Judge Suspends Trump Sanctions on AI Company Anthropic

(Patria) - A U.S. federal judge on Thursday suspended sanctions that President Donald Trump's administration imposed on Anthropic, saying the measures likely violated the law by blacklisting the company over its expression of dissatisfaction with the Pentagon regarding the use of its technology, AFP reported.

In the Northern District of California, Judge Rita Lin granted Anthropic's request for a preliminary injunction in its lawsuit against the government, freezing a presidential order that barred all federal agencies from using Anthropic technology.

The ruling also suspends the Pentagon's designation of Anthropic, the creator of the Claude AI model, as a national security supply chain risk – a designation typically reserved for organizations from adversarial foreign countries.

The designation not only blocks the Pentagon from using the company's technology but requires all defense suppliers and contractors to certify they are not using Anthropic models in their work with the department.

The dispute erupted last month after Anthropic angered Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth by insisting its technology should not be used for mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons systems.

Hegseth said on social media X that Anthropic had “given a masterclass in arrogance and disloyalty, and a textbook example of how not to do business with the United States government or the Pentagon.”

The tech sector has largely backed Anthropic following the punitive measures, which were suspended for seven days by Thursday's ruling to give the government enough time to file an emergency appeal on short notice.

At a hearing earlier this week, Lin said she was concerned the government was “trying to punish Anthropic... for criticizing the government’s contracting position in the press,” which would be a violation of the constitutional right to free speech.

In her ruling, she said the government’s designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk was “likely both unlawful and arbitrary and capricious.”
“There is nothing in the applicable law that supports the Orwellian notion that an American company can be designated a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government,” she wrote.

Lin also cited other “serious procedural problems with the government’s actions” as reasons for issuing the injunction.