A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic earlier this year was unconstitutional, according to the New York Times. Anthropic had filed suit in March in a California district court, accusing the Trump administration of unlawfully retaliating against the lab for the red lines it set on how its models could be used.
Ars Technica reports the specific refusals at issue: Anthropic declined to support lethal autonomous warfare and mass surveillance, and the administration's framing of the company as "woke" is now part of the record the court weighed. The Verge characterizes the case as the end of a monthslong rollercoaster between the lab and the administration — a fight the government now loses at the district level.
This is the first time a court has told a US administration it cannot punish an AI lab through procurement for the contents of its usage policy. Every frontier lab writes restrictions on military and surveillance deployment; the open question was whether writing them costs you federal business. The ruling says, at least here, that the answer is no. Expect an appeal — the decision is one district court's, not a settled precedent.
Sources: New York Times, The Verge, Ars Technica,