In Setback For Anthropic, US Court Refuses To Overturn Pentagon Ban

A US appeals court upheld on Friday the Pentagon's decision to exclude Anthropic from its supply chain, a decision taken when the AI startup refused to remove certain safeguards on its Claude model.The conflict began in February when Anthropic refused Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth's demand to remove restrictions on the use of Claude for fully autonomous lethal weapons and mass domestic surveillance of Americans.The supply chain risk designation, formally made in March, canceled Anthropic's military contracts and barred other Pentagon contractors from using its technology.The designation against Anthropic marked a highly unusual application of the authority against a US company.The Pentagon immediately turned to its competitors.Its major rival OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, signed an agreement on the same day as Anthropic's ban, while xAI, Elon Musk's company that develops Grok, signed in February and Google and Microsoft a few months later.Anthropic has since become a pariah at the White House,…