SAN FRANCISCO: A US federal judge ruled on Thursday that sanctions imposed by the Trump administration against AI giant Anthropic were illegal, finding that the government punished the company in a row over military use of its technology.
Anthropic infuriated Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth in February by insisting its technology should not be used for mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons systems.
President Donald Trump in response ordered every government agency to stop using Anthropic’s products, while Hegseth labelled the company a “supply chain risk” to national security.
“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank cheque to punish and retaliate against government critics,” judge Rita Lin said in a 59-page decision.
She barred the federal agencies named in the lawsuit from enforcing Trump’s order to stop using the tools of Anthropic, creator of the Claude AI models, and overturned Hegseth’s designation of the company as a “supply chain risk”, a status previously reserved for foreign firms.
