By Heather Somerville and Amrith Ramkumar
SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge on Tuesday said the U.S. government appeared to be punishing Anthropic in its actions against the artificial-intelligence company, in retribution for bringing into the public view its contracting dispute with the Pentagon.
"It looks like an attempt to cripple Anthropic," U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California said during a court hearing. Such actions "of course would be a violation of the First Amendment."
The hearing is part of a bid by Anthropic to get relief from the Trump administration's ban on government use of the company's AI models. Attorneys for the Silicon Valley company and the U.S. government made arguments before Lin, who has not yet ruled on the matter but expressed serious doubts about the Trump administration's actions in her opening remarks.
Lin said that after Anthropic publicly disclosed its dispute with the Defense Department, the administration "seems to have a pretty big reaction to that" and its actions "don't seem to be really tailored to a stated national security concern."
"It looks like defendant went further than that because they were trying to punish Anthropic," Lin said.
Anthropic this month sued the U.S. government to halt its designation of Anthropic as a supply-chain risk, a designation that has pitted the Trump administration against one of the industry's leading artificial-intelligence labs. The dispute stems from a disagreement over how its AI tools can -- and cannot -- be used in national security applications.
Anthropic has said the designation as a supply-chain risk -- a ban usually imposed only on Chinese entities -- has already cost it hundreds of millions of dollars in canceled contracts and aborted customer agreements. The company projects it will lose billions of dollars in revenue this year, which will also make it more difficult for the company to fundraise from investors.
Even as the closely watched legal battle moves into the courtroom, Anthropic's models are currently in use in the war with Iran for targeting and planning airstrikes. How the spat between the Defense Department and one of the leading frontier AI labs shakes out is likely to have ramifications for the relationship between the Pentagon and a Silicon Valley that has only recently warmed to the business of war.
Write to Heather Somerville at heather.somerville@wsj.com and Amrith Ramkumar at amrith.ramkumar@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 24, 2026 17:16 ET (21:16 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Comments