U.S. appeals court upholds designation of Anthropic as supply chain risk

A federal appeals court panel in Washington, D.C., on Friday upheld the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic , dealing a blow to the artificial intelligence company in its months-long battle with the Trump administration.

The 2-1 decision rejected Anthropic's argument that the Department of Defense's ban on its Claude models was arbitrary, unauthorized and unconstitutional.

"The Department had ample support for its conclusion that the continued integration of Claude into the Department's information systems, by the Department or its contractors, presented a statutorily covered national-security risk," Judge Gregory Katsas wrote in the majority opinion for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which Judge Neomi Rao joined. Katsas and Rao were appointed by President Donald Trump.

Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, who was appointed by former President George H.W. Bush, dissented.