous weapons.
The Defense Department asked Anthropic to replace the provision with wording that permits “all lawful uses” of Claude. The AI provider refused, which led U.S. President Donald Trump to ban federal agencies from using its models. Around the same time, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk. The latter move prohibited defense contractors from using Claude.
