The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Anthropic in its bid to block the Department of War from designating it a “supply chain risk.”
Fresh off its March 26 victory in a California court, the AI company also had to file its appeal to the War Department’s designation in Washington, D.C. On Wednesday, a three-judge panel at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against granting it a preliminary injunction, though the court agreed a speedy final decision was needed.
While U.S. District Judge Rita Lin ruled in favor of Anthropic on March 26 and criticized the Pentagon in a 43-page ruling, the three judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals were far more sympathetic to the government in their own four-page ruling, saying the “equitable balance here cuts in favor of the government.”
WHY ANTHROPIC IS SUING THE PENTAGON
“On one side is a relatively contained risk of financial harm to a single private company,” the decision read. “On the other side is judicial management of how, and through whom, the Department of War secures vital AI technology during an active military conflict.”
Two of the three judges on the panel, Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, were appointed by President Donald Trump and have in the past leaned heavily toward national security concerns. Lin was appointed by former President Joe Biden.
Anthropic put a positive spin on the ruling, saying it was “grateful the court recognized these issues need to be resolved quickly and remain confident the courts will ultimately agree that these supply chain designations were unlawful.”
The language used by the two courts in their respective decisions was notably different. Lin decried the Pentagon as “Orwellian,” said it was violating the First Amendment, and claimed that its records “show that it designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk because of its ‘hostile manner through the press.’”
The Pentagon has argued that Anthropic’s unwillingness to give it unfettered access constitutes a national security threat, putting service members’ lives in danger through the possibility of being faulty in the line of combat.
JUDGE BLOCKS PENTAGON’S PUNITIVE MEASURES AGAINST ‘SUPPLY CHAIN RISK’ ANTHROPIC
“The worry is that Anthropic, instead of merely raising concerns and pushing back, will say we have a problem with what DoW is doing and will manipulate the software … so it doesn’t operate in the way DoW expects and wants it to,” Trump administration attorney Eric Hamilton said at a hearing in the California court last month.
Anthropic argues that the Pentagon’s supply chain risk designation will cause irreparable harm to the company if it isn’t lifted immediately, and that the designation itself represents government overreach.
