U.S. judge blocks Pentagon’s ‘Orwellian notion’ to label Anthropic a supply chain risk and ban Claude from the government

A federal judge has ruled in favor of artificial intelligence company Anthropic in temporarily blocking the Pentagon from labeling the company as a supply chain risk.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin on Thursday said she was also blocking President Donald Trump’s directive ordering all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic and its chatbot Claude.

Lin said the “broad punitive measures” taken against the AI company by the Trump administration and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared arbitrary and capricious could “cripple Anthropic,” particularly Hegseth’s use of a rare military authority that’s typically directed at foreign adversaries.

“Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government,” Lin wrote.

Lin’s ruling followed a 90-minute hearing in San Francisco federal court on Tuesday at which Lin questioned why the Trump administration took the extraordinary step of punishing Anthropic after negotiations over a defense contract went sour over the company’s attempt to prevent its AI technology from being deployed in fully autonomous weapons or surveillance of Americans.

Anthropic had asked Lin to issue an emergency order to remove a stigma that the company...