Judge questioned the ban on technologies from the company Anthropic for the US federal government

US federal judge Rita Lin said at a Thursday hearing that the government under the Trump administration had not presented sufficient evidence to designate the company Anthropic as a “supply chain risk” (a risk in the supply chain) and to ban the use of its technologies by the federal government. The dispute arose over stalled contract negotiations between the company Anthropic and the US Department of Defense (DoD): Anthropic refused to deploy its AI for mass surveillance of Americans or for targeting and decisions on the use of lethal force, saying that the technology was not ready for those uses. The Pentagon, in turn, argued that a private company has no right to dictate how the military uses technology and promised to use the tools in a “lawful” manner.

The government further argued that public criticism of the Department of Defense by the company Anthropic also justified the ban – Judge Lin described this logic as “very troubling” and warned that it could set a precedent for retaliatory measures against federal contractors who disagree with the administration.

The Department of Defense also claimed that the company Anthropic could deactivate or modify its models during military operations – according to experts, this claim is unsupported by evidence. Judge Lin agreed with this assessment and said she had seen no evidence that Anthropic could modify a delivered model or “press some kind of kill switch button”.

The Thursday hearing is part of one of two lawsuits that the company Anthropic filed against the Department of Defense in March to challenge the ban and the risk designation; the second lawsuit is being heard in Washington. Judge Lin, who temporarily blocked the ban in March, is now considering whether to make that decision permanent.