Judge blocks Pentagon effort to 'punish' Anthropic with supply chain risk label

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/26/business/anthropic-pentagon-injunction-supply-chain-risk

112•prawn•1h ago

Comments

JohnTHaller•40m ago

Some judicial pushback against authoritarian policies is good to see.

alexchapman•30m ago

Oh I agree.

alienbaby•18m ago

I'd wish more for an impartial, considered judgement

sgc•12m ago

Which of course would look exactly like judicial pushback against authoritarian policies.

KronisLV•10m ago

> 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

What issue do you take with that statement or the outcome here? I think Anthropic’s position on what the tech should not be used for was well reasoned.

It feels like the govt. flipped out based on their public messaging and this whole ordeal - instead of them themselves being more measured and just choosing not to use Anthropic’s services if they take an issue with it.

comrade1234•36m ago

I'm sure the contracts will start rolling in now.

paulpauper•27m ago

So much for all that alarmism a month ago. Just got to be patient and wait for cooler heads to prevail. Or it goes to show how Anthropic handled it well, by making their case as persuasively and assertively without delay as they had done.

jonplackett•25m ago

It’s all a big PR campaign. They will reveal shortly that they used Claude as their legal team.

SpicyLemonZest•25m ago

I completely disagree with the idea that a court not allowing the Secretary of Defense to bankrupt a company for disagreeing with him means it's wrong to be alarmed that he tried. It remains extraordinarily alarming that the guy who runs the US military thinks anyone who tries to stop him from doing what he'd like is a threat.

Waterluvian•16m ago

I think the verdict has been in for years now that there is nothing that Americans will mobilize against if it’s only the principles of freedom and liberty on the line. I think it will take being poked with a rather large stick to see some movement. Crippling the economy might be that stick. Unfortunately we all get to suffer their idiocracy.

0x3f•24m ago

Is the practical outcome much different? I doubt they'll get contracts either way, so the labelling was just a formality.

If anything it seems the label was just intended to give a veneer of legitimacy to the admin by using an existing mechanism and terminology, rather than saying "we're going to block your access because we feel like it".

epolanski•20m ago

It's a strong signal that the government cannot strong arm privates.

simmerup•17m ago

Though of course that would require the government to respect the rule of law

mmoustafa•20m ago

The Supply Chain Risk label requires every single company in the supply chain of a product or service provided to the US Government to either drop Anthropic or get dropped themselves. This is not just suppliers, but also includes suppliers of suppliers all the way down. This is a much larger chunk of the economy (approaching 100%) than the Pentagon/DOW.

0x3f•17m ago

Yes, but

> I suspect the admin will now just have an informal, not-written-down policy that does exactly the same thing.

mmoustafa•15m ago

Aaand that would get challenged in court, remember they had to get Congress to create this designation in the first place because it is not de-facto legal for the USG to discriminate between individuals or corporations.

root_axis•8m ago

That doesn't make any sense. You can't apply an informal policy to the entire supply chain.

verdverm•2m ago

There are multiple designations, any part of government, defense applications, not allowed.

For example, in certain outcomes, Anthropic may not be used by the Pentagon, but still be used by the IRS.

why_only_15•19m ago

The point of the supply chain risk designation was not just to have the DoD stop using Anthropic (they could have done that by just cancelling the contract). Their intended effect was to force every company that sells to the US government, no matter how indirectly, to not use Anthropic in any way, which would effectively destroy them because almost every company is in the supply chain (for example my company is https://calaveras.ai/ because we sell to AI companies who in turn sell to DoD).

0x3f•18m ago

I understand that, but I suspect the admin will now just have an informal, not-written-down policy that does exactly the same thing.

SpicyLemonZest•15m ago

How would they implement such a policy? Amazon, Google, etc. aren't realistically going to terminate all business with Anthropic based on an informal policy that the DoD won't write down.

why_only_15•14m ago

This is not really possible. My guess is that the government is not willing to spend the necessary quantity of money to get e.g. Amazon or Google to divest of Anthropic and stop providing them computing resources.

0x3f•13m ago

I believe Palantir are the only ones providing gov with Claude access

why_only_15•5m ago

The point is that if DoD's supply chain restriction does what Hegseth seems to want, all contractors involved with Anthropic would have to divest. That includes Amazon and Google, who are both DoD contractors who provide massive quantities of capital and compute to Anthropic. It's irrelevant that Anthropic provides Claude through Palantir.

Ifkaluva•13m ago

No you don’t understand, they can’t accomplish the same by an informal policy.

Both Google and Amazon are government contractors. With the designation, they might have had to divest their positions in Anthropic and be unable to serve their models.

No informal rule accomplishes that.

Dylan16807•10m ago

How is an unwritten policy about suppliers of suppliers of suppliers going to affect a million companies?

SEJeff•12m ago

Fun fact: Palantir is powered entirely by Claude and was what was used for the Venezuela operation and for targeting for the Iranian operation.

charcircuit•23m ago

What's the point of a supply chain risk distinction if you can't mark a company as a risk if they express that they will be a risk?

0x3f•19m ago

Well, you could also say what's the point of laws when courts can interpret them however they like? There's never a neat answer in such multi-valent systems, is there?

mexicocitinluez•18m ago

What's the point of the Constitution when the government can ignore it at their discretion?

Dylan16807•1m ago

Is this question supposed to have anything to do with the situation at hand, where what they did was refuse to perform certain categories of service?

dataflow•21m ago

I assume the court case [1] is referring to 10 U.S. Code § 3252 [2]?

[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72379655/134/anthropic-...

[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/3252

tim4ock•5m ago

Not surprising given since Biden appointed Rita F. Lin as a U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California, confirmed by the Senate in a 52-45 vote on September 19, 2023.

Won't stick on appeals and for sure if it makes it to the supreme court will be a costly suit.

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