Trump blacklisting of “woke” Anthropic deemed illegal by federal judge
A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration illegally blacklisted AI company Anthropic after it refused to permit its technology to be used for lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of Americans. Judge Rita Lin found the measures amounted to unlawful First Amendment retaliation, rejecting the government’s national-security justification and ordering the directives to be withdrawn.
The administration had ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s products permanently and barred defence contractors from doing business with the firm, including on non-military work. Lin said the government’s risk assessment was weak, noting its concession that Anthropic lacked backdoor access to deployed systems and that its models were no riskier than other opaque AI systems; Anthropic sued in March and had already secured a preliminary injunction.
- Judge rules Anthropic blacklist was unconstitutional retaliation.
- Government must rescind its restrictions on Anthropic.
- Anthropic opposed autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.
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Anthropic is a US company that makes Claude, an artificial intelligence system used to generate and analyse text and other information. Governments and defence contractors are among the organisations weighing how such systems might be used in public services and military work.
The dispute centres on limits Anthropic says it places on using its technology for lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of Americans. The US government has broad powers to manage national security and procurement, while the First Amendment protects speech and can restrict government action taken in retaliation for a company’s views.
The case matters because it raises questions about how far the government can go in excluding a technology supplier, and how courts assess national-security claims when constitutional rights are also involved. It may also affect how public agencies and contractors work with AI companies that set limits on the uses of their products.