U.S. District Judge Rita Lin said at a Thursday hearing that the Trump administration has not presented enough evidence to justify designating Anthropic a "supply-chain risk" and banning federal agencies from using its AI models. The hearing was part of one of two lawsuits Anthropic filed against the Department of Defense in March, after contract talks collapsed over the terms under which the Pentagon could use Anthropic's Claude models.
Anthropic had refused to let its technology be used for mass surveillance of Americans or for weapons-targeting and firing decisions, arguing the technology isn't ready for that role. The Pentagon countered that Anthropic could remotely disable delivered models during wartime, or "flip some kind of kill switch" — a claim Judge Lin said the government has failed to prove. She also called the administration's suggestion that the ban was justified by Anthropic's public criticism of the DOD "really troubling," warning it risks punishing federal contractors for protected speech.
Lin issued a temporary block on the ban and the supply-chain designation back in March and is now weighing whether to make that order permanent.