Anthropic asks full appeals court to rehear Pentagon supply-chain risk ruling

Anthropic on Tuesday petitioned the full D.C. Circuit to rehear a 2-1 panel decision from Sept. 25 that upheld the Defense Department's designation of the company as a national-security "supply chain risk." The label, applied in March after talks over military use of Claude broke down, bars defense contractors from using Anthropic's models in their work for the Pentagon. In the filing, Anthropic's lawyers argue it was blacklisted because it refused to let its models be used for mass surveillance of Americans or lethal autonomous warfare, and that the panel majority misread the law by allowing the designation "without any pre-designation process and despite straightforward evidence the designation was retaliation for Anthropic's speech about AI safety." A federal court in San Francisco struck down a parallel designation in August.