Anthropic, the artificial intelligence developer, on Tuesday asked the U.S. federal appeals court in Washington to review a September decision that had upheld the Department of Defense's earlier designation of the company as a national security supply-chain risk.
The Pentagon designated Anthropic after the parties were unable to reach agreement on safety safeguards for the firm's technology. In September the appeals court ruled 2-1 in favor of the Defense Department. The majority held that the Pentagon acted lawfully after Anthropic refused to permit its intellectual property to be used in autonomous weapon systems or mass surveillance systems.
The court also rejected Anthropic's claim that the Defense Department's action was retaliatory. Anthropic has argued that the Pentagon's blacklist has caused the company to lose billions of dollars in revenue.
In its Tuesday filing, Anthropic contended that the court majority misinterpreted the federal statute underpinning the proceedings. The company says the statute was originally designed to address hostile foreign actors, not to impose restrictions on domestic government suppliers in this manner.
A parallel case in California saw a federal judge in August vacate a similar restrictive measure, although that ruling relied on a different statute than the one applied by the appeals court in September.
The dispute sits within a broader regulatory debate: Dario Amodei, chief executive officer of Anthropic, has called for unified regulation covering leading U.S. AI companies, while the Trump administration favors a growth-oriented, less restrictive market approach.
The reporting was based on Reuters. An AI assistant contributed to preparing this article; the final content was edited and verified by our journalist.
