Anthropic asks Washington, D.C. court to rehear Pentagon blacklist appeal

Anthropic asked a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., to rehear its appeal against the Pentagon's decision to blacklist the company's models. The Defense Department listed Anthropic as a supply chain risk in March, barring defense contractors from using its technology when working with the agency, and Anthropic subsequently sued the Trump administration. In September, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Pentagon's decision 2-1, rejecting claims that the ban was arbitrary, exceeded authority, and was unconstitutional. In a petition filed Tuesday, Anthropic's lawyers said the court ignored that the designation was direct evidence of retaliation against the company for speaking out on AI safety, and mentioned that the company received the designation because it refused to allow its models to be used for mass surveillance of Americans or lethal autonomous combat. Earlier, the company signed a $200 million contract with the Pentagon in July 2025, and negotiations over deploying Claude on the Defense Department's GenAI.mil platform broke down in September.